Money For Something

25 - Liar

**Ace**

Jackhole was a tosser. Astonishingly, Willow didn't seem to care. Which was an excellent but surprising result. When I'd asked her privately, away from Kim and Lucy's watchful eyes, why she wasn't worried about his shit, she told me that the fact that he was a dickhead wasn't new information to her.

If only I could be so relaxed. I still had the shits with Josh. And presumably he had the shits with me. I'd managed to avoid him since he'd said shitty things about Willow and me. It wasn't hard, because he was avoiding me too. Lenka was probably encouraging it.

I'd gotten the feeling that she thought he should be hanging out with a better class of rockstar than me. Someone with a bit more star power. Although, with Willow's and my recent notoriety Lenka should have been frothing at the bit to be seen with us. Getting her face in the papers was, after all, her endgame.

My apparent secrecy when it came to marrying Willow probably hadn't helped the distance that had developed between Josh and me even before this recent blow up. I didn't need him to tell me that he thought he should have been my best man. I agreed with him, and I was sorry for it. There wasn't anything I could do to change that or make it better, unless I was prepared to tell him the truth about Vegas.

How about, no.

I wasn't prepared to do that. Not when the whole point of staying married had originally been so I didn't look like a massive fuck up. Telling the truth now would take me at least into the Premier League of fuck ups if not the European Championships. I'd look like a drunken fool and Willow would look like a sucker. Or worse. Like a gold-digger. Only one member of Polarstar was with one of those, and his name started with a J.

It would be interesting to see if Josh would show his face at the belated wedding reception that Lucy and Bas were throwing Willow and me. Lucy had organised to hold it at hers and Bas's house, reasoning that we could keep things more private due to their trusted staff and neighbours. Something that would help ensure our privacy along with minimising the potential of any leaks to the press.

Lucy and Kim 'suggested', read that as ordered, that we keep a low public profile until the storm Jackhole had unleashed blew over. They also 'suggested' we keep the guest list small. Anything more than a small guest list would require a change of venue and that would make it harder to guarantee our privacy. It made sense, but I couldn't help wondering if our privacy was their only reasoning.

The idea of privacy should have occurred to me. Somehow, it hadn't. Sometimes it still surprised me that as a band Polarstar was well-known. There was always moderate interest from the gossip sites into our comings and goings. Unless I did something spectacularly stupid or notable there was no interest in me, let's face it – I was just the drummer. Nudie runs, house fires, Las Vegas weddings, things of that ilk always generated interest. Sedate wedding receptions, not so much. However, considering all the fuss Jack was making it stood to reason to expect that interest in me was at an all-time high.

Lucy had been worried that Willow might not like the limited guest list, level of secrecy and the luxurious but low-key venue. Willow had snorted and said, "That was kind of the point of eloping to Vegas. We honestly couldn't give a flying fuck if it's low key. It's never exactly been my dream to have a massive wedding filled with celebrities that the paparazzi feel the need to stake out."

I loved the way she made her truth work with our lie. In fact, I was pretty sure that I loved everything about her. Having never been in love before, not even the unrequited kind that Gray had felt for Kim, I wasn't totally certain if what I felt was normal or even usual. I was certain that Willow was my favourite person in and out of bed. What I felt was way more than like.