When I had to hunch over and press my forehead against the vinegar-and-lemon smelling table, Sacha poked me in the shoulder. "When you gotta go, you gotta go," he said with another laugh that didn't hold a lick of embarrassment in it.

I looked up to see that his grin was telling me a story about an incredibly handsome man that didn't take himself too seriously.

It was like finding a four-leaf clover.

"Did I gross you out?" he asked when I didn't immediately respond.

I scowled and shook my head. "Are you kidding me? Have you talked to Eli?" He nodded, but there was no way he'd interacted with him enough to not be fully aware of my brother's mental impairment. I couldn't see Eli talking to someone for longer than twenty minutes without making some rude and/or inappropriate comment.

"There's four of us kids in our family, and Eli and I used to have to ride the bus to school together in the morning, so we had to wake up earlier than everyone else. He'd make sure to get up before me every single day for years so that he could purposely leave me 'presents' in the toilet," I snickered. "You can bring on the brown pickles with me anytime."

Sacha chuckled, his index and middle finger pressing against his temple. "What you're trying to say is that Eli's to blame for making you this way?"

"Hey!" I cried. I wasn't sure whether to be insulted or not.

"I mean it in a good way. You're beautiful-" I'm not sure how I managed not to fall off my chair. "-And you don't have a problem talking to me about The Clap, diarrhea and vomiting. You're fun, Gaby."

My ears went red. Too worried about saying something dumb, I held out my hands at my sides in a "what can I say" gesture.

Sacha smiled and opened his mouth right before the sound of loud beeping coming from his pocket tore his attention away from the table. Pulling his phone out, he asked me to hold on before answering the call. "Hey... I just finished going for a run... yeah... I'm about to eat." He shot me a smile when he glanced up. "I'll see you soon... I miss you too... okay... bye."

The chances that the person he was talking to on the other end was a family member could be pretty high, but my gut feeling said otherwise. Someone that good-looking had to have a significant other in the picture.

"Girlfriend?" my mouth spewed without a second thought.

He simply shook his head, and I missed the way one of his eyelids lowered in denial. "Old friend."

Friend?

Sure. I almost snickered. I'd grown up alongside three boys, two of them becoming manwhores right before my eyes. I understood how they worded their sentences. An "old friend" that you told you "missed" was more than likely an ex-girlfriend or an ex-buddy you used to do things with that you probably wanted to do more things with in the future. Sacha didn't seem to be like my brother or Mase, but still. An "old friend" was an "old friend."

It wasn't my business, though, so I pushed Sacha's friend and conversation out of my head and smiled over at him, close-mouthed.

He only smiled back at me. The silence settled around our shoulders in a weird fit.

"Are you ready to go?" I asked him.

Sacha nodded and we got up, making our way out. Neither one of us spoke up as we walked back to the venue. I didn't know what to say, and I guess he didn't either. We smiled at each other a couple of times when we'd stop at a corner and wait to cross the street.

I heard the guys before I saw them. We were rounding the nearest building to the venue when Eli's booming laugh mixed with two other boisterous ones. Immediately, I felt this big ball of dread form in my stomach, my shoulders tightening.

I knew Eli inside and out. I could recognize his laugh when he thought something was kind of funny, really funny, not funny at all but he was attempting to be nice, and I was all too aware of the texture his laugh held when he'd either drank too much or smoked pot. And while he was a grown man and I had no right to tell him what to do, there was a reason why one of the conditions I made before coming on tour with him was that he kept the drinking, and by default the partying, to a minimum. Especially when I was going to have to put up with his crap afterward.

Eli laughed again, and I took a deep breath, already palming my chest for the tour laminate I had on a lanyard so I could go into the building through the front instead of the back door.

Sacha's hand nudged my arm. "You all right?" he asked when I looked up at him.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I forced a smile onto my face when Mason's voice pierced through the air.

He frowned. "You don't look fine."

We were getting closer and closer to the corner of the block where I would either go in through the front or walk a few more feet and make my way to the back where the bus and trailer were. "I just..." I blew out a shaky breath I hadn't realized I was holding and shook my head as if I wanted to shake off this entire situation with the idiots. "I don't like being around Eli when he's on something." I had a sudden flashback of the night that had finally been my breaking point, when I decided I didn't want to keep going out with GO. I'd been so pissed that I didn't speak to any of them for months after that tour ended.

"He's that bad?" Sacha asked.

I lifted up a shoulder, fighting off the anxiety trying to make a home in my chest. "Not bad, he just... says really stupid stuff. They all do." Hurtful, personal stuff that none of them had any business sharing.

He nodded as if he understood, and maybe he did. Most people had that one friend that turned into a wrecking ball once they had drunk too much or done something else that changed their personalities or thinking process.

When we got to the corner in front of the venue, I touched his side. "I'm going in through the front."

Sacha tipped his head down. "I should start getting dressed so I can begin warming up." He flashed me that bright white smile one more time. "If you ever want to go running again, let me know. You're a better running buddy than Julian."

I couldn't help but smile and nod.

The dark slashes of his eyebrows went up. "I'll even let you off easy with only seven miles next time if you want."

I fought the urge to push him away like I would have if he were one of my demons and snorted instead before backing away. "Go put your make-up on and warm up, Celine."

I could still hear my brother laughing when I entered the venue less than a minute later.

Chapter Six.

I knew something was going on when I found my twin and Gordo smiling sweetly over at me from their spots in the living space of the bus. The fact that all of the members of TCC and their crew were surrounding them didn't help any. I usually didn't sleep in, but a stuffy nose had kept me up. I grabbed a plastic cup from the cabinet over the microwave and then fished out one of the gallon jugs of water that were stashed in the lower kitchenette cabinets, all while watching the group closely and trying to listen to what the hell they were talking about.

The scent of bullshit was strong in the bus.

"I'm in," Julian said first, looking at Freddy. "You?"

"I'm in," the TCC tour manager agreed.

What exactly were they in for?

Slowly but surely, the rest of the members sitting on the couches all nodded or verbally agreed to whatever it was they were talking about. I slowly slid in to the only seat available across from Carter, which was one of the two chairs belonging to the small table in the kitchen.

"Carter, what about you?" Eli asked the man I spent a lot of time with.

Still in his pajamas and looking only slightly more awake than me, he shrugged. He had his hair down and parted down the middle, the ends brushing his thin shoulders. "I'll play."

I'll play?

Oh no.

"How many people is that, then?" Gordo asked. I didn't miss the smug look he threw my way after he asked.

"Eleven," one of the TCC guys answered.

Gordo let out the most exaggerated sigh I'd ever heard in my life, even going as far as to make his eyes go wide. "E-lev-en? That's an odd number. We can't have an odd amount of players in the game."

This motherfucker.

My brother turned to look at me and shrugged his shoulders. "Flabs, I guess that means you have to play."

"The hell that means I have to play. I'm not playing," I said in a careful, controlled voice before taking a too casual sip of water, making sure to keep eye contact with him.

"You have to," Eli repeated.

"Odd numbers," Gordo piped in like a little shit.

I shook my head, making sure to keep my features even. If I was careful and really nonchalant about it, my chances of getting out of this were higher. Eli knew too easily how to pull my strings at the right time, and I sure as hell wasn't going there. "It's not happening."

Carter shot me a curious look. "You don't like to play?"

I glared at the two idiots when I answered. "I don't like to play with them."

The scoff that came out of Eli and Gordo was impossible to miss.

"C'mon. Don't be a party pooper," my twin muttered.

"I'm not being a party pooper. I just don't feel like getting the crap beat out of me," I explained to them. Glancing back at Carter, I sighed. "Every time we've played in the past, I end up getting hurt. My lip got busted last time, and I'm pretty sure my tailbone was fractured. I also had this bruise bigger than Eli's head-"

"We need you on a team," Gordo insisted.

I just shook my head.

"Quit being a baby and play. Gordo promises not to knee you again, don't you, Gordo?" Eli asked.

The dark-skinned man next to him nodded almost enthusiastically.

They were so full of shit.

"I promise not to knee you either," Eli amended next. "We can be on the same team if it makes you happy."

Well, that was part of the problem when we'd played in the past too. I wasn't usually a competitive person-a game was just a game and if it made someone's day to win, so be it-but when it came to doing things against Eli, that was a whole different story. We'd been competing for attention, love, food and just about everything else from the moment we'd been born. Arguing and fighting over stuff was second nature for us.

But still. The memory of my bloody busted lip was still fresh in my mind two years later. Before that there had been a visit to the dentist for a new filling, a bloody nose, a sprained back, an ankle I couldn't walk on for two weeks... the list was endless.

Then there was whatever crap the losing team had to go through. It was the whole purpose behind playing: to embarrass the loser.

"I'll tell Mason not to purposely trip you anymore," Eli finally added with an expectant look on his face. "Deal?"

I hesitated. Along with the bloody lip in the past, there had also been a black eye, an elbow to the center of my chest...

"It'll be fun," Bryce, the TCC light guy, suggested.

It'll be fun, they said.

Just a friendly game, they said.

Well, they were fucking liars. All eleven of them.

Two hours after I was finally guilt-tripped into agreeing to play, the bus made a detour on the journey from the parking lot it had sat overnight to the park it dropped us off at. The drive had only been four hours long, and in the middle of the night, we arrived in Houston, Texas. Unfortunately, there was more than enough time to kill before we needed to get to the venue, so I couldn't use that as an excuse as to why we couldn't play. We all piled out, dressed in shorts, T-shirts and an array of tennis shoes.

A few of us, including me, were busy putting sunblock on when Gordo went around passing out pieces of torn-out notebook paper folded into small pieces. There were two papers with stars on them for whoever won team-captain duties and nine pieces of paper with either a "1" or a "2" on them, the deciding factor for which team each person ended up on. We'd already agreed in the bus that Eli and I would be on the same team, so I would choose a paper for the both of us.

That part of it went fine. There was no problem.

Julian ended up the captain of the "1" team and Freddy, the tour manager/sound guy or front of house, got the other piece of paper to command the "2" team.

Julian, Mason, Sacha, Bryce, Isaiah and Mateo were on team one.

Freddy, Carter, Gordo, Miles, Eli and I were on team two.

Still, no problem.

Then they decided they were going to go over ideas as to what the losing team had to do as their punishment. This wasn't unusual, either; every time I'd played their stupid Soccer Death Match in the past, there had been some bet going on. It had always been something humiliating, so my standards weren't too high. I was pretty much ready for something involving bare asses or being someone's slave for a day.

And then Mason's dumb-dumb-dumb-ass blurted out, "Losing team has to shave their heads."

Uhh...

"YES!" I wasn't sure who first yelled out their agreement, but I wish I had so I knew who to nut-punch.

"No!" I threw my arms out and looked around at the group of idiots who weren't screaming at how dumb his idea was. "Are you shitting me?"

They weren't.

Why almost all of them thought this would be an excellent punishment for the losing team was beyond me.

"Majority wins," they said. Carter and I seemed to be the only people against it, and that was more than likely because we had the most hair out of everyone on tour by far. Everyone was so confident that the team they were on would win, they didn't mind taking a risk.