The Rocker That Holds Me (3 page)

As soon as I have a small hold on my gag reflex I rush to the toilet so that I can finish. My hair gets in my way and I get puke in
it before I can push it out of my face. The smell makes me gag and I vomit until I am left dry heaving. Tears stream down my face, my brow is sweaty, and my stomach is still rolling.

I pray to every god I know of and beg for mercy. None comes. Instead I have to force myself to stand on my unsteady legs and I hold my mouth under the faucet until I have the taste of bile mostly out of my mouth. I want a shower, but
first I have to clean up the mess in the bedroom before I can do that.

When I finally climb from the shower I feel somewhat better. But I’m running behind so I have to leave my hair wet and rush to pull on clothes before waking the guys.

I’m not surprised to find that Shane is still covered in girls when I open his hotel room door. The heavy smell of sex in the room makes my stomach protest, but I swallow the rising bile and drag him out from under the three girls. My hand fists in his hair and I yank until he is on his feet. “Get the fuck in the shower!” I command, not in the mood to have to deal with sluts after the morning I have already had. “I give your fucking brother a lecture about this shit, but it’s you I have to handle this morning.”

“Emmie!”
He protests when I push him into the walk-in shower and turn the cold water on full blast. “Fuck!”

“Down stairs in ten minutes.”
I bark at him before slamming the bathroom door behind me. The sluts on the bed are rousing and I shoot them disgusted glares. “Get your shit and get out. You have two minutes before security tosses you out, dressed or naked. I don’t give a fuck.”

Jesse is still asleep when I walk into his room. The smell of sex still lingers in the room but he is alone in his bed. I don’t even try to rouse him gently. I just fill a glass with water and dump it on his head. “I’m up. I’m up.” He gasps.

“Good.” I snap and leave him to get ready.

I’m surprised to find that Nik is already up. When I put my key card in his door it opens. He’s already dressed. His
thick hair is styled and everything. Like always the sight of him makes me ache in places that I shouldn’t be aching. He gives me a concerned frown. “Emmie? Feeling okay, baby girl?”

The rushing around has made me dizzy and my stomach is still protesting. But I’m not in the mood to argue with him. If he knows that I’m sick he will insist on my going to a doctor. Not going to happen!
“Thanks for being up.” I muttered.

“Em…” He trails off when I turn to leave.

I ignore him as I step into the elevator and go one floor up. Drake’s room stinks of sweat, booze and sex. But thankfully the girl—or possibly even girls considering the number of condom wrappers on the floor beside the bed—are gone. He’s already somewhat awake when I walk in. Of course that’s because he’s head is in in the toilet. The sound of him puking makes my own gag reflex overreact and I dry heave in the sink. Green bile is all that I can produce and I turn the tap on so that I can swallow a few mouthfuls. At least now I have something to come up.

Drake’s sweaty hand touches my back.
“Em?” His voice croaks my name and I glance down at him, wiping sweat off my upper lip. “You okay?”

I give him a weak smile. “Guess we both had a rough morning.” I mumble.

He groans as he gets to his feet. He’s butt naked but neither of us care. I’ve seen every inch of my guys. None of us are shy about our body parts. No one bats an eye when we see each other naked…Okay maybe I bat an eye or two when I see Nik naked, but I would never let them know. “You never get sick.”

I shrug. “I’m fine.
Nothing to worry about. Take a shower, okay?” He nods and I turned to leave. “Brush your teeth.” I remind him.

Ten minutes later they are all seated on the long sofa in the conference room. A buffet of breakfast foods has already been set out. I try
to breathe through my mouth to keep from being too overcome with the smells. Normally I would make them a plate of food and cups of coffee, but this morning I don’t think I could deal with that and not throw up. Thankfully none of them seem to care that I’m not taking care of their needs.

The reporter from
Rock America
magazine is already asking them questions. Skinny with thick glasses and a nasal voice that grated down my spine with each word he that came out of his twisted mouth, I wonder how this guy became such a talked about journalist in the rock community. Probably had a daddy that was a big deal. I wasn’t sure and could have cared less. The man wants to know what everyone else who is a fan of Demon’s Wings wants to know. How did they meet? What is the significance of the band’s name? What are their plans for the summer? When is there going to be a new album?

Like they have always done they don’t answer the man’s first t
wo questions—no one knows where they came from or what their lives were like before they got famous; mostly as a form of protecting me because of my mother’s unpleasant lifestyle even if their own childhood hadn’t been so happy. But they go into detail about the summer and the new material that Nik has been working on for their next album. An hour later the guy stands to leave. After shaking everyone’s hand he turns to me. “So how do you like working for Demon’s Wings?”

“Emmie isn’t the hired help.” Jesse informs the guy, which we all know that he already knew. “Your interview is over.” The warning is plain and clear in the drummer’s voice and the reporter makes his escape.
Jesse can be a hot head, easy to anger at times and quick to throw a punch. I have had to bail his ass out of jail a few times for fighting.

I wait a few moments to make sure that the guy is gone before I turn to face them. “I want to say I’m sorry for being a bitch yesterday and this morning.” I tell them, remorsefully. I don’t often act like a bitch to my guys.
Honestly I can be queen bitch when I have to be, but not to them.

“Sit down, Em.” Jesse commands me. When I just stand there, he grasps my hand and pulls me down on the sofa between him and Nik. “We need to talk.”

I bite my lip, scared that they are going to make me go to the doctor. Or yell at me. Of the two I think I would rather they yell, but either one would make me cry. Nik wraps his arm around my shoulder, his fingers playing with the ends of my still damp hair. It’s soothing and just being this close to him makes me feel safe and loved. “Emmie, we can see that you are getting burnt out. It’s okay. We all are. That’s why we are going to take the summer off.”

“I already knew that you planned on taking the summer off.” I roll
ed my eyes at him. “Rich called me last night.” I tell him when he seems confused. “We are touring with Axton and OtherWorld starting in September.”

“Fucking Rich.”
Jesse grumbled. “We wanted to surprise you.”

“Anyway…We were thinking of renting a house somewhere. But we thought that you would lik
e to pick where.” Nik smiled down at me, that smile that always makes my heart ache for things I know I can never have. “Anywhere in the world that you want, Em. Pick a place, find us a house and that’s where we will spend our summer.”

My chin trembled. I was relieved that they weren’t yelling, that Drake hadn’t ratted me
out to the others and they weren’t all insisting I see a doctor. So why was I suddenly sobbing?

One more concert and then it was back on the road.

Do you know how hard it is to hide throwing up when you are on a tour bus? It’s near impossible. But somehow I do it. For the next three weeks I keep it from them. With the wakeup calls I get every morning where I have to rush to the onboard bathroom, I have never been so happy that the guys could sleep so soundly in my life.

After
retching every morning I’m usually able to make it through the rest of the day without a repeat performance. Still my stomach rolls all day long and I’m losing weight because I can’t force myself to eat. That is something that they all pick up on, even Drake in his almost constant drunken state. They start watching me closer and I know that they are about to gang up on me.

And really I’m more worried about finding out what is wrong with me than
an actually trip to the doctor right now. But I’m putting it off as long as possible.

I find us a house online. It’s perfect. Private beach, no one for miles that could possible
bother us. And if the guys get restless they only have to drive forty-five minutes to find a club or bar. The price for the house for the entire summer makes my stomach clench. Even after all these years and the life style we lead I feel sick having to spend so much money. But it wouldn’t even put a tiny dent in all of our wallets now.

Even my own
wallet. Rich pays me well for taking care of my guys, something I would have done for free. But Nik and Jesse made him put me on his payroll when I was eighteen. I haven’t had any need to touch the money that I earned. If there was something the guys thought I wanted they just bought it for me. If I needed something they pushed their credit cards into my hands and made sure I used them.

By the time all the details were taken care of there were only a few days left until the end of the tour. One more stop, two more concerts, and then we were going to be on a plane. I was excited. We have never had a whole summer off. I would get to sleep in for three months! That thought alone made me sigh.

“I think you should see a doctor.”

My head snapped up at the sound of Nik’s voice. He and Jesse have been sitting at the back of the bus with me watching TV for the last hour. I was feeling better after my morning of vomit filled fun. “No.”

He was sitting right beside of me so I didn’t have time to move when he grabbed me and pulled me onto his lap. “Yes, Emmie. You are nothing but bones now. You aren’t eating. And I heard you this morning in the bathroom. You sleep all the time, and you keep having bitchy mood swings. Something is wrong.”

“I don’t want to go to the doctor.” Okay, maybe I did. I was scared that there was something
seriously wrong with me, like an ulcer or something. I’ve never been this sick in my life. It takes all I have to keep water down these days. But I was still terrified of doctors.

“
We’ll go with you, Em.” Jesse promised, twirling a drum stick around his fingers expertly. “We won’t let them hurt you.”

I took a harder look at him. He was really worried about me. I could see it in the way he was looking back at me that he was a little scared too. I couldn’t handle that. So I gave in. “Okay.” I whispered. “I’ll find a doctor when we get to the beach house.”

They both seemed to relax a little. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it.” That’s when I realized that Jesse thought that something bad was wrong with me. I pushed off of Nik and climbed onto the drummer’s lap. His arms clenched around me and I let him hold me. No one said a word as we drove through the night, my closeness seeming to soothe something in the big man.

--

I woke with a warm body wrapped around me. It wasn’t unusual for me to sleep in the same bed with one of the guys. When you live on a bus you sleep where you can. I knew who it was by the breath on the back of my neck. Jesse was a mouth breather. Yawning I moved until I was sitting up. He didn’t even move. His arms fell back on the sofa beside of him and I stood, trying to stretch some of the kinks from my tired muscles.

When I glanced down at my friend my heart melted a little. He, like the rest of my guys, loved me more than anything in the world. And I loved him just as much. Smiling I picked up a throw from the chair against the opposite wall and draped it over him before bending to brush a kiss over his brow.

The bus was still moving and I knew I should get some more sleep. There wouldn’t be time for a nap once we got into Galveston. It will be nothing but rushing from the moment we stopped. My stomach was thankfully cooperating with me and I didn’t have to fight with the urge to vomit. So I walked through the sleeping quarters, where the two sets of bunk beds were pressed against opposite walls.

Shane was muttering in his sleep, his favorite
Gibson clutched in his arms like a child with a stuffed animal. On the bottom bunk his brother was out of it. I checked to make sure that he didn’t have an open bottle of liquor and then pulled the covers up over Drake’s bare back. I worried about Drake the most. No one ever talked about his reasons for needing to drink away the past. We all knew what his demons were. And we all knew that until he was ready there was nothing we could do but watch over him. The two times that we had talked him into rehab hadn’t ended well.

I found Nik asleep in my usual place at the front of the
bus. He was laying on his stomach with my pillow hugged tight and my favorite blanket over his waist. Why was he sleeping up here? He hated the front of the bus because the windows weren’t as tinted and let in too much light during the day. But there he was, drooling all over my pillow and hogging my couch.

With a sigh I pushed at his shoulders, making him turn over so that I could climb in beside of him. He didn’t even protest as I snuggled close to his naked chest and pillowed my head on his chest. I inhaled his clean, completely unique Nik smell and closed my eyes.
This was as close to paradise as I would ever get.