Not that it was purely the Steve-and-Elspeth situation riling him. It was the contempt too. The fact that the rest of the band valued him so little they thought it was no big deal for him to be treated like this.
Well, it was time people started accepting that their actions had repercussions. If you pissed on the same fire often enough it went out. And right now he felt thoroughly pissed on.
‘Where you headed?’ Ash enquired nonchalantly, as though there were nothing amiss.
Xane put his arm around the girl’s shoulders. Beneath her skin, her pulse raced excitedly. She probably thought she’d won herself a grand old prize, when she couldn’t have been more wrong.
‘Sally and I are going for a drive.’
That got him a response. Ash raised both beetle-black brows in disbelief. The girl stiffened too, so much so that Xane almost withdrew his hold. It seemed the idea of getting lewd and crude with him hadn’t actually been front and centre in her thoughts. She looked up at him in stunned disbelief.
‘Really?’ Ash raked his gaze over the girl’s body from her tits to the hem of her very short skirt. ‘I know I’m always on at you to branch out more, but is now really the best time? Shouldn’t you be hashing it out with them?’
Xane flicked the tip of his tongue against the silver ring through his lip. ‘To what purpose? Everything that needs saying has already been said.’
Ash hunched his shoulders so high he was in danger of piercing his ears with the spikes on his jacket. ‘Dammit, Xane, nothing’s been said at all! It was a dumb situation to get yourself in, and it’s even dumber now. You ought to be glad you’re out of it.’
‘’Cause you’d know all about what’s best for me.’
‘I know you should have waited until the gig was over before you started your pity party.’
Yeah, and Elspeth should have held her bloody tongue until the show was done, but he didn’t suppose Ash had bothered to yell at her.
Xane moved closer to the door. His public image might be as a hard man of rock, but not even he could perform a death growl with his throat choked up and a six-foot incision in his chest.
Ash shifted to one side but slouched against the doorframe, forcing them to step over his legs to get out. ‘I’ll be in touch tomorrow. We need to talk things through.’
They didn’t need to talk about jack. Black Halo was done in its current form. ‘Whatever.’ Xane pulled his saviour into the rain.
After the heat of the arena, the cold outside came as a surprise. Xane kept hold of the girl as much for warmth as to maintain the façade that he intended to get laid. Sex was not what he needed right now. With his soul already flayed he didn’t need someone else’s expectations and emotions complicating things. And the thing about fans – which is what he gathered she was – was that they all thought they knew him, having memorised a few bits of trivia. Not only that, but they assumed, because they ‘knew’ him and loved him, he’d feel the same way in return.
He never did. They weren’t people he’d call friends. They had no life experiences in common with him. The only commonality was the music, and even then they didn’t experience it in the same way. To them it was a product; something packaged, shiny and complete. Whereas he birthed the damn stuff, taking lyrics either he or Spook had written and then scratching out the chords and rhythms that filled his head. He worked at it, transformed and nurtured it, until he had something good.
‘How far are we going?’ he asked, growing tired of the cold.
Ahead of them the car park formed a vast dark stain on the horizon, relieved only by the rainbow hues of oil-slicked puddles. Xane lifted his hand to his face to brush back his hair, whereupon streaks of kohl ran into the grooves between his fingers. ‘Where did you say you were parked?’
‘I didn’t.’ She gave him a tight smile. ‘It’s this way. I’m not in the main car park. It was full. I had to settle for a side street.’
He followed the clack of her heels for what felt like miles, while watching the sway of her butt. He’d lay money on her only dressing like this for special occasions. The clothes didn’t sit easily on her back. She was so knotted with tension she seemed in danger of snapping something. Her hemline especially was giving her issues. Her small hands constantly smoothed the cloth.
Jeans and T’s, he predicted as her usual attire. Maybe the occasional floral dress that turned her into a frump.
Xane almost fed her a corny line about how great she looked in order to get her to relax, and because even in his piss-poor mood he could acknowledge she was a knockout. The dark colours suited her peaches-and-cream complexion, while the tight cut emphasised her natural hourglass curves.
Of course, he also considered the possibility that he and not the outfit was the source of her distress. She wouldn’t be the first woman who’d landed lovely foul-mouthed him instead of kinkmeister Spook or everyone’s sweetheart, Paul.
He caught her looking back at the lights of the stadium and decided it was definitely a case of wrong-guy syndrome. Well, she was going to be doubly pissed off when she realised that not only had she landed the booby prize, but he wasn’t interested in making out. His only plan for the night was to get home and get blotto.
If that made him a bastard, then so be it.
At least he’d saved her from being screwed by Ash. Not that she’d ever thank him for it.
‘This is it.’ She stopped under a street lamp, part way along the sort of side road he’d think twice about traversing in daylight.
The wind chased the strands of her now dripping dark-brown hair across her face, giving her a solemn, slight ethereal look. She was different from the sort of girls who normally offered to take him places, but then she hadn’t actually offered, only gone along with what he’d suggested – so far.
‘This is yours?’ He’d expected her to drive a girly city runabout, not a bloody enormous sedan. Maybe she wasn’t quite as inexperienced as she looked. Her whole image might be a sham to lure guys in. Half a mile down the road, she’d probably transform into some vampire bitch queen and suck him dry.
No matter, he’d take that chance just to be away from here.
Xane settled himself into the passenger seat, from where he checked her out for fangs. No evidence of them: she had small, neat white teeth.
She nervously fussed, making multiple checks before turning on the ignition.
A powerful rumble filled the vehicle.
‘Sorry.’ She slapped a finger across the CD power button, cutting his death growl off midway through one of the band’s earliest tracks. ‘I’m sorry.’ She backed up the car and proceeded to perform the slowest turn out of a parking space he’d ever experienced, but then he was used to Rock Giant slaloming the tour bus as though it were an Aston Martin and not a converted double-decker.
‘Been driving long?’
‘Six months. How about you?’
‘I can, but I don’t very often.’
‘I don’t suppose there’s much need when you’ve people to ferry you about.’
Was that a dig? He thought it might be.
‘Where are we headed?’ she asked as they approached the first junction. ‘You’re staying at the Whyteleaf, right?’
Wrong. He might have a room booked there, but he’d never intended to occupy it. Not when he had a bolthole within an hour’s drive.
‘May I?’ He pulled his phone from his pocket and jacked it into the port on her dashboard. It was the work of moments to feed his postcode into the satnav app and have it start