For Love or Money Read online

  “That’s addiction.” His stare darkens. “You can’t run from things to avoid pain. It’s a natural part of life. Pain is living. You think when my dad died in the car accident, I wasn’t broken? I was six when he died. He was my favorite person in the world. We played soccer every day and he taught me how to play a guitar. I know how it feels to lose someone you love. But that doesn’t have to be the end of life.”

  It makes more sense why we’re so alike. “You aren’t any different from me, James. You aren’t any better than me. You are just as mad as I am that your parent died. You push people away the same way I do.” I stifle a laugh when I think about it all. “You refused to take money from my dad, but you sold yourself to the highest bidder to pay tuition. My dad would have made a deal with you.” I know hot tears are spilling down my cheeks and I look like a psycho, but I don’t even care. I point at him and shake my head. “You set yourself up to fail as big as I do, and I see now what my dad was seeing. We are two pieces of dynamite rubbing against each other, just waiting for the explosion.” I look down, hating that I lied to him, and if we’re going to break up then I might as well get it off my chest. “I told my stepmom about your tuition situation. That’s how my dad knows. I thought she was my friend. I didn’t know she’d tell. I’m sorry for that but I’m not sorry I love you. I’m sorry you can’t love me back enough to trust me.”

  I see cameras starting to lift in our direction, so I get into the first cab that stops for me. I spend the next fifteen minutes sobbing into my hands and avoiding the constant ringing of my cell phone.

  Geoff is sitting outside of my hotel room when I get there. He lifts his face, smiling and looking exhausted. “Hey, kid.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t need a babysitter, Geoff. I’m an adult for the first time in my life.”

  He stands, looking confused. “Why can’t I worry about you? You’re my family.”

  I open the door, not inviting him in. “I don’t have family. She died when I was a kid and I’ve been on my own since.” I close the door, hating myself the minute I realize what I’ve said and open the door to his smiling face.

  “You are so mean when you’re being dramatic.” He strolls past me as if I never said it. “You have to learn how to curb that.” He climbs onto the bed and gives me a look. He’s fifteen years older than me and has been working for my dad since he was very young. I was a small kid when he started. Our life has always been his.

  I don’t even know how he does it.

  I climb onto the bed but he sneers. “Go change first. That dress is appalling.”

  I roll my eyes and go into the bathroom to take a shower. Every second of it is a battle to not think about the outcome of my night.

  I come back out in my fleece pajamas that I normally sleep in in Boston. He wrinkles his forehead. “Wow, fleece. Who knew you wore sensible clothing to bed or at all.” He slaps the bed. I climb in next to him, even though he’s on top of the covers, and snuggle in to him. He hugs me and kisses my head. “Your shampoo stinks.”

  I start to cry as the emotions hit.

  “What? Why are crying about shampoo?”

  I shake my head. “I really like him. I love him and he’s so wrong for me. He’s only going to hurt me. This is why I don’t love people, Geoff.”

  “You mean apart from me and Henry and your father, of course.” He chuckles. “Lana, you’ve always loved people, you just don’t ever give them the chance to love you back. Your flaw is the receiving end, not the giving. You have to be open to receiving love and you’ve always been closed off.”

  I look up at him. “It’s scary.”

  He nods. “There isn’t going to be an easy sort of love, unless it’s with a dog or a cat, and even then they have such a short life span. Love is pain but it’s pleasure and trust and intimacy. You won’t ever have any of those things if you don’t let someone love you.”

  I lie there, contemplating what he’s said. He doesn’t say anything else, he just holds me and lets me sleep. He’s always been the big brother I never had.

  I wake in the morning to him passed out on my bed, still dressed and on top of the covers. He is handsome. It’s sad he hasn’t ever gotten married or had kids or any type of life. He’s spent every minute babysitting me and hanging out with my dad.

  My dad.

  The show. Shit.

  I sigh and get up, getting dressed and made up for the first day of the show. I leave Geoff sleeping like he might never wake up and go for breakfast. I get to the elevator and decide I need to talk to Leo.

  I head for his room, not thinking about the proximity to James’ when a door opens and he comes strolling out. He freezes when he sees me.

  My heart is in my throat but we have to perform together so faking friendship has to become something we just do. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to worry about being in love with him and him not really loving me back, or just not the right way. Not enough to trust that I won’t fuck random dudes to piss him off.

  God. Why does everyone think I’m the worst person on the planet?

  My brain has an answer for that but I shut that bitch up. I don’t want an honest answer. I just want to avoid the conversation altogether.

  James walks to me, and when I try to move to the other side of the hallway, he’s there. I turn and go to the other side but he follows me until we are chest to chest. He smells amazing and looks even better, towering over me and taking up all the room in my head. He runs a hand down my cheek, muttering, “Who says the explosion has to be a bad thing. Maybe we’re more like fireworks than dynamite.”

  My eyes betray my resolve and look up into his.

  The next moments are a blur. A frenzied one.

  His mouth is on mine and our hands are attacking each other’s clothes. He has opened his hotel room door, dragged me through, and is laying me on the bed before I even realize it. His body pins mine to the mattress, but it feels like it’s the exact choice I should have made all along. It feels right to have my hands in his hair, pulling his face down on mine and to have my legs wrapped around his waist. Everything feels right.

  He pulls at my clothes, kissing my nape but something changes. Our movements slow to a tempo I’ve never experienced before. He’s grinding against me and then he’s inside of me, and I don’t know how it all happened. I don’t know where my underwear went or how his pants got undone.

  His hands are roaming my body, cupping to meet his thrusts and we are writhing against one another. I don’t bite his lip or scratch his skin, I just suck and hold as he makes gentle motions, pushing himself into me and making me feel like nothing I have ever experienced.

  His lips explore as his body slides atop mine, pushing me to move with him. My legs are wrapped around him, pressing his ass and making his movements take him deeper into me. I don’t know how, but I come with the slow, full-length rocking our bodies are doing. He’s kissing next to my lips and still all over me—inside of me, as the tumultuous waves of emotion and pleasure press me farther into him. I am lost in his sea of movements and bliss, when suddenly he grips to me, thrusting in jerks and making a noise I have never heard him make. He exhales deliriously into my hair and is kissing my head. He pulls back, brushing my cheeks and lips with his.

  Two things dawn on me.

  His semen is inside of me—it’s the first time that’s ever happened. The second, and somehow not the less frightening of the two, we just made love.

  It’s my first time. I have never had vanilla sex that wasn’t a nightmare of fake intimacy and awkwardness.

  He stops kissing and swallows hard. “Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  He looks down at our abdomens. “No condom. I don’t even know what happened. That’s never happened to me before.”

  I nod and wonder if maybe he’s right, maybe we are the fireworks and not the dynamite. That didn’t feel like dynamite. It didn’t have a single moment that felt wrong.

  “Are you on the pill?”


  I smile. “Yeah. I have been since I was fourteen.”

  “I love you.” He blurts it out, making me laugh, but he shakes his head like he’s serious. “No. I do. See how natural this feels? You just made me make love to you, and it was only possible because I love you.”

  I roll my eyes. “I have to admit I don’t know what that was. Because it didn’t feel like fucking, and for a guy who only likes fucking, that’s weird.”

  He sighs into my head. “Your shampoo stinks.”

  It makes me laugh.

  He pulls himself out of me and drags me to his shower. We spend the entirety of it soaping each other and kissing tenderly.

  By the end of it all, I am convinced love is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

  Especially when he lifts my face as I’m doing my bra back up and kisses my nose. It’s the sort of act a girl has to free herself to feel comfortable with it. Not every guy can kiss your nose and stare into your makeup-free face and see you with nothing but love.

  Looking into his dark-green eyes it’s all I see.

  Acceptance and love and admiration.

  Of course, leaving the hotel room to find Geoff looking for me like a mad man and blowing my phone up is not the ending I saw to the whole experience. I look at the frantic messages and mutter. “Meet you at the auditorium?”

  James lifts my chin, planting a delicious kiss on my lips. “Okay.” He walks off as I blatantly stare at his ass.

  God, he’s perfect.

  My phone rings and I answer it. “Hello?”

  It’s Geoff shouting. “WHERE ARE YOU?”

  I look around the hallway. “Sixth floor. Why?”

  “We got the information on the foot pervert. I need to see you in your room right now! Come alone!”

  My insides churn. The way he said the two sentences makes me sick.

  I turn and run for the elevator, pressing the button a hundred times before it arrives.

  Inside of it I can’t help but twist up in knots.

  He sounded so scared, like I was in danger at that moment.

  I wince.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chris and Rhi-Rhi

  James

  I can still smell her on me, even after the shower. The feel of her body under mine, pinned, and yet alive with welcoming movements and delightful sounds, is replaying in my head. I can taste every bit of her.

  When we get to the auditorium, Nick nudges me. “She okay?”

  “Yeah, she’s meeting us here.”

  “She could have given us a ride. I hate this bus,” he grumbles.

  Leo nods, leaning forward. “Did you guys have a fight last night on the street?”

  “Yeah. We’re fine now.”

  He glares at me. “Less fighting and shit on the street and more behaving like professionals.” I open my mouth but he puts a finger up. “No. I know we’re dealing with Lana but that’s the price of loving her. You get to be the jerk who has to keep her ass in line.” He holds up a YouTube video of us fighting on the street. You can’t make out what we’re saying, but you can see it’s us.

  “Shit!”

  “Don’t make this job harder for me.” He looks stressed.

  “Whatever.” I can’t believe someone was filming us. The video looks like I’m roughing her up. It’s completely taken out of context.

  Nick holds his phone up with a quote from a late-night TV show about how we’re the next Rhianna and Chris Brown.

  I sigh.

  Simon gives me a sideways glance. I shake my head, fighting the urge to snap. “I didn’t hurt her. I was just trying to make her listen.”

  “That’s what Chris said.” Nick laughs.

  I laugh bitterly. “Fuck the paparazzi. I didn’t do shit.”

  “I know that. I know how these movies look. But the fans won’t. So keep it in your pants in public. You guys can have all the sex games you want inside of a locked bedroom, so long as it doesn’t involve the popo.”

  My blood is boiling as I climb off of the bus.

  Bryce grabs my arm and seethes an angry threat. “You hurt her and I’ll kill you.”

  “Fuck off!” I tear my arm from his, vibrating and needing a run before I blow up on someone.

  Lana is with her dad and Geoff in front of us. Her dad glares at me as they file into the auditorium. He wraps an arm around Lana’s shoulders. She looks upset and doesn’t even look my way.

  Fuck!

  I am an idiot.

  I shouldn’t have put my hands on her arms like that in public. She was just so angry. My insides are churning already and creating a mess of an already bad situation, when Leo comes hurrying back to me, looking like he’s having a stroke. “WE’RE FIRST!”

  I slump. I won’t even get a chance to talk to her before we have to perform. At least it’s just the same songs as yesterday.

  Leo leads us backstage as the show is starting and Lars is doing his introduction to the summer show.

  The crowd is pumped, clapping at ridiculous moments.

  I walk to her, ready to beg and plead and promise to never grab her arms like that again, but she sees me and turns away.

  Geoff steps between us. “We are having a weird morning, I’m sure you can relate. Lana is going to need a minute.”

  I shake my head. “No way. I need to explain that I’m sorry. It’s my first time dealing with this and I didn’t know.”

  He looks confused before he sighs. “She’s already anxious about performing.”

  Damn. He has a point.

  But am I not part of the solution and the comfort for her?

  I feel like I am. My chest feels bare without her head resting against it. The air I’m breathing feels empty if her hair isn’t part of it.

  Simon and Brandon are still giving me a shitty look. If they had seen us in the hotel room an hour ago they wouldn’t think that she hated me for beating her up on a sidewalk. I wish I could explain, and at the same time, I hate that I think I have to.

  Leo brings me my guitar and fixes my collar on the clothes Lana picked.

  He brings Simon and Brandon over. “Lana and James didn’t get into a fight. You both need to understand how these videos work. I saw them making out in the hallway this morning. Something else is wrong with her. It isn’t him.”

  I sigh. “Thank you. I didn’t hurt her. I would never. I would walk through fire before I would hurt her.”

  They look skeptical but nod in agreement.

  Nick comes wandering over, his face is as white as a sheet and he looks confused.

  Leo gives him a look. “What? God, don’t say you’re sick. If I got you sick I’ll kill myself.”

  Nick swallows and looks at me. “What’s the control on your temper like right now?”

  I shake my head. “Not good.” But my stomach is in my throat.

  He gives me a look that says his isn’t so good either. “It was Nance’s dad.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about but Leo gasps. “No!”

  “What?” I look at them both.

  “The semen has been traced back to Nance’s dad and they’ve tested the other girls who were raped. It’s him on three. The rapes coincide with his business trips to Boston. And one of the girls was roofied but her memory wasn’t completely gone. She recalled an older guy so the campus was checking out profs and maintenance. But I guess Geoff and Henry got a PI who decided to steal DNA and sneaky test all the guys who’ve slept with Lana. The match they found was Nance’s dad.”

  I have nothing. I have no way of reacting. My hands go numb and my heart aches for her, but my rage is stuck at frightening and psycho. I’m vibrating and angry in a way that I can’t comprehend. I want to run out the door and run to wherever he is and smash him into a thousand pieces.

  Leo’s hands are over his mouth, but when his eyes reach mine, he lowers them slowly. “James, James, James, dude!”

  My mouth is parted and my hands are trembling.

  Leo
is shouting at Nick but all I see is her.

  She turns to see Leo yelling, and I realize the world is going in slow motion.

  Her eyes lift to reach mine. Her hands wipe away the moisture at the sides of her eyes, and like nothing is wrong, she turns and walks to me. Her tiny hands lift to my face, cupping it the way I love to do to her. The warmth is startling. Her pink lips move but I don’t hear the words.

  I see one word flashing through my mind over and over—mine.

  She stands on her tiptoes and whispers into my lips as she kisses me. “When we get onstage just look into my eyes. It’s just you and me, baby. Don’t think about it, okay?” She is comforting me?

  God, she’s perfect and braver than I ever imagined.

  I swallow and the sound of everything around us turns back on. I shake my head and look down on her. She smiles—it’s weak and forlorn but it makes me smile back. “Just you and me,” she whispers.

  I catch the last of the announcement for our group just as Leo shoves us onstage.

  Nick starts playing the keyboard straight away. Lana’s soft voice fills the auditorium as she starts the song off. The crowd goes crazy, not only is it Lana Webber—THE Lana Webber—she’s also amazing. We play our hearts out for her. My fingers are numb and I play from memory, on autopilot.

  When she finishes the song, I have never been more proud of her. She turns, waving at the fans for the first time ever, and comes back to me. She presses her lips against mine, making the crowd go crazy.

  “Just me and you!” I whisper and walk to the front to start the song with Simon.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Balance and BFFs

  Lana

  James looks back at me from the microphone before he leans in, speaking softly, “Hope y’all are having an awesome time. We were supposed to sing American Authors, but I think we’re gonna go with the song that hits a little closer to home right now.” He turns and mutters, “‘Counting Stars’ by One Republic.”