When the last note fades, the crowd roars and I look out into a sea of glowing phones, as far as the eye can see. Kade and Vaughn are there and the three of them take a bow.
Travis waves and slings his arm around me. “Goodnight, Nashville. We love you.” Then he leads me off the stage to the thundering cheers.
As soon as we’re off, we’re swarmed. Travis leads me to a waiting tour bus, which will take us to their warehouse, where there’s an after-party. The bus is crowded to the point of being claustrophobic and I understand now why Travis bought the house. He once told me he bought it so he could hear himself think and I can see how he would need to take a break from this life sometimes.
He keeps me with him, his arm secure around me, touching my hair, murmuring in my ear. “You sang like an angel. You were so good.”
“So were you, Travis. You’re unreal.”
Vaughn grins at me as he pops a bottle of champagne. He’s striking with his black hair and his blue eyes and his ink. “Ruby, where’d you learn to sing like that?” he says, pouring our glasses until they overflow with bubbles. “Rox, you nailed that tour, honey.”
“That’s some voice you’ve got, Ruby,” says Kade. There’s a girl with him. She has short blond hair and a stand-offish vibe. He doesn’t introduce us and I smile in a sort of greeting but she doesn’t smile back.
“Thanks.”
“Have you ever performed before?” Roxie asks me.
“No. That was my first time.”
They talk and laugh and I sip my champagne, still reeling from the surreal experience of what just happened to me. What’s still happening to me.
We get to the warehouse and we’re ushered through a back entrance because the street in front of the building is swarming with people. More rabid fans, desperate to get a glimpse of the Tucker brothers.
The warehouse is a huge loft with an industrial, modern look that’s been softened with wood and brick and a wall of windows looking out over the glittering city. It’s furnished with expensive-looking leather couches and funky lamps glowing golden light. It’s already full of people. A passing waiter serves us more champagne.
I’m already tipsy from the first glass but I figure it’s a night for celebrating.
Travis gets pulled into a conversation with some people and Roxie draws me over to the window.
“Do you have a manager, Ruby?” Roxie asks me.
“A manager? No. No, I don’t have anything.”
“We should talk.”
“Sure. I’d love that.” I’m sort of shocked by her suggestion but I’m also distracted, because I can see Travis talking to some people deeper into the room. Roxie gets pulled away into another conversation.
It’s so crowded in here.
Travis is surrounded by groupies. Lots of them. Beautiful, scantily-clad girls who obviously have one thing on their mind: getting as down and dirty with Travis Tucker as possible. They seem open to the idea of all getting down and dirty with him at the same time. In fact two of them seem almost as interested in each other as they do in Travis.
One of them grazes the back of his shirt with her fingertips. Another’s watching his mouth, like she’s thinking about kissing him. A slim redhead with a tattoo on her hip, above her very-low rise shorts, fingers a strand of his hair. They’re like sharks, slow and stealthy, circling him.
Travis steps away from them. He’s trying to talk to a guy that’s sitting on a couch. But the girls are insistent. Their hands graze his shirt and his hair. He turns his back to them, talking to the guy on the couch.
And then I see more clearly who he’s talking to.
It’s Jack. Jackson, they called him.
Rose’s boyfriend.
I’ve only met him once, as he was picking up Rose a few months ago. But it suddenly all clicks into place. He’s a musician. He travels a lot. Because he’s with Travis’s band. He’s their opening act. I didn’t recognize him on the far side of the stage earlier, with the hat he was wearing and the sunglasses. His hair is longer than it was the last time I saw him.
Jackson is sitting on a couch and there’s a girl sitting on his lap. Another girl is sitting on the arm of the couch, leaning over him, playing with his hair. Jack is laughing. He tips back a shot of whiskey someone hands him. The girl on his lap is kissing his face. She’s unbuttoning his shirt, running her hands over his chest.
No wonder he’s too busy to call Rose.
It’s pretty obvious he’s gearing up for a big night … and one that very definitely doesn’t involve my sister. It occurs to me now that I don’t know if Gi got Rose to go to the clinic to get a morning after pill. I never asked her. I hope desperately that she did. I wonder if he’ll knock up these girls too. The way his hand is placed under one of the girl’s shirts seems like a pretty good clue that he’ll take whatever they’re offering. Maybe he’s got a whole slew of pregnant women crying by their phones across the country, waiting for him to call them.
And suddenly I wonder if Travis does too. This is his lifestyle. He has thousands of women throwing themselves at him every night. Like they are right now.
Have I been a fool … for thinking I was special? Does he feed those lines to all the girls he spends time with?
I remember asking him when we first made love if he’d done it many times. Yeah, a few.
How many is a few? A few hundred? A few thousand?
I stand here and the rest of the party sort of fades out as I watch the women fawn over Travis as he takes a long drink straight from the whiskey bottle.
The champagne is making my head spin.
Do I have this all wrong, for thinking he was mine? Do all the rock stars play around? Maybe all I am to him is a naïve country wannabe with the same fantasy as all the girls in this room and all the girls in that vast, cheering crowd.
Travis got jealous when I once mentioned Chase to him. I’m a little surprised now at the fever of my own jealousy. I never meant to care so much. I wanted experience. I wanted to know what it felt like to feel. Travis sure showed me that. But now I’m starting to realize that all that feeling has dug a lot deeper than I expected it to.
It was never my plan to get attached. But … how dare they touch him?
He’s mine.
And why is he letting them?
Does he tell all the girls about his honesty and his big cock right before he fucks them in the back seat of his Shelby?
Ruby, calm down. You’re overreacting.
Another girl sidles up to him and whispers something in his ear. He has to lean closer to her to hear what she’s saying. She smiles and touches his face.
Before I know what I’m doing I’m walking over to Travis.
He sees me and he makes an attempt to brush a few hands off his shoulders, but they’re not easily dissuaded, these girls. They’re ravenous for a piece of Travis Tucker. What a goddamn gentleman, though, really. To notice me standing there and make some lame attempt to fight off his fans for my sake.
“Hey, Ruby,” says Jack. How can he be so blasé about this? He’s making no attempt to brush off his girls.
“Hi, Jack.” I can’t help myself. “Have you spoken to my sister lately? The one who’s waiting at home for you to call her like you promised you would?” The one who you confessed your love to before having unprotected sex with and then didn’t bother to find out if she was okay. Which isn’t only Jack’s fault of course, but I don’t sound as calm as I was going for.