“Because you and Lana weren’t supposed to know about it at all,” he muttered half under his breath.
“Yeah, and I would have remained ignorant if I hadn’t heard him on the phone with Axton about the party Friday night.” Lana glared at him. “And trust me, knowing that you are planning this stupid thing with Axton Cage only makes me more anxious.”
Dallas finally picked up the phone. “If this isn’t Lana or Harper I’m hanging up,” she warned.
“It’s me,” I assured her. “Did you know anything about the bachelor party this Friday?”
“No way!” she exclaimed. “Why would I fucking know?”
“Because your man is helping plan it with mine.”
“Fucking assholes!” she bit out. She and Axton were still holding on even through Dallas’s continued insecurities about Gabriella Moreitti and Axton. “He never mentioned it.”
“You know what we have to do, right?”
“I’ll make the arrangements. I know the perfect club.”
“Good. I’ll see you in an hour and we can plan it out. I say since the bachelor party is Friday, then so is Lana’s.” I glanced at my friend and she only nodded.
“I’ll see what I can do, but this might be something that will require the redhead’s help.”
I snorted, knowing by ‘redhead’ Dallas meant Emmie. Those two had become friends during the time Lana’s family had stayed on the East Coast right after she had come home from the hospital. “Emmie it is then.”
Shane groaned and I knew exactly what he was thinking. For one thing, Emmie probably didn’t know about the bachelor party. For another, if Emmie was going to be going to a bachelorette party, then so was Layla.
Nik and Jesse were going to kick his ass!
Shane
With Harper still upset with me, I had to move fast to make other arrangements. I knew that Emmie wasn’t going to help me, mainly because when I had begged she pointedly refused. She was helping with plans for Lana’s party and to hell with me.
As the days quickly passed, I kept on my toes altering the one party to crashing another. Because Emmie was doing the arranging, I knew that it was going to be almost impossible to get into whatever club she was renting out for the evening. But I had to make sure that we did crash it, or I was going to have three angry men kicking my ass.
Jesse was the first one to call me and nearly rip my head off over the phone. He and Layla were coming out a day earlier than expected just because of the party, and after seeing the way my friend had nearly knocked my brother’s head off a few months ago, I was eager to put things right.
“So now you have not only hurt Lana, but you also have my wife going to some party that I know will be hard-core with the way Em has been dropping hints,” Jesse snarled over the phone. “Oh, and Layla is pissed at me! So thanks, bro.”
“Why is she mad at you?” I demanded. “You weren’t in on this.”
“It doesn’t really matter to her or Emmie right now. Nik’s in the dog house too. Good luck with that, by the way.”
Nik had been more pissed than Jesse. “I’m sleeping in a bed that isn’t mine!” he raged thirty minutes after Jesse had called me. “You better fucking fix this, Shane. Emmie is making me sleep in your room.”
Of course neither one of my band brothers could compare to how furious Drake was. Lana was staying at Harper’s until after the party. I was sure that I was going to have the bruise on my chin for a good month. My brother was like a bear with a sore paw the way he was acting. “I told you, no party!” he had yelled right before he caught me off guard with the punch to the face.
It had taken me two hours to calm him down and promise him that I was going to fix it. Still, as pissed as my family was, it didn’t come close to how I was feeling. Harper was staying at her apartment with Lana, and I wasn’t allowed to visit. I hadn’t gone a day without seeing her since we had started dating. There hadn’t been a night that she wasn’t sleeping in my arms since we first made love.
Now she wouldn’t even answer the phone when I called. All my texts received a short, cold reply.
So yeah, I was hauling ass to get things right.
Now, as I stood with eight other rockers outside of the club Axton had been lucky enough to find out from Dallas was the place for tonight’s revenge party, I was almost scared at how easy it appeared to be to get in.
The seven foot muscle head that stood in front of the doors to the club had a headset in his ear and spoke to his boss for a moment before stepping aside and letting the nine of us pass. Nik raised his brows at me when I glanced at him.
When I hadn’t moved for almost a full minute, Drake pushed past me and into the club. The rest of us could only follow. The corridor was dark. A small light along the floor was the only guide we had so we wouldn’t trip over our feet. Loud techno music was playing. Strobe and laser lights were flashing from every angle, giving me a headache despite the years of using those same lights in our concerts.
I had this scary picture in my head of what we were going to find. All the girls with male strippers grinding against them. Harper sandwiched between two guys while they rubbed their junk all over her… My fists clenched at my sides, and I nearly punched a wall as we all increased our speed.
When we reached the bar area that had the dance floor right behind it, we all stopped at the sight that greeted us.
The place was empty.
Except for a bartender behind the bar, the place was completely empty. Drake exploded into a round of viscious curses that no one heard because the music was so loud. I pulled out my phone, hoping beyond hope that Harper would answer me this time when the music was suddenly cut off.
The lights came on and I had to blink a few times before my vision returned to normal. From the top floor of the club stood a group of laughing women dressed in killer club wear. At the sight of Harper standing between Lana and Dallas, my heart flipped over. The look she was giving me told me I was forgiven because the joke was on me.
“So,” Emmie called from the second floor. “Have we learned our lesson?”
“Fuck, I love her,” Nik muttered under his breath, staring up at Emmie in awe.
Harper
With only about fifteen people in the huge club, it left for lots of dark, quiet corners. I was thinking about taking advantage of one after having spent nearly a week away from Shane.
I had gotten over being mad at him a few hours after our argument. I might have even given in and run back to him then and there. But Dallas, Emmie, and Layla had intervened. We had to teach them a lesson, they told me. Not just Shane, but all of them. Teach them that we weren’t going to put up with something like this without there being consequences.