Ch.3: Flying High

Two hours later, I was on a plane, sitting in first class with one of rock's most famous frontmen. Surreal didn't begin to cover it.

My small suitcase had already been loaded into the car that Jude's PA had sent to collect us from the hotel – although there was no sign of the PA herself. She'd also included a blue cap and a pair of Ray-Bans for me, so I'd had some measure of anonymity while leaving the hotel.

I wasn't sure if that was for my sake, or if it was because Jude didn't want to attract any media attention.

We hadn't talked about whether or not we'd go public with the marriage, or our arrangement, and now that I was sitting on the plane with him, it struck me again how little I knew about the man I'd married or the life he led.

The life that I'd suddenly found myself a part of.

I peeked around the cabin. There were only eight seats in the whole space – roomy, padded things that reclined into beds and were separated from the rest of the cabin by partition walls, creating little privacy booths. Each booth had a TV, a table for food and drinks, and a well-stocked minibar.

It wasn't hard to see why people were willing to spend money flying like this. It sure as shit beat being packed into cramped seats with complete strangers, fighting over armrests, climbing over people to get to the bathroom, and trying to ignore tantruming kids.

I couldn't see who else was in each booth, but I was pretty sure the woman who'd boarded the plane before us was a supermodel from Australia or New Zealand. I was about to ask Jude if he knew, when my phone buzzed.

My sister, Tasha, had sent a photo and a text reading, Have you seen this?

I tapped on the photo and my stomach plunged.

Tasha texted again before I could respond.

That's Jude Scott, right? I know it's kind of fuzzy, and a bunch of people online are arguing about whether it's really him, but it has to be, right? He's got the star tattoos on his hand.

It was a fuzzy photo, but to me it was clear as day, because I knew when it had been taken. I knew, because I was in the photo too.

Um, not sure, I texted back. Maybe? It's hard to tell. He's not the only guy with star tattoos.

Ugh, you suck, Tasha replied. It is him. And check out the woman he's with. She looks a bit like you.

I swallowed. In the photo, Jude had his arm slung around my shoulder, and I was cuddled against his chest, one hand pressed against his pecs like I was staking a claim. My face was partly hidden by a straw hat with flowers woven into the brim, and I had no idea where I'd got it, or what had happened to it because it definitely hadn't been in the hotel room when we'd woken up.

I don't see it, I texted back, feeling like a dick.

Only two years younger than me, Tasha was my best friend as well as my sister, and I hated lying to her, but some degree of privacy was obviously important to Jude. Until I knew exactly where we stood on how public our marriage would be, I couldn't tell anyone else that it had happened.

Why hadn't we talked about this back at the hotel? Or laid down some ground rules?

Perhaps my pounding hangover, general confusion over everything, and lingering fear over the damage I'd done to the room had something to do with it.

Another text came through from Maria, a girl I used to work with.

IS THAT YOU WITH JUDE SCOTT? she said.

I wish, I replied.

She sent back a series of sad faces.

It could have been youuuuu, Tasha texted.

Huh?

That pic was taken in Vegas. You and Jude Scott were in Vegas at the same time, and you could have run into him at any point, but instead he hooked up with someone who looks like you. All I'm saying is, you missed out. It could have been you. It SHOULD have been you. How pissed would Jake have been?

I glanced up at Jude, relaxing in his chair beside me. He always looked like he owned any space he entered.

I'd come to Vegas to drown my sorrows over my cheating boyfriend and through some extraordinary twist of fate, I'd found myself married to possibly the hottest man on the planet. Jake would shit bricks if he knew, and part of me desperately wanted to rub his lying face in it.

But that wasn't fair to Jude. I might not really know the guy, but I wouldn't use him to get back at my ex.

Can you imagine? I texted back, trying to ignore the growing knot of guilt in my chest.

Could Jude and I really keep this under wraps for a whole month? What would happen if anyone found out? I'd have to confess to Tasha that I'd lied and kept secret the biggest thing that had ever happened to me.

But I had no choice. This wasn't a normal-guy-meets-normal girl situation. Tasha would have to understand. I shook my head and put my phone away. There was no point worrying about bridges that I didn't need to cross yet.

"I can't believe I trashed a room at the Bellagio," I said.

Jude chuckled. "You call that trashed?

"Yeah?"

"Our first year on tour, Darrell handpicked thirty girls from the crowd at a gig, invited them all back to his hotel room, got them to strip down to their underwear, and started a whipped cream fight with them. Cream stains on fancy velvet wallpaper? Not pretty. The whole room had to be redecorated."

My lips twitched. I'd seen photos of that incident, snapped by other hotel guests, and some of the girls in question had stripped further than their underwear. One of the most famous and widely circulated photos showed three naked girls, covered in whipped cream, running down the corridor of a very swanky Paris hotel.

"Why whipped cream?" I asked.

"No idea. I didn't even know he was doing it until I heard the noise and went next door to see what was going on."

"And then you joined in, right?"

"Thirty nearly naked girls covered in cream?" Jude winked. "Damn right I joined in. Another night, we were trying to get back into our hotel room, but we were so trashed we didn't realise we weren't even on the right floor. We stole an ornamental bust on display in the corridor and broke down the wrong door before the guests could call security."

"Oh my God, I've never heard that story before. What happened?"

"I stole one of those room service food carts, and tried to ride it away. Instead, I fell down the stairs and cracked two ribs. Darrell didn't even get that far. He was still convinced we were in the right room, even with the guests screaming at him. He went straight to their bed and passed out. He didn't wake up for another twelve hours."

"Have you ever been to a hotel that you didn't destroy in some way?"

Jude frowned, thinking it over. "There've been a lot of hotels over the last three years. I can't even remember most of them, especially not after post-gig parties. I'm sure some nights I just crashed in bed, but I don't remember them."

"It sounds like Darrell was worse than you," I said.

"Yeah, he was a crazy son of a bitch." Jude laughed, then quickly sobered. "Hell of a guitarist though."

Darrell Deal had been Angels & Demons' lead guitarist when the band had first swaggered into the limelight. He'd been friends with Jude before Jude formed the band, before they became international megastars, and that friendship had translated into genuine chemistry onstage, and drug-and-alcohol-fuelled antics offstage.

Jude had always been the main star, but plenty of fans had dropped their panties and screamed Darrell's name as he stalked the stage, thrashing riffs on his signature black Gibson guitar.

But after that first rollercoaster year in the spotlight, something had gone wrong. The friendship between Jude and Darrell had soured, and despite the constant speculation from fans and media, no one really knew what had happened. Darrell had left the band, Jude had refused to talk about it, and Darrell's main claim to fame since then was continuing the drunken antics that had helped make Angels & Demons famous.

I had no reason to assume that Jude wouldn't shut down my questions in the same way he did everyone else's, but, like any fan of the band, I was curious. Maybe he'd answer something more indirect.

"Do you think Darrell will ever rejoin the band?" I asked.

"Doubt it."

"What about the others?"

Steve Burton and Tom Rudd had been Angels & Demons' original bassist and drummer, and though they hadn't been close like Jude and Darrell, and hadn't got up to the same crazy shit, they'd still been an integral part of the band. They'd left shortly after Darrell, something else that Jude had always refused to talk about.

Some people insisted that Jude was clearly the problem, while others were certain that there was more going on than anyone understood. I'd always been in the latter group.

Jude fiddled with his sunglasses. "I think that line-up is over."

"Will you ever have a permanent line-up again?" I asked.

Since the departure of almost all the original members, Jude had regularly changed his guitarist, bassist, and drummer. No member had lasted longer than nine months – not because there was anything wrong with them, but because Jude had, apparently, become opposed to letting anyone else stay in the band for too long.

"Nah. Changing it regularly keeps everyone's egos in check," Jude said.

"Who keeps your ego in check?"

He gave me a lazy, satisfied smile. "Mine's allowed to run wild."

"Of course it is."

My phone buzzed again, but I didn't look at it. I was too afraid that someone else had seen the Vegas photo and did recognise me. "Look, Jude, there are some things we need to talk about."

"Sounds serious." Jude opened the minibar and started examining the bottles.

"We need to work out where we stand," I said.

Jude picked up a small bottle of champagne, pulled a face, and put it back.

"Too cheap for you?" I couldn't help saying.

The corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. "No, I just hate champagne."

"Then why was there a ridiculously expensive bottle spilled across the carpet in the hotel?"

He gave me a duh look. "Because you wanted it."

"I did?"

"You must have done. I sure as hell didn't."

Typical. The first time anyone treated me to genuinely good champagne and I'd spilled it all over the floor.

Jude found a small bottle of whiskey and poured it into a cut-glass tumbler. "You want some?" he said.

"No, thanks. My hangover's still kicking my butt."

Jude shrugged.

"Anyway, we haven't talked about the rules of this thing we're doing," I said.

"Rules?" Jude sounded contemptuous of the very word.

"Yes." I glanced around the cabin again. No one was looking at us, but I lowered my voice anyway. "Are we telling anyone about this? Or are we keeping it quiet?"

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know!" I felt a hot surge of frustration – not necessarily at Jude himself, but at everything. "Yesterday, I'd never even met you. Now we're married, I'm moving in with you, and I'm a little freaked out, to be honest. Your life is different to mine in every way, and I don't know what to expect or how I'll fit in, and – why are you smiling at me like that?"

"Sorry," said Jude, not sounding remotely sorry. "You're just really cute when you're getting annoyed with me."

"I'm not annoyed with you. I'm . . . flailing. I don't know what's going on, and I need you to understand that."

Jude drained his whiskey and set the glass down. "How about this? I don't want a media storm just yet, so let's keep it quiet for now, and once you've settled in at the loft, we can talk about it again. By then, you might decide you don't want anyone knowing."

"So might you," I pointed out.

He didn't say anything to that, just helped himself to another mini bottle of whiskey.

"What about our families?" I said.

"What about them?"

I stared at him, but he didn't look at me.

"We're not keeping this from them, are we?" I said.

Jude's head dipped a little lower, his messy curls falling across his face, and I got the feeling that I was straying into sensitive territory. Despite Jude's meteoric rise to fame, very little was known about his parents. All he'd ever said was that they'd adopted him as a baby and they were proud of everything he'd achieved, but he'd never mentioned their names, or appeared with them at award ceremonies or other events, or included them in his new life in any way.

Wedding ring or not, I wouldn't pry into parts of Jude's life that he obviously wasn't comfortable sharing yet, but my parents were the most important people in my life.

The last time I'd spoken to my mum, I'd been sobbing in a taxi on my way to the airport, ready to fly out to Vegas alone, and in her sensible Mum way, she'd reassured me that everything would be okay. I'd go to Vegas, have the time of my life, and when I got back to England, she and my dad would help pick up the pieces.

As far as they knew, I'd be in Vegas for another two days, so at least I didn't have to drop this bombshell on them right away.

"You think they'll understand?" Jude asked.

My mouth suddenly felt very dry.

Throughout my entire life, my parents had supported the choices that Tasha and I made, but I'd never married a complete stranger while blackout drunk in another country before. I wouldn't blame them if they were less supportive of that.

Jude offered me the whisky bottle again, and I shook my head.

"You don't have to tell them yet," he said.

"I don't want to lie to my parents."

"It's not lying." Jude flashed me a grin. "It's temporarily withholding the full truth."

"I don't know if I want to do that either."

Another shrug. "Your choice. I'd wait until the dust settles a bit, but it makes no difference to me if you tell them or not."

I suspected that he had no intention of telling his own parents yet, and I felt a pang of pity for him. My parents and my sister were the bedrock of my life, but not everyone had that support. Maybe there was a very good reason why Jude didn't like talking about his family.

In the booth across from ours, I heard fabric rustling, as if someone was settling down to sleep, and a sudden wave of exhaustion crashed into me. I was too hungover to think about this now; I needed sleep – real sleep, not the passing-out-drunk-sleep of last night. Or was it this morning? My memory stubbornly refused to give up the goods.

My eyes felt like they had tiny weights attached, and when I yawned, it felt wide enough to crack my jaw in two. I'd hoped to use the plane journey to get to know Jude a bit better, but even forming words was an effort now.

"You should get some sleep," Jude said. He pressed a button on the side of my seat, and it reclined, back and back and back until it was almost flat, like a bed. He passed me a blanket.

"Thanks," I mumbled. "I guess I haven't partied like that in a while."

"Better get used to it." Jude grinned. "You're a rockstar's wife now."

I didn't have the energy for a comeback. The last thing I wondered before sleep pulled me into the dark, was whether I'd bitten off a lot more than I could chew.