Free Cry For You (Fallen Star #2) by Candy J Starr Page A

maybe. But the whole him paying me thing didn't sit right with me. I did the housework and we had sex. That made me pretty much like his wife but he paid me. It was the sex plus money part of it that worried me, obviously. I was on the border of being something that I didn’t want to be.
    Without that pay from him, I needed money from somewhere. I had to get a job and that would take me further away from Tex. I'd have to leave the house every day and I'd not be able to tour with him. That'd put me back right in the same situation I was before I started working for him. But there was no way we could go back to being boss and housekeeper, even if I wanted to.
    A few times I’d started heading into the conversation but had gotten diverted. It was always there though, hanging in the air as something I had to do.
    "Are you ready?" he called. "Devon's here to pick us up."
    "Yeah, I'm ready. I was waiting for you to finish primping yourself."
    “I don’t primp.”
    “You so do.”
    He walked out. I ran after him and slipped my hand into his back pocket, the two of us walking to the car like that.
    "Why don't we have people pick us up in stretch limos?" Devon asked as we got in the car.
    "Because we aren't stretch limo people. I hate those things. If you want to tell the driver something, you have to yell like this." He cupped his hands around his mouth. "And people stare at you. Plus it makes it easier for the groupies to spot you."
    "Yep, the groupies spotting me thing is a bonus. Makes less work for me." Devon laughed.
    I had the feeling that, although Devon talked like that, he craved a steady relationship more than anyone I knew. There was something inside him that had never healed after Julie died. He blamed himself and Tex blamed him. That made it hard for him to move on. As far as I knew, Devon was clean now but his using had been complicit in her death. Past relationships screwed you up. I knew that more than anyone. All that shit hung around in your head, undermining the happiness in your life.
    "You get them all now. No competition from me or Brownie."
    "It's the best."
    Tex turned in his seat to smile at me. I had been stuck with the back seat. That was okay with me. Devon and Tex would talk about band stuff, leaving me alone with my thoughts. It'd been a hectic week. Mum had messaged me with a heap of jobs she'd wanted me to do. She and Dad were still in Bali working and playing but had been thinking about moving to Chang Mai so needed some documentation from the storage unit. Mum had even mentioned me coming over for a holiday. I'm not sure how she could know me for so long and forget important facts about me – like that I hate the sun and I hate hot weather and, most of all, I hate going places.
    "You could even bring your young man," she'd said.
    Gross. “Young man”, that sounded so ancient.
    I couldn't even imagine the two of us on a tropical island. Tex would hate the beach – all that sand and glare. We were definitely inside people.
    Tex had told me that the beach near our place got popular in summer. Usually with teenagers catching the bus out so they were nowhere near their parents. Packs of them would get off the bus, all full of pop music and junk food and garish-coloured swimsuits.
    "It's awful," Tex had said. "Luckily the last bus back to the city is at 5.00, although sometimes they come out in cars."
    "Ah, so that's why the bus comes out here."
    "Yeah. What did you think?"
    "For my convenience... obviously." I’d never really thought about it.
    At least we'd be away for part of the summer. And Tex had said you could only really hear them when they first got off the bus and then only until they started down the track. Mostly, inside the house, you didn't even know they were there.
    I really missed Mum and Dad but I didn't want to travel to see them. I wished they'd come home, if only for a visit. Maybe, when the house was done, they could come and stay for a while.
    The car swerved, knocking me