Excerpt from Road Taken

“So who’s the brains in the group?” O’Devil asked. “It’s you, right?” He looked at Michael, who glanced at Jamie and Cal and coloured.

“No, we’re all… I mean, we make the songs together.”

Jamie winced, and of course O’Devil noticed. “I think you’ve got someone of a different opinion here,” he said, chuckling mirthlessly. “The thwarted guitarist, am I right? Handsome, but not just a pretty face?”

“He writes the lyrics,” Jamie declared with some vehemence. “We make the music together.” The half-lie tasted like rancid fish on his tongue. But he wanted it to be true. It was how it should be.

“Sure you do,” O’Devil grinned. “I know about your history, you know. Your manager isn’t exactly a clam. So young Mr Vaughan here pens the lyrics and Jamie and Cal, you make the music. That’s wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. No, no, don’t object. Let’s just keep it that way. No need for the ex-turtle doves to spend any time together.” He laughed loudly against the wall of silence that was Pax. “But from now on you’ll have to convince me that you’re not up to anything naughty. No hanky-panky on stage, no going knocking on each other’s rooms in the middle of the night, no bloody make up. Okay?”

Not waiting for their meek nods, O’Devil stood and moved across the room. Three pairs of eyes followed him as he pressed a button on a VCR and sauntered back to his chair, pretending to adjust his suit while really glancing at Jamie and Michael, checking for reactions.

It was the promo video from the first leg of the tour. Tangled in sweaty sheets back at Jamie’s apartment, Michael had told him how Cal had shown it to him in an effort to convince him of Jamie’s feelings. Now that Jamie watched their interplay in rising mortification, he could see how it would do the trick. In fact, he could see how Patrick had become suspicious in the first place.

God.

Seriously, God.

On-screen Jamie was flirting shamelessly with Michael at every turn. Each chord fired off towards stage left was accompanied by a come-hither look, a twist of the hips as if to mime another kind of thrust. The smiles, the coquettish shoulder-rolls, the tossing hair and batting lashes… It was a miracle they hadn’t been called out before. That the disgruntled thug in Leeds hadn’t bunched the two of them together and tossed them in the nearest trash can.