“So you have to spill everything. And I mean everything, without holding back.”
Lacey smiled as she curled up in a pool of pillows, reveling in what had to be the first moment of peace she’d experienced in what seemed like years. They’d rolled into Virginia Beach early, and the crew had been given the night off to roam the beach, party, whatever. The next night would be one of the biggest concerts of the tour, and they deserved the break.
Lacey felt herself relax another inch. She liked having her own room for another reason, too. She’d gotten used to the cameras being around, but in the few days since Brenda’s impromptu Baltimore appearance, they’d seemed to be everywhere she was. Especially if Dante was even remotely close. Maybe they were running out of footage, maybe suddenly everyone was fair game. Lacey was just glad to hole up in her room for a while. Even the bus trips hadn’t proven useful—too brief for any real privacy, and Harry had caught a ride with them down to Virginia, using the time to go over some plans for the fall tour with Dante. Everything just seemed—off. Wrong.
“There’s silence on the other end of this line,” Anna went on, plaintively. Lacey heard Erin’s giggle and imagined both of them sitting in the quaint kitchen of the brownstone, Erin with her hair sporting whatever remnants of oil color she was using that day, Anna mainlining what was most likely her fifth cup of coffee of the day. She switched to flavored coffees at night because of their weaker caffeine punch, so the kitchen probably smelled of English Toffee or Mocha Nut Fudge. Lacey closed her eyes just thinking about them. She missed them both—hell, Dani, too. The life of a rocker was interesting, but if she was really honest, it was also exhausting. It was good to have a place to call home.
“What do you want to know?” she asked into the accusatory silence. “Have you been watching the show? Is it any good?”
“Is it any goo—of course it’s good!” Anna jumped in. “Even the gang at the firm are talking about it, and believe me, we’re all super boring. But everyone’s usually up at midnight when these damn things air, working on one job or another, so it’s become kind of a ritual break for us. I know it’s all going to end in—what, a week?—and that’ll bum people out. They’ve gotten used to it just that quick.”
“They’ll get unused to it, too, just as quickly, I’m sure.” Lacey yawned, but she couldn’t help feeling a prick of excitement. “But yeah? They talk about it the next day?”
“Yup, and those who didn’t catch it find themselves out of the loop and having to scroll through message boards to get all of the nuances of the story. That Brenda woman is hot! I had no idea she and Dante almost got engaged last year.”
Lacey frowned at the phone. “They said that?”
Erin laughed, the sound surprisingly robust from such a small woman. “They did not say that. Anna is just pulling your chain. Although now that I’ve seen Dante’s bare ass, thank you very much, I can appreciate the finer artistic points of your interest in him.”
“Ah … yeah. It’s definitely worth a repeat viewing.” Lacey would have given any amount of money to see Dante’s naked backside herself, in person, but for now she’d have to settle for the YouTube playback. “Come to think of it, he wasn’t around to watch that particular video go live. So maybe he finds his own ass boring.”
“He’d be about the only one,” Anna said dryly. “How goes it with the crew?”
“Eh, it’s okay,” Lacey said. “I think they like me for the most part.” Most of them, anyway. “But I’m still not one of them, you know?”
“But you’re doing so much!” Erin put in with earnest outrage. You could rely on Erin for that. She was the one who gave to panhandlers even if she only had one dollar left in her pocket, even if she knew they were just going to use the money to buy their next drink. She was the one who collected strays and found their owners. She was the one who taught kids how to paint for free, rather than even put her own work up for sale, when she could barely keep up with the bills on her gorgeous old brownstone. “They have to see that you’re trying to make things go as smoothly as possible!”
“And it’s good experience, no matter what,” Anna observed, while Lacey found herself nodding as if she were sitting in the kitchen with them, not hundreds of miles away.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m learning a lot about running a tour, managing schedules, dealing with last-minute SNAFUs—”
“What about handling the talent?” Anna pushed. “Tell me that you’ve also been brushing up on that aspect of your experience. Please. I can’t be the only one suffering from a severe lack of sex.”
“Well, since Dani isn’t here yet, I’ll say it: It’s your own fault, Anna,” Erin put in, and Lacey could picture her earnest frown as she chastised Anna. “You can’t expect to find guys to date if you’re locked up with your computer in the basement of some office building until two A.M. every morning.”
“Oh, right,” Anna scoffed. “This coming from a woman who goes to Shaw’s with globs of Cadmium Blue still stuck in her hair, completely oblivious that she’s buying milk wearing mismatched Crocs and an inside-out shirt.”
“What? We were out of milk!” Erin protested, but Anna cut her off.
“Focus, Erin. Lacey is spending her days and nights with the rock star of her dreams. That’s who should be having great sex.” Pause. “Tell us you’re having great sex.”
“Well … sort of.” Lacey threw herself back on the pillows. “We’ve gotten really close a couple of times but even the close shots are hotter than anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
“Ahhhh,” Anna sighed. “Hot like how? Like you guys made out?”
Lacey grinned into the semidarkness. “Sort of like that,” she said, feeling her cheeks warm as she thought about her impromptu voyeur tease, the shower stall, the hotel room. “He, um—he’s really great at kissing, by the way.” He’s really great at everything, in fact.
“Hey, it’s almost go time for the web show,” Erin put in. “You have your laptop handy, Lacey? We could watch it together.”
“I never thought I’d be saying this, but I look forward to a day when I won’t have my laptop handy. Or my iPad, or my phone.”
“Never the phone,” Anna laughed. “How could you live without my texts to keep you company? Hey, Dani.”
Lacey heard rumblings in the background and grinned at the flat, sardonic tone that could only belong to Dani Michaels. She called out her own hello, and Dani grunted back. Lacey yawned, and Erin giggled over the phone.
“Are you going to even stay awake long enough to get through the video tonight?” Erin teased her. “You sound like you haven’t slept in weeks.”
“Yeah, well, no rest for the wicked, hey?” Lacey fumbled her fingers onto her iPad, bringing up the YouTube channel for the Dream It tour webisodes. Her Wi-Fi connected with the hotel’s system, and she was typing in the code when Erin’s voice floated over the phone again.
“Oh my God, that’s so cute,” Erin said.
“What the hell is it?” Dani cut in over her. “What’s all that purple frilly crap all around—what in the—Lacey, is that your name?”
Lacey’s fingers froze on her keyboard. A well of sharp, sudden hysteria opened up within her, threatening to swallow her hole. No, she could hear the scream emerging from her innermost being. No, no, no.
A million images flashed in front of her eyes. Snippets, scenes. Her office back at IMO. The scrapbooks, locked in her drawer. Brenda suddenly showing up in Baltimore, clearly with an agenda that Lacey hadn’t been able to figure out. The camera crew, filming her with more intensity. Suddenly interested in her every movement. No.
“It’s a scrapbook!” Anna crowed. “Oh my God, that’s got to be the most darling thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”
But she was talking to dead air.
Lacey was already bolting out of her room and down the hallway. The crew always gathered in Harry’s room—generally a suite—to watch the YouTube thing when they didn’t have a live show. She had to get there, had to stop them. She couldn’t—
No. Not the scrapbooks. She knew the exact one that Dani had been talking about. It hadn’t been the first one—it had been the fifth. The fifth of fifteen. Fifteen scrapbooks that chronicled the life and times of Dante Falcone from his very first mall and Disney Channel appearances to his emergence on the scene as the most incredible rocker ever born. Lacey had knocked it off when she’d hit her twenties, thank God, but she didn’t think that was going to save her.
The early ones had been the worst. True to her nature, true to her name, she’d festooned each of them with glitter and lace and scrapbooking embellishments—she’d cleaned out whole aisles at the craft store just to make each book its own teen-dreamy work of art. She’d started the summer of her fourteenth year, and … she’d just never stopped. The books had become more sophisticated, but the emotion behind them hadn’t. It was pure, unadulterated, wide-eyed fangirl adoration. And now they were … now they were—
Lacey burst into Harry’s room, but it was already too late.
There, splashed across the flat screen in garish living color, was the final page of her sweet sixteen Certified Authentic Dante Falcone Scrapbook. And in bright pink glitter paint she’d scrawled “Lacey + Dante forever.”
She was going to die.