Blame it on the Tequila by Fiona Cole (the reading strategies book txt) 📕

“What if something happened? What if—”

“Stop overthinking. You’re letting those notes get to you.”

“Of course, I am,” I shouted.

“Parker,” Ash put both hands on my shoulders. “It will be fine.”

Famous last words.

“Are you guys looking for the redhead from your band?” a girl beside us asked.

“Yeah, did you see her?”

“Think so. She was being carried out by some guy—didn’t get a look at his face, but he had your build,” she gestured toward Oren’s lean body. “She looked trashed. I wasn’t even sure it was her, but then I saw those sweet blue suede boots she had on.”

My whole world crashed in on me like a black hole, everything—all at once, like an anvil from a mile above. I wasn’t even sure how I was still standing, as my legs shook like jello.

“Dude, are you okay?” Her voice sounded like it came from the end of a tunnel.

Someone shook me.

My stomach roiled.

She was carried out.

She looked drunk.

Nova hadn’t had anything but water all night.

I promised her I’d wait.

I promised her I’d protect her.

I promised her I’d keep her safe.

I promised her she’d be fine.

“Parker!” Ash shouted an inch from my face. “Parker! Look at me.”

“I promised…” I breathed.

“It’s okay. We’ll figure it out,” he said, but his eyes held anything but surety. His eyes brimmed with the same panic consuming me. “Let’s start looking for her. Brogan and Oren are already outside.”

“Call 911,” I ordered someone—anyone.

I snapped into action, but we all knew.

We were too late.

Any hope that maybe I was wrong was dashed to nothing but dust when the cops questioned us later that night.

“Do you have the notes?”

“No. She tossed them.”

“But there are comments on YouTube,” Oren offered.

“We already looked at those. It’s being sent to our department, but it’s not much to go on.”

“Why didn’t you come to the police?” a female officer asked.

“I guess we didn’t think it was that big a deal. That he was just an admirer,” Ash explained, looking the least confident I’d ever seen him.

“An admirer?” she repeated, her face scrunched in disgust. “More like a stalker.”

“More like a serial killer,” another officer said, walking up and passing a file to the two questioning us.

“A what?” I asked, speaking for the first time.

The female officer scanned the pages before meeting each of our eyes. She looked like someone who shows up at your door to let you know a loved one has passed, and everything in my body started breaking down before she even started. One word reverberated through me like an earthquake.

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

Twenty-Eight

Nova

P A S T

Intense throbbing pounded against my temples. I squinted against the bright sunlight pouring in, only adding to the pain. My tongue scraped across my dry lips, and I struggled to swallow—my mouth like the Sahara.

Trying to massage my temples to ease any of the pressure came to a halt when metal scraped metal, and I couldn’t move more than a couple inches. Like an electric shock to my heart, I jolted, opening my eyes to find my left wrist cuffed to a metal headboard. My stomach churned, and bile burned up my throat. I barely held back the vomit, probably because panic squeezed my throat too tight to even breathe.

Oh god. Oh god, oh godohgodohgod.

Flashes of how I got here bombarded my already frantic mind.

I was at the show. I was in Parker’s arms. I was kissing Parker.

I had to go to the bathroom, and he promised to wait. He promised. But once I finally made it through the line, no one was there. I asked one of the members from the other bands, and they turned to me with glassy eyes, slurring something about how he went to go talk to some music executive.

When I asked him where, he shrugged and walked away. I’d been a ball of excitement, already riding a high from the show, but then to know that the guys had a music company interested in the band had me practically floating. I’d just needed to find them.

I’d been so gone in my excitement, I’d forgotten to keep looking over my shoulder at every turn. I’d forgotten why I’d asked Parker to wait for me in the first place. At least, until I’d turned a corner down a barren hall, looking for the offices, and felt a prick in my arm. I thought maybe I’d scraped myself and looked over my shoulder to find a large, dark shadow looming. The same dark shadow that haunted my nightmares. The one I dreamed about each time we played a show, and I got another letter waiting for me at the end.

The one I asked Parker to protect me from.

The one he promised he’d keep me safe from.

The one the guys laughed at and said it was probably some teenybopper.

This nightmare was anything but a teenybopper.

And I was anything but safe.

I’d opened my mouth to scream, only to have a beefy hand slap over my lips and catch me as I fell, the drugs he injected me with working too quickly to fight.

I jerked my wrist, cringing from the screech of metal on metal. With a quick glance around the room, I saw I was alone, and the last thing I wanted to do was alert whoever had taken me to the fact I was awake.

Taking stock of my surroundings, I stalled over the picturesque room. Simple grays and whites, clean lines. Hell, even a flower arrangement sat on the nightstand. I wasn’t sure if the normality of the room caused more panic or less. Maybe because I expected a mattress on a floor or some dingy trailer that reeked of desperation and evil. Instead, my mind had to wrap around the nightmare I was in with the warm scent of vanilla floating around me. It felt like some kind of mind game to lure me into comfort before the worst—the calm before the storm.

Creaking reached through the closed door opposite the bed, sounds like footsteps coming up wooden