Insider (Exodus End #1)

Insider (Exodus End #1) Read Free

Book: Insider (Exodus End #1) Read Free
Author: Olivia Cunning
Tags: Book 1, Exodus End World Tour
Ads: Link
He’d recognize that she was lying as soon as he saw her.
    “Toni, she’s a horrible jealous bitch,” Julian said through the crack in the stall door. “Don’t let her hurt your feelings.”
    “Julian! This is a women’s restroom.”
    “Trust me, honey, there isn’t a thing in here that interests me,” he said.
    She could picture the disgusted sneer on his pretty boy face.
    “Except making you smile. Now come on out of there.”
    “In a minute.” She blew her nose again and rubbed her face with the palm of her hand.
    “What did she say to you this time?” Julian asked.
    “That I’m g-going to f-fail.” Toni dashed away a stray tear. God, why did she have to be so soft-hearted? It was a freaking nuisance.
    “You aren’t going to fail,” Julian said. “You’re going to kick ass. I guarantee it.”
    “What if the band members won’t talk to me?”
    Julian released a soft laugh. “They’ll talk. They won’t be able to help themselves. Someone has to fill in your long bouts of absolute silence.”
    She didn’t talk much. Especially to strangers. Her stomach lurched. Everyone around her on this tour would be strangers. Everyone.
    “I’m terrified,” Toni admitted, mostly to herself. But Julian heard her.
    “Of course you are. Who wouldn’t be? But you’re going to get past your fear and you’re going to get out there and make a fantastic, exciting life for yourself, because the one your mother made for you just doesn’t suit you.”
    At least someone besides her recognized that.
    Toni grinned, feeling loads better, and opened the stall door.
    “There’s that smile,” Julian said, hugging her. “Now hurry the hell up. You have a tour bus to catch and four rock stars to befuddle with your sugary sweetness.”
    In the company car, Toni snatched the cigarette out of Julian’s well-manicured hand and took a deep drag. Lungs burning and eyes watering, she choked before producing a hacking fit that would put a tuberculosis patient to shame. There was a reason she didn’t smoke. Well, several actually. But an aversion to choking to death was at the top of her list.
    Julian took his eyes off the freeway long enough to give her his what-the-fuck-is-your-problem look before retrieving his cigarette and settling it between his thin lips. “You don’t need nicotine, honey,” he said around the filter. “What you need is Valium. Or Xanax. Actually, both would do you some good.”
    “Are you suggesting I need to be drugged?” she asked, giving her mother’s personal assistant the evil eye.
    Julian was the closest thing she had to a non-blood-related friend. Occasionally he made her leave the house and go out on the town. Unfortunately, they always ended up in gay bars, which was entertaining enough but didn’t do much for her romantic prospects. But they weren’t crawling through stadium-event traffic to embark on a social adventure. Toni was about to get on the tour bus of the most well-known metal band in the world—hell, even she had heard of Exodus End and she mostly listened to classic rock. She’d gone from uncertain to nervous wreck the moment she’d fastened her seat belt. Just thinking about touring with the band made her stomach do summersaults, backflips, and cartwheels. She had an Olympic-level gymnastics meet going inside her.
    “Did you remember to shave your legs?” Julian asked. He took a nonchalant drag off his cigarette before holding it between two fingers against the steering wheel. They were inching along the interstate at a snail’s pace. She probably could have gotten there faster if she’d walked.
    Toni scowled, thinking that was the oddest thing Julian had ever asked her and the man had no filter. “Why does it matter? Did you cut off all my skirts so they barely cover my ass?” Turning her conservative clothing into ho-garb was something he would do.
    Julian laughed. “Damn, why didn’t I think of that?”
    As they neared the Mercer Street exit, Julian

Similar Books

Lilac Spring

Ruth Axtell Morren

Terror at the Zoo

Peg Kehret

THE CINDER PATH

Yelena Kopylova

Combustion

Steve Worland

A Death in the Family

Michael Stanley