Evie Deal's life is turned upside down when her father's new band takes America by storm. She goes from being a shy girl living in poverty to riding with one of the craziest bands of the 80s, all while trying to manage a rocky relationship with the...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
December 9, 1983
"Are you mad at me?" Evie asked her father. He hadn't said anything this entire morning — from the time he arrived at the jailhouse to pick her up, through the entire taxi ride, and now that they were back in her hotel room — he was silent.
"No," Mick said, washing his hands in the bathroom. But his expression suggested otherwise.
"You look like you're mad at me."
"Well, I just had to pick my teenage daughter up from a German jail because she got in a bar fight with her boyfriend, so...I'm not exactly happy with you right now."
"I'm sorry." She sat down on her bed and hung her head low.
"What were you thinking, Evie?" Mick leaned against the desk, staring at her with an exasperated look on his face.
"Those men were trying to assault me. What else was I supposed to do? Just let them?"
Mick looked down, his eyes stopping on the big bruise on her arm. The bruise from where one of the men grabbed her. Sometimes, he forgot how dangerous this world was for her. Actually, he actively tried not to think about it. It made him want to drink.
"No," he said. "I'm not mad at you about that. You did the right thing to do in that situation. I just hope this night made you realize why I don't want you hanging around Nikki."
"What?" Evie laughed because if she didn't laugh she would cry. "What would've happened to me if Nikki hadn't been there? Huh? You probably would've been picking me up from the police station for an entirely different reason."
Again with the reminders of the things he feared the most. "If Nikki hadn't been there, you would've been asleep in that bed last night, not out at some random bar." At least, that's what he liked to think.
"And what's the fun in that? We're in Europe, for god's sake, should I not be allowed to go out and explore a place I'll probably never see again?"
"There are ways of having fun that don't involve going to sleazy bars with dirtbag rockstars."
"Nikki's not a dirtbag."
"That's what you think, but..."
Evie cut him off: "But what? But the last three weeks we've spent together, where Nikki's been nothing but loving and respectful, all the time we spent together every day, all of the dates and the trips and the hobbies he promises we'll do together once the tour is over, it's all because he doesn't actually care about me? He has dozens of groupies who line up backstage every night, yet he's choosing to spend time with me, just because he has some master plan of deceiving me and breaking my heart? And even if that's not the case, should I really have to avoid someone who makes me happier than anyone else in the world, just because he makes stupid decisions sometimes?"
