A/N: Yay for updates! Again, I will try to do so as fast as I can but life is against it happening everyday. Cousins up to visit, friends wanting to hang out, parents, ect. So yeah, please bear with me here but whenever I can I will write!
And once more, thank you to all my readers and reviewers and alerters…if that's even a word? You guys make my day with all your awesome reviews! So enjoy the next chapter! (PS it's going to be in Nick's POV and listening to the song Dare You To Move might help get in the mood. It's what I was listening to while I wrote it!)
So forming a list of all the things I now had to deal with while on tour. It was getting to be quite lengthy and we'd only been on tour less than a month. About two weeks actually.
1. Shows. I always had to worry about the shows every night, no matter how many I've done before. At least this wasn't the greatest worry.
2. Spending time with my best friend without her thinking I'm spacing and forgetting about her. She was a very understanding person but that would only go so far when I had another girl hanging around me.
3. Which brings me to number three. Gracie. Dealing with a girl who seemed to be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder without a shrink on board and only seemed to be okay around me and Phoebe was pretty time consuming. Especially when dealing with number two.
4. My brothers. Shane and Jason were head over heels for Kirsten and Claire. And for the love of God, did they have to invite them on tour? They'd known them for all of a day! And then Frankie and his need to be entertained was enough to drive someone to drink.
5. My brother's best friends. Suddenly I was the go-to guy for Karla and Christine to vent about how Shane and Jason were ignoring them. This was getting ridiculous. They were really trying to see how far I could go before I cracked!
6. Trying to cover up the fact that I was about to crack.
Unbelievable amount of topics on this list. How did anyone expect a fifteen year old to be able to handle all this? I was supposed to be at the age where my biggest priorities were looking cool, what nights I could hang with friends, and school.
Which reminds me, add school as number seven on the list.
So here I was, sitting in the back of the overly crowded tour bus, guitar in hand, Phoebe with her head resting on my shoulder, and a very loud commotion coming from down the hall.
We could hear Shane and Jason trying to impress Kirsten and Claire, no doubt while Karla and Christine looked on in disgust. My parents were out there with them, getting to know the girls…again. They'd been having these nightly interviews since we'd brought the girls along. Frankie was probably sitting between them on the couch. Gracie had gone to bed early tonight. She'd fallen asleep at the concert and Jason had had to carry her on to the bus. She currently resided in my bunk. After the first night here, that's the only bunk she would sleep in, for reasons unknown. Maybe whatever had happened to her had affected her ability to accept changes in her surroundings?
I had also been trying to get that story out of her. Gently, I'd been asking her about what had happened but she refused to tell me. It scared me to think that whatever had occurred made her feel like she couldn't tell anyone. But I promised myself and her I'd help her and I couldn't do that if I didn't have the full story.
Phoebe sighed next to me and I stopped playing my guitar. I put it down and sighed with her.
"Why'd you stop?" She asked me, picking up her head off my shoulder to look at me.
"I can't think straight. I'm playing stuff that doesn't even sound like anything." I said truthfully.
"I liked it. It sounded…pretty." She said.
"Really?"
"Yeah. It was a little sad, but pretty." I could always count on her to tell me the truth so I had no reason not to this time. If Phoebe hated something, she wouldn't hesitate to say so, and when it sounded good, she took pride in being the first to let me know.
"Thanks," I smiled slightly and she settled back down on my shoulder. We pulled into the hotel parking lot in Colorado a moment later. My family was the first ones off the bus, Kirsten and Claire following close behind. Karla and Christine appeared in the doorway to complain some more.
"Those girls are getting on my last nerve!" Christine said, plopping down on the couch. "They are fawning all over the guys!"
"Yeah, Shane can't keep his hands off of her. I'm pretty sure he and Jason are in need of a little wake up call," Karla announced, grinning evilly.
"I don't think that t-ping their bunks and switching their after shave with perfume will convince them Kirsten and Claire should be dropped at the next airport," Phoebe said sarcastically. I stifled a laugh as Karla lunged for her younger sister.
"Karla, don't kill her. Mom and Dad would kill me for letting it happen." Christine said, restraining her.
"Fine," Karla folded her arms and leaned against the wall next to the doorway.
"Well I'm tired so can we please go up to the room now?" Phoebe pleaded with her older sisters.
"Yes please. I'm tired too," Christine said getting up and the girls all wished me a good night.
"Night guys," I called to them as I decided that going inside was probably a good idea. I walked by my bunk and paused to wake up Gracie. Unfortunately she got a little spooked at my shaking her awake.
I was half asleep and wasn't thinking when I shook her arm and she screamed, sat up rigidly, and recoiled from my touch. Not tonight, please! I thought.
"Shhhh, it's just me, calm down." I said trying to get her to stop screaming. She did but still appeared shell shocked.
"S…s…sorry," she managed to choke out.
"Come on, we're at the hotel. I'm going up to my room, you coming with me?"
She nodded and climbed out of bed carefully. But as she did so, her shirt, or rather one of mine seeing as we hadn't had much time to go shopping and everything we had bought for her so far was in the wash, caught on the sheets as she pulled them back and I found myself catching a glimpse of a series of bruises running along her stomach. Oh man, this was what I'd been waiting for…an excuse to ask.
I stopped her from moving once I saw the bruises, grabbing her arm and holding on despite all her whimpering.
"Gracie slow down-" I tried to start but she cut in.
"No please don't! Please don't make me talk about it!" She cried, pulling away from me. She was smart, she knew exactly what was going on.
"You have to tell me. I want to help but I can't if I don't know what's going on!" She wasn't listening, just twisting around, trying to break out of my grip.
"No! I can't tell you! You'd hate me!" She screamed and I froze. Why on earth would I hate her? I voiced this concern to her and she just stared me down before saying, "Because it makes me dirty."
I was pretty sure of where this was going now.
"Gracie, please tell me. I'm begging you." I said softly. "Please. I promise I won't hate you. I could never hate you."
She drew in a shaky breath. "You promise?"
"I do." Those words opened the flood gates to a world I was better off never entering. A world every kid was better off never entering.
It was painful to listen to. Every word racked with so much emotion, emotions I didn't even know existed nor was capable of feeling myself. It made me see her in a new light. Here was a girl, not any older than me, who'd been exposed to horrors no one should have to go through. By the end of it, I was crying in spite of myself, and it was all because of three little words.
"He raped me," it was barely a whisper, coming over the tears streaming down her face. I think my heart broke right then and there.
"Oh…Gracie…" I had no idea what to say. What did you say to someone who'd gone through all that?
"Please don't say you're sorry. It's not your fault. You have nothing to be sorry about," She looked down, ashamed of everything.
"It's not your fault either," I said. She looked into my eyes and I swear she aged about twenty years right in front of me.
"That's nice and all to say, but a total lie. I let it happen." I snapped at that one.
"No! No you didn't! If you'd let it happen, you wouldn't be so messed up! It's not your fault and don't you dare tell yourself that!" I couldn't believe she blamed herself for that asshole's sick and twisted mind.
"Nick, I need help," she whispered to me. I'd never heard her call me by my name before. It sounded different coming from her.
"I'm here," I whispered, taking her into my arms. "I'm always here for you, Gracie."
So what do you think? Kind of corny but I needed to get this out of the way so that I can segway into the boy's love interests and how they get together. This will basically be the rest of the story, each chapter being a step forward in one of the three couples love lives. Or at least that's how it looks right now.
