Fast Lane - Kristen Ashley Page 0,47

leaves after calling good-bye to his mother.

“Later, Jesse,” she says.

The door to the outside closes soundly.

“Sorry about that. He’s not normally rude, but my children are not very happy I’m dredging up what they call ancient history,” Lyla explains. “They feel the heartbreak for Mom is better left alone. Particularly my son.”

Jesse:

We didn’t know.

We didn’t know we had a month and how important that month was.

We didn’t know we had a month to hang by the pool. Go to the beach. Catch a movie at the Chinese theater. Go to Universal Studios and take a tour of homes of famous people. Hit clubs on Sunset and listen to the music people were playing.

We had a month to drink and smoke and get high and go to bed with a woman where you didn’t have to wake up and haul your ass onto a bus or head to the airport to catch a plane that would take you to another city, another hotel, another sound check, another gig or get to the studio to lay down tracks.

You could sleep as long as you liked and get up and Lyla would bring you coffee and make you eggs or pancakes or someone would have gone out and bought donuts.

We didn’t know we only had a month.

Only a month to be young.

Only a month to still be kids.

Only a month before we all had to grow up.

And fast.

I was sitting by the hotel pool reading when someone blocked my sun and it stayed blocked.

I looked up from my book to see Preacher standing there.

He was wearing shades, the sun behind him so he was shadowed, this meaning I couldn’t read his expression.

I didn’t have long enough to figure it out before he shifted to the side of the lounge I was in, bent over and put his hands in the armrests at my sides.

And in this position, his face in mine.

I held my breath.

“Tommy got it,” he said.

My heart flipped.

“He got it?” I asked.

“He got it. He got it all. Creative control. Danny and Hans. Headline tour. A month off. And more money than we were expecting.”

All I heard was what I asked next.

“Headline tour?”

He smiled.

Slowly.

Then he said, “Get up, cher. Go upstairs. Get dressed. I got somethin’ I wanna show you.”

I wanted to celebrate headline tours, but if Preacher had something to show me, I’d go for that.

He pushed off and helped me up.

I wrapped my sarong around my hips and held his hand as we went upstairs to our suite.

I was slathered in oil, so I took a shower while Preacher got on the phone, and by the sounds of it, talked to practically everyone he knew.

He sounded happy so I was smiling as I swiped on some eye shadow, blue eyeliner, a brush of pink blush, some mascara and lots of lip gloss before I fluffed out my hair, threw on a long-sleeved, off the shoulder, inch-of-belly showing, printed gypsy top, some cutoffs and slid on a pair of pale pink pumps.

Preacher approved of my outfit with a sexy smile, grabbed my hand and I walked down to the lobby with him in his faded jeans with his worn-out tee that had a faded logo from some bar he’d played in Illinois.

He asked the valet for one of the three cars Tommy had leased for the band.

As we stood outside waiting for it, I slid my sunglasses on, and Preacher lit a cigarette and then threw his arm around my shoulders.

Lyla:

[Off tape]

That picture is iconic.

Yes.

It was weird then. We were just…us.

We didn’t think, standing somewhere, waiting for a car, that someone would be around to shoot a picture that someone would pay to print because people would pay to look at them.

At us.

We didn’t see them then.

The photographers.

We learned to spot them.

Many credit you and that picture for gypsy tops becoming the rage.

[Shrugs]

I don’t know.

I just know that suddenly, everyone was wearing them, which I thought sucked.

Because when they did, I didn’t want to wear mine anymore.

And I really liked them.

Preacher drove up a scary, steep driveway to a massive house, then around to the side where he hit the opener I just then noticed was attached to the visor of the Porsche 959.

The garage door opened.

A garage door that was one of four of them.

He pulled in, turned off the ignition, the car stopped purring, but I was having trouble breathing.

“Preacher,” I whispered.

“Come on, cher,” he said before he knifed out.

He was at my side before I had my