More Than Music (23 page)

Laughter broke out at the bar, the kind you could tell is laughing
at
instead of
with
. The source seemed to be Lacey, who sat with the banjo player from The Quiet Battles and the busty singer of Brazen, a pop band from Team Lance. They stopped and gave us fake smiles as we passed by and then started giggling when our backs were to them.

“Why do I feel like I’m in middle school again?” Kyle asked after we got into the elevator.

“Oh, shit.” Jared stared at his phone, and the expression on his face worried me more than anything.

“What is it?” I asked.

He waited until we were in their room and then held his phone up to show us. There, on his tiny screen, was an image of me in Jared’s arms, my face pressed against his shoulder as he kissed the top of my head. We were in our white outfits from the last live show, the photo taken after my glasses went missing while he was comforting me. It was an intimate, private moment when we’d thought we were alone—and someone had plastered it all over the Internet.

Lacey. It had to be her.

“What the fuck is that?” Hector asked.

Kyle’s head snapped back and forth between me and his brother. “Are you two together?”

I opened my mouth to confess everything, but Jared said, “No! This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Then who were you with last night?” Hector asked, crossing his arms.

“Just some groupie I met after the show. I don’t even remember her name.”

“Maddie, is this true?” Kyle asked, looking me right in the eye.

Behind him, Jared shook his head at me. I was torn between the two brothers, one a friend and one something more. I’d have to betray one of them no matter what I chose. I didn’t want to keep this a secret from the guys, but I couldn’t call Jared on his lie in front of them either. And, if I was honest with myself, I was afraid to admit the truth to them, too.

“He’s right. It’s not what it looks like. This was taken right after my glasses were stolen, when I was having a panic attack. Jared was helping me calm down, that’s all.” That part wasn’t a lie, at least.

Hector poked his finger into Jared’s chest. “Swear to us. Swear right now you’re not together and we’ll drop it.”

Jared raised his hands and said, “I swear.”

I nodded and kept my face blank, but inside I was breaking in two. When the show was over, we’d have to tell the guys the truth, and I could already imagine how angry they’d be.

Kyle frowned, but he blew out a breath and nodded slowly. “Well, how bad is the damage?”

“Bad,” Jared said. “The photo’s all over the Internet, and they have quotes from Becca saying I do this kind of thing all the time.”

“That’s because you do,” Hector growled.

Jared glared at him, and I jumped in before this got any worse. “Lacey must have done this,” I said. “When she stole my glasses, she threatened me, something about how we shouldn’t get in her way or else.”

“We have to tell Dan,” Kyle said. “She can’t get away with this shit.”

Jared sank onto his bed and grabbed his laptop. “It doesn’t matter. We’re screwed. No one is going to vote for us now. The producers will make sure of it.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed with him. Just like he thought the band had only become popular because of his bad boy image, now he thought we were doomed because of one photo of us together. Still, we couldn’t afford to lose even a single vote at this point in the show. I just hoped there were no other photos of the two of us floating around. We’d been so stupid and hadn’t been careful enough, and now our reckless passion was coming back to haunt us. God, what had we been thinking?

My phone buzzed, and I was almost too afraid to look. Messages from Carla and Julie, asking if the photo was real, asking if I was okay, asking more questions I couldn’t answer.

“Damn,” Jared said. “Do not read any of these articles. Especially the comments.”

“What?” I leaned over his shoulder to read his screen. The photo was on one of the most popular blogs about the show with the headline: “
The Sound
’s Secret Affair.” Below, the article called Jared a playboy and made him out to be some horny asshole who slept with women as some sort of power trip. They described how this had led to Villain Complex losing their bass player, with a few harsh quotes from Becca to back it up, and compared our band to the show’s former winner Addicted to Chaos—exactly the thing we’d been trying to avoid.

According to this article, I’d abandoned my internship with the LA Philharmonic to chase after him like some sort of star-struck groupie. They brought up how my father had cheated on his wife with my mom and my mom’s subsequent alcoholism, like that explained everything about me. Like I was just reliving her mistakes all over again with Jared. I couldn’t believe they would post stuff like this, shedding light on all the things in our past we tried to keep hidden. Things no stranger had a right to know about us. How did they even get all this info about me?

In the comments, I caught a glimpse of, “I knew it,” and dozens of people calling me a slut. One even said I was probably sleeping with every guy in the band. Another said we’d only been rescued by Dan because I was screwing him, too. My eyes watered with tears, and I barely managed to blink them back. How could people be so cruel? And what was with these double standards—Jared could sleep with dozens of women and no one batted an eyelash, yet one photo of me hugging a guy and I was a slut? I hated the Internet.

Jared clicked away to a different screen with a sigh. “I told you not to read them.”

I knew I shouldn’t take the attacks personally, but it was hard. I wanted to ignore the slut comments, but the underlying sentiment behind every word was that I didn’t deserve to be in the band or on the show. That I was a talentless hack, I’d gotten in the band by accident, and I was bringing the rest of the guys down with me. And it killed me because, deep down, I suspected all of that was true.

“I have to go,” I mumbled, stumbling to the door.

Jared opened his mouth like he wanted to say something but then shook his head and dropped his eyes. I fled their room and ran down the stairs to my floor. No elevator this time. I couldn’t risk running into anyone from the show right now. I had to get away—from the guys, from the show, from this life.

A
n hour later, someone knocked on my door. Jared stood outside, hands shoved in his pockets. He didn’t move to kiss me, and any hope that things would be the same between us quickly slipped away.

“Not okay?” he asked softly.

“Not really.” I stepped back to let him in, and he checked the hallway to make sure it was empty before he entered. He stood just inside the door—close but not close enough—and every inch of my body strained to throw myself into his arms. I needed him to kiss me and tell me everything would be okay, but he didn’t make a move.

“We talked to Dan. He said the photo was no big deal and that we shouldn’t worry about it.”

“No big deal? Has he seen what people are saying about us?”

“He says this kind of shit always happens and it will blow over soon. He doesn’t think it will hurt our chances on the show.”

“I hope he’s right.”

“Me too…but maybe we should cool it for a while. Stop seeing each other, at least until the show is over. We don’t need any more bad publicity.”

How was I supposed to cool it with Jared when I saw him every single day? He was the guy I thought about when I couldn’t sleep, whose touch set my nerves on fire, whose voice haunted my every step. The guy who always believed in me and made me want to reach for more. I didn’t want to give him up. And maybe the article had struck a nerve or something because for the last hour all I’d been able to think about was my father and what he’d done to my mother and how I refused to become her. I didn’t want to be Jared’s secret anymore.

“Can’t we just tell everyone the truth?” I asked. Yes, the producers didn’t want us to be together, but it wasn’t up to them who won the show. People liked our music, and some of the viewers might even be happy we were together.

“You already saw what they’re saying online about us after one innocent photo. If we admit that we’ve been lying and sneaking around, the backlash could be huge. Not to mention, the guys will completely lose their shit, and you know what Dan says about cohesion and all that.” He shook his head, his face pained. “We’re so close to the finals and the spot on the tour. We can’t afford to mess things up now. If nothing else, we owe it to the other guys to focus on the band for the next two weeks.”

I wanted him to pull me into his arms and tell me he didn’t care what anyone thought, that he was tired of the lying and sneaking around, that he’d do anything to be with me. But he was right; the truth would only make things worse right now. If we could just get through the rest of the show, win or lose, we might be able to have a real future together when this was all over.

“All right.” I stared out the window at downtown LA sparkling with lights, at the Hollywood sign cresting the hills, at anything other than his pleading eyes and the lips I longed to kiss.

He cleared his throat. “Maybe you should go out with that Sean guy, too.”

“You want me to date someone else?” I’d spent the night in his arms, and now he was pushing me toward some other guy?

“No, of course not.” He drew a ragged breath. “I can’t stand the idea of you with him. I just think it might throw people off, make them less focused on the two of us.”

Maybe or maybe it would just fuel the slut rumors about me. I didn’t want to lead Sean on, but I supposed one dinner couldn’t hurt, as long as I was up front with him about only wanting to be friends. But Jared would have to keep up his reputation, too, and the thought made me sick.

“Fine.”
Only two weeks
, I reminded myself. I could do anything for two weeks.

“I’ll see you at rehearsal tomorrow.” He hesitated and leaned in a little, like he was about to kiss me. I held still, waiting, wanting, anticipating, but he pulled back and slipped out the door without another word.

I wrapped my arms around myself and went over his words again. No matter what he said, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was more than a temporary split. Suddenly our secret romance seemed a lot less sexy and a lot more like a mistake.

A
t the crack of dawn, we went on a national radio show and assured everyone that the photo was just an innocent moment of one friend comforting another. The entire band laughed off the bad headlines, acting like everything was normal, but I didn’t know if anyone would buy it. Especially when the fracture in my heart got wider every time I looked at Jared.

After that we went straight to rehearsals, and I suffered for hours hearing him sing “Bad Romance,” followed by a photo shoot with The Quiet Battles where we pretended to be one big happy family on Team Dan. When I finally collapsed into bed, I was too exhausted to stay up all night missing Jared, though I couldn’t shake his ghost from my sheets.

The next two days were a repeat, with different publicity events and long hours rehearsing and recording both songs while the producers and camera crews watched us like hawks. Being on a break with Jared was easier than I’d expected since we never had a free minute alone together. Hell, if we got a chance to sit down and eat a real meal, we were lucky. Was this how musicians on tour lived? Sprinting from one thing to the next, pushing their bodies to the limits, giving up a normal life for one in the spotlight… I almost questioned if I really wanted it that bad. Almost.