Random on Tour: Los Angeles (Random Series #7)

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ANDOM ON
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J
ULIA
K
ENT

Copyright © 2015 by Julia Kent

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

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A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE

This book deals with the very difficult topic of sexual assault and rape, and I’ve taken great care to address this with the sensitivity and respect it deserves.

None of the scenes in the book contain sexual violence, though the characters do tell their stories of
past
sexual violence. None of those descriptions is graphic or gratuitous. This book is about hope and healing, but the characters do have past trauma that they discuss. 

For those readers who may be triggered, please be aware, and if you need assistance, contact RAINN, an anti-sexual violence organization with resources for survivors:
https://www.rainn.org/get-help
 

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Prologue

Maggie

Liam began banging a plastic fork against a plastic Champagne flute. “Again! Again!” he cried out as we imitated him, the dull sound of plastic on plastic making me laugh.

I was with the band, Random Acts of Crazy, on the rooftop of the building that housed the concert hall where they’d just played, and the band’s drummer, Sam, had just proposed to his girlfriend, Amy.

She’d said yes. We greeted their resulting kiss with cheers and catcalls, more alcohol and lots of cake. So much cake.  

Liam’s girlfriend and my best friend, Charlotte, had invited me to the concert and I’d come up for this after-party, reluctant to be around human beings this day of all days. It was an anniversary of sorts for me.

One I’d like to never celebrate.

But
it
celebrated
me
, like it or not.

Seven years ago, to the day, I was gang-raped by three men on my college campus.

Seven years ago I was torn into tiny little pieces of Maggie. It had taken a lot of glue over the last seven years to make those pieces fit together again and make up something resembling a whole.

Watching Sam kiss Amy so tenderly, her engagement ring sparkling in the glow of lights on the rooftop, I smiled. It was a real smile, one filled with mirth and appreciation and a little too much Champagne, perhaps. Getting drunk might not be the most responsible thing to do right now, but I didn’t much care. 

“Someday, you,” Charlotte said to me, her own voice a little loose.

“You first,” I said, my eyes flitting over to her boyfriend, Liam. They’d reunited after years apart, a simple misunderstanding finally cleared up after fate stepped in and made them see each other again. We were outside on this fine, clear evening, a few stars shining through the obscured city sky, the bright lights and teeming activity on the roads below us a reminder that we were in a tiny little cocoon. Just a bubble. 

The world outside us went on, oblivious to the massive shift that had just taken place for Sam and Amy. When the world is so big, what feels like a tectonic plate shift on a personal level is nothing more than the movement of a hair in the larger sense.

I guzzled another flute of Champagne and froze, the liquid in my throat, waiting to be swallowed.

Tyler was here.

We’d met a few times before, in passing. He was the substitute bass player for the band; I was the lead guitar player’s girlfriend’s best friend. In that weird sort of social circle thing where Venn diagrams get laid over different groups, Tyler and I were bound to be in the crossover once in a while.

He looked so hot. Short brown hair. A few days of beard. Bright green eyes that were more guarded than a Russian mobster’s. He was sleeved, the colorful tattoos a tapestry, but every time I met him I couldn’t quite see them. We only saw each other in dark concert halls, or tonight, under the stars.

He gave Sam a rare smile and a hearty handshake, forearm muscles bulging. I wondered what it would be like to have those hands on me. My fingers tracing those tats. Listening to him tell me the story of his naked body while he forgave mine.

Forgave it for failing me.

I shook my head fast to banish the thoughts that drew me into places so dark they became black holes of the soul. The gravity of trauma had a way of sucking all the good into it, and tonight I wasn’t going to let that happen. The opposite, in fact.

Tonight I was going to fuck Tyler.

He didn’t know it yet, but that was okay. He would. Soon.

“Maggie?” Charlotte handed me another drink and gave me a half-smile. “You look like you’re a million miles away.”

I ran one hand through my orange hair and drank some more courage. Not too much, but not too little. The only action I’d seen in five years involved my own hands and devices with batteries, and that had been torture. I didn’t quite count a few kisses with guys in bars on dance floors that smelled like sour alcohol and bleach. Those furtive attempts to prove I could let someone touch me sexually had been more like mini therapy sessions than anything arousing.

Tyler was definitely arousing.

“I’m ready,” I whispered, willing the shake to leave my voice.

Her already-big eyes widened, like white globes with brown pools in the middle. Charlotte’s dark, straight hair was cut with bangs that were so perfect they were like a blade.

“Tyler? You’re picking a guy whose nickname is
Frown
for your first...oh, Maggie, are you sure?” 

My eyes met hers.

“You
are
sure,” she hissed, sucking air in through her teeth. Charlotte was nothing if not tactful and cool under pressure as long as she was dealing with someone else’s crisis. She was clearly weighing her judgment. “I know you were thinking about doing this, but...him?” 

I just nodded, then shrugged. “It has to be someone, right? He’s nice. Kind of rough in an appealing way. Non-judgmental. Not at all hard on the eyes.” 

“No, not at all,” Charlotte said, interrupting me. She rolled her lips in as if fixing her lipstick. I knew she was curating Tyler. Evaluating him. Biting her lips and assessing him like a specimen. Was he Maggie worthy? She was deciding.

“And he doesn’t talk. No feelings to worry about. Easy peasy. How many guys get a one-night stand offer from a chick?” I asked, my tone far lighter than my heart. My palms began to sweat. My face, too. I felt a drop trickle between my breasts. I’d worn actual lingerie today, a bra and panties that were made in this decade and that matched. 

Just in case. Just...in case.

She snorted. I took the moment to drink some more. The fuzzy warm blanket coating my skin made my idea seem so much better. Fucking brilliant, in fact. Sleep with a friend of my best friend’s boyfriend. Tyler couldn’t be a total asshole to me, right? He had as much invested in being decent to me as I had in getting him to help me just get this over with.

Reboot my sexual self. Defragment my clit. Clear my hard drive. Something like that. Damn, that Champagne was good. 

“Don’t ask Liam that question,” she said in a sour tone. Oh. Ouch. Her turn to chug a Champagne flute. 

Darla walked over with two plates in her hand, pieces of celebratory cake the size of lion paws resting on them. “Eat,” she ordered. Darla was the band manager and Trevor and Joe’s girlfriend. Brash and big, blonde and bold, she was a
tour de force
and had no filter.  

I liked her. She, Trevor and Joe were in a threesome that Liam mocked endlessly, but it worked for them. More power to them.

I watched Tyler and licked my lips. Charlotte took both plates and handed one to Liam, who took it absentmindedly and returned to his conversation with Trevor. They were discussing electric guitars the way Charlotte talked about vibrators with Amy.  

Charlotte returned her attention to me, her mouth full of cake and her eyes full of questions.

See, I don’t do this. That whole seven year thing happened for a reason, and the reason is that
I don’t do this
. But there are only so many therapy sessions and web searches and nightmares and group therapy sessions and late-night rescues with students at the college where I’m a Resident Director that you can manage before you go out of your mind with wanting to get the Big Fucking Deal Moment of your trauma history out of the way.

And fucking Tyler would accomplish that.

I hoped.

Was it a good plan? Was it a safe plan? Was it a rational plan?

Probably not.

But when you’re trying to escape from the internalized identity of That Gang Rape On Campus Girl, you stop caring after a while.

After about seven years.

Tyler

The chick with the multi-colored hair was giving me the eye. And the creeps. But mostly the eye. I knew that look. That was the look of a nervous but desperate woman who wanted sex.

I didn’t play that game.

I was here because Darla called me and said that I should come. I didn’t play in the concert, but I came tonight to watch and because Darla asked me to join the engagement party. Sam was a cool guy. Amy was the kind of girl who looked down on me for the three years I was in high school, but she wasn’t like that to me. She was just that
kind
. The kind of chick who thought she understood anything about the world she could put into a neat little box.

Eventually they learned. I guessed. I guessed they learned that the world doesn’t work that way. I didn’t know any women like that up close, so all I could do was guess.

“Hey, Maggie!” Darla called out, walking over to her with two plastic cups of Champagne. Maggie. That’s right. I sucked at names.

I didn’t suck at faces. She’d stuck in my mind since the first time we met. She was carrying a blow up sex toy doll that day.

You didn’t forget that kind of thing.

Long, dyed hair. Three or four colors. She had eyes that were so fucking blue they must have been painted on. Fake lenses. A ton of piercings and a nasty scar up one cheekbone. That made me pause. What the hell happened to her? You don’t get that kind of mark from living a pampered life like most of the people at this party. 

Maybe I misjudged her.

I didn’t fuck chicks who came on to me like I was something you try on, like a dress at a store in the mall you thought it would be fun to slip into for a minute. A disguise. A distraction. I’d been offered plenty of tester pussy. Like getting spritzed at the perfume counter at the mall—here’s a sample. Check out my scent.

They liked to get their turn on the bad-boy inked-up dude ride. And then they went home to their perfect houses in the suburbs, where Mommy and Daddy paid for everything and expected them to live cookie-cutter lives.

Been there, done that, had the memories of uncomfortable looks when I asked for a second date burned into my brain like a brand.

I was the guy you fucked so you could tell your friends you had a bad boy.

I wasn’t the guy you brought home for dinner.

Maggie, though...that scar. The hair that looked like something out of a My Little Pony commercial. All those studs in her nose and ears. Women who made themselves look like that did it to filter out the world. 

So did guys.

“How’s it going?” she asked. Darla handed me a beer and walked away, a satisfied smile on her face. I had a hard time with words but not with facial expressions. More than one woman here wanted to see me with Maggie. I felt like a gazelle being watched by a pack of lions on one of those nature shows my dad left on after he passed out from his nightly twelve pack. The gazelle at the watering hole during a drought, being looked over by the pack of hungry lions.  

Cougar, actually. Maggie’s a good five years older than me.

“Good.” I drank my beer in one long motion, trying not to choke. Her eyes raked over my arm as I lifted it, widening, then going back to normal. Whatever
normal
meant.

Leave.
My internal warning system told me to get the fuck out of here. Do not engage. Do not touch. She was Charlotte’s best friend and you don’t taint the waters when your only paid gigs come from this chick’s best friend’s boyfriend’s band.