Angel rolled his eyes. “She wanted him from the jump. I’m just a good-enough friend to take a pass on pussy that wants to sit on my friend’s dick rather than mine.”
May popped his head out from behind me. “I fucked a blond in Vegas? I don’t remember?”
“Big tits Brittany,” Angel and I said in unison.
“Oh.” May’s eyes gleamed. “I remember her.”
Angel shook his head. “Zoey is off limits for jokes of any kind, especially innuendos, May.”
“Why’re you singling me out?” May protested. “I’m not the only member of this band.”
“No,” I agreed. “But you’re the biggest slut in the band, and sex and women are never far from your mind.”
May paused for a moment then he stepped out from behind me with his hands up at his chest, palms out. “That’s fair,” he said. “I won’t talk about your missus anymore.”
“If you do, I’m breaking your fingers.”
Angel turned and walked towards our luggage with May hot on his heels.
“My fingers?” he spluttered. “Of all things to break, why my fingers? I need them to play! You’d ruin the entire band and our Sinners would hate you and—”
May’s rant was cut short when Angel grabbed one of our carry-on suitcases and shoved it into May’s gut, winding him. I looked from the pair of them to Hayes and we both chuckled in amusement.
“I think he’s serious about that new girl of his,” Hayes mentioned. “He hasn’t so much as looked at another woman since he started dating her last month. He smiles more too. You’ve noticed it too, right?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I have. Our boy’s all grown up. He’s in a serious relationship now just like you are.”
Hayes grinned. “I’m married, he’s not.”
“With Angel, I wouldn’t be surprised if he married that girl next week and had her knocked up by the year’s end.”
“Don’t jinx us,” Hayes shuddered. “After the new album drops next month, we have one year before our next tour. This time tour is gonna be different, mate. Two hundred shows in thirty-seven countries. Can you fucking believe we make albums and go on tours? That shit still blows my head.”
I slung my arm around Hayes’s shoulder and said, “Lad, I hope it never gets old for us.”
“Amen, brother.”
We looked back at May and Angel, who were now scuffling and demanding the other apologise for something they said. I shook my head, not surprised because they pulled the same shit no matter what country we were in. I looked at Hayes and grinned.
“Home sweet motherfucking home.”
CHAPTER FIVE
FRANKIE
For nine years, my day-to-day life could be depicted like clockwork.
I went to work, visited my mum and Michael, stocked my cupboards with food, paid my bills, refilled my inhaler prescription at the pharmacy. I read between four and five books a week and sometimes I went to the cinema by myself if I was having a really wild night. I didn’t have any girlfriends; my co-workers were lovely, but our social circles did not cross outside of work. This worked well for me because I had a routine that I liked to follow. I knew what to expect, or at least I normally did.
Risk Keller being back in Southwold threw a wrench into not only my day-to-day plans, but right into my entire life.
“It’s okay,” I told myself as I walked towards the entrance of Sir John Leman High School. “This is not a big deal.”
Trying to reassure myself had been a complete and utter disaster.
I didn’t have social media accounts, so I couldn’t check in and see if it was actually true about the band attending Mr Jones’s retirement ceremony. I deactivated my Facebook account years ago because everyone would constantly post things about Blood Oath as they got more successful and even more famous. I understood it: three of the band’s members were from Southwold and everyone was super proud of them. I was too, I just couldn’t see or read about Risk because it hurt me too much.
I refused to ditch the ceremony out of fear of him showing up because Mr Jones didn’t deserve that. He was a fantastic man who deserved to be celebrated for all of the work he had done for the school and the time he gave to his students over the years. For me, he was an angel after my father passed away. I spoke to him a few times a week and after each talk I felt immensely better. Nothing took away the pain of losing my dad, but Mr Jones helped me focus my pain and deal with it rather than let it consume me. I knew Risk, May and Hayes, if they were actually attending the ceremony, were going because they loved Mr Jones. He was their after-school music teacher and second biggest fan after me. He bought them their first instruments with his own money.
He had encouraged them to reach for the stars and now they were stars.
I wasn’t going to let the possibility of seeing Risk mess with showing my respect to Mr Jones. I was a grown woman and even though I was worried about possibly seeing him again I wasn’t letting that keep me from doing something that I wanted. It was likely that I was working myself up over nothing. Maybe I would get a little sad, but sure, who wouldn’t? I loved him desperately at one point in my life but that was the past. Risk probably didn’t even remember me, I was only his childhood girlfriend. He was a rock star now, and thanks to Anna and Hannah Porter, I knew he had been with a lot of women, some really famous ones, over the years.
The chance of him remembering me in his living-in-the-fast-lane life were slim to none.
I entered the school, the familiarity of it made me smile. I headed
