Insider (Exodus End #1)(124)
Author: Olivia Cunning

She hadn’t personally released the information to the tabloids, but she was responsible for someone gaining access to it. She hadn’t protected those she cared about. If she hadn’t written those things down in the first place . . . If she’d been more careful with her journal . . . If she’d just stuck to the prescribed interview questions . . . If she didn’t trust people so easily. If, if, if.

She leaned against a rough stone wall and waited not so patiently for the band to come out after the show. The guard seemed to realize she’d been defeated, so he wasn’t watching her closely as he flirted with a pretty blonde trying to get in to see the bands. Toni hoped to use his lack of attention to her advantage when an opening presented itself.

It seemed to take an eternity for the band to emerge from the back exit. They were uncommonly grim as they strode toward the waiting bus. Reagan, especially, looked pale and forlorn. Logan brought up the rear, walking several paces behind the rest of them with his head down, as if he was the one who’d betrayed them. She wondered if they’d yelled at him because of what she’d supposedly done.

The security guard was too busy gawking at rock stars to notice Toni shift from the wall to the barrier fence. Abandoning her gear and luggage, she hiked up her skirt and climbed the cool metal railing. She dashed toward the bus. Logan drew to a halt as Toni streaked toward him. He turned in her direction. The look of betrayal on his handsome face made her stumble, but no, she couldn’t fall. Not now. She had to reach him. Had to explain. Oh God, don’t look at me like that, Logan. She feared he wouldn’t listen to her or believe her even if she did plead her case.

An arm around her midsection stopped her abruptly, and her feet came off the ground as she was pulled against a large hard body from behind. She struggled, kicking her feet and shoving down on the arm around her waist with both of her hands.

“Let me go!” she demanded.

“Not a chance,” the guard said. He grunted when her heel connected with his shin.

“Logan!” She struggled harder. “Logan, you have to listen to me. I didn’t do it. I swear.”

Logan shook his head at her, turned away, and continued toward the bus.

“Logan!”

He didn’t so much as look at her as she screamed for him. Yet her struggling had finally weakened the guard enough that she slipped from his grasp. Unprepared for freedom, she stumbled forward, catching her fall on her palms, before regaining her footing and racing toward the bus.

“Logan, please hear me out,” she yelled as he stepped onto the bus. He was too far ahead. She wasn’t going to reach him in time, and he refused to look at her, to give her a chance to explain. He was pulling away from her and taking her shattered heart with him.

The door shut behind him, and she slammed into it with both hands. Pain shot through her asphalt-scraped palms, but she didn’t care. Didn’t care about anything but reaching him. She didn’t know if he’d be able to hear her through the closed door, but she had to try.

“Logan, you know I’d never do anything to hurt you or anyone in the band. Remember when I couldn’t find my journal? Someone stole it or found it. I don’t know. But that’s where the information came from. I didn’t give it away. I didn’t sell it. You know I wouldn’t do that. I love you!” Tears overflowed as she pounded on the door. “Please, Logan, listen to me.”

The bus shuddered as it rolled forward. She walked beside it, banging on the door with one hand. And then she was running, trying to keep up. She stumbled through the parking lot, but it was no use. He was gone. Without even speaking to her. Gone.

She didn’t struggle when someone grabbed her and held her still. It was over. Her dreams. Her relationship with Logan. Her life. Over.

Her legs gave out, and she crumpled to the ground, sobbing for all she’d lost against the unforgiving asphalt beneath her quaking body.

Thirty-Two

Logan leaned his forehead against the inside of the bus door and swallowed against the lump of despair strangling him. He couldn’t hear Toni’s words as she tried to yell through the reinforced steel, but he could hear the desperation in her tone. How could she have betrayed them all this way? Had she played him a fool the entire time, like some sort of spy who used sex to get a man to spill his deepest secrets? No, she was too honest. Too sweet. Too gentle to do anything so underhanded.

But the evidence was on the page. Toni was the only person outside of the band who knew all the stories that had been printed. It couldn’t be a coincidence that they’d all been released in the same tabloid at the same time. What he didn’t understand was why she’d do it. She never seemed desperate for cash. Was she trying to earn enough money to get out from under her mother’s thumb?

“She should be glad Butch was the one who kicked her ass off the bus,” Reagan railed. “I probably would have killed her.”

“You might as well settle down,” Max said. “What’s done is done.”

“Does anyone know a good attorney? I’m going to sue her for libel.”

Logan understood that Reagan was upset. Her story was the only one that was current. Everyone else’s was something they’d had years to process. But she was overreacting. Did she really expect to keep her relationship with Trey Mills and Ethan Conner a secret forever?

“You can’t sue for libel unless malicious lies are printed,” Logan said, shoving off the door and climbing the steps. “Everything in that article was true.”

“I can’t believe you’re defending her!” Reagan yelled. “She ratted you out too.”

“I’m not defending her, just saving you time. You’d never win a libel case. You can ask Jessica Chase if you don’t believe me. She’s a lawyer, you know.”

“You don’t want to take this to court,” Dare said. “If you think this little article has exposed your relationship with my brother, imagine the stink a full-blown trial would create.”

Reagan crossed her arms over her chest and flopped into a chair. “What am I going to do?”

“Own up to your relationship,” Dare said. “You’re not doing yourself any favors by trying to hide it.”

“People won’t understand. They’ll think I’m some sort of deviant just because I’m in love with two men.”

“I agree with Dare,” Steve said. “People blow secrets all out of proportion, and then after the truth comes out, the gossip quickly dies down.”