After yet another rubbish night's sleep I head downstairs to join the guys who are all up early. Hazel and Joey are in the pool, Nick and Stu are taking funny selfies and posting them online whilst interacting with fans and Reece and TJ are boxing. Reece looks knackered and is punching and kicking hard.
"What's with him?" I ask Stu and Nick pointing at Reece.
"Still pissed about yesterday, he has already been hassling David to fix it this morning." Stu answers.
"Here take this, I made it for Reece but it's going cold." Nick hands me a cup of coffee.
"You guys need to get ready to go, we leave in an hour." I say tapping my watch.
"Yes boss. GUYS HEAD IN!" Nick shouts to the others.
After a few minutes everyone heads in except Reece, he continues to punch the hell out of the punch bag. I walk over to him and offer a small smile.
"That my coffee?" he asks, and I nod and pass it to him.
He looks at it and notices its half missing. I try to discretely wipe the froth from my mouth. He smiles, downs the coffee and resumes punching the bag.
He leaves me no choice and with a small sigh I lean down and grab TJ's boxing gloves, even though they are rather big for my hands and disgustingly sweaty.
After a few minutes Reece stops to look at me and asks, "Did he ever hurt you?"
The question catches me of guard and I step forward and start punching the bag.
"Once. He hurt my arm. I told my mum I did it at school." I take a step back and Reece resumes punching.
"You have no pictures on social media of your face......even your account name is a nickname."
"Amy got tired of me not being on social media, so she set me up an account. She controls it all, so my face is safe."
"You shouldn't have to live like that, not because of......him."
"I'm used to it. The world doesn't know what it's missing though, I take a mean selfie." I grin.
He stops punching again.
"Even having a photo of you puts you at risk. I have some from the beach, I need to delete them."
"Wait, why? Do I look goofy?" I ask jokingly.
"Jamie I'm serious! Someone hacked my account and sent an email to get you fired. Who's to say they won't plaster you online.?"
He pulls out his phone and I grab it.
"Don't delete our memories!"
In that moment I realise how much he cares, I confided in him and now he's scared for me.
I take off the gloves and step closer to him. I remove his gloves despite some resistance on his part.
"You don't have to worry about me. I'm ok."
"Jamie, you're giving me that look, the one I give you."
I blush, "I know, I tried not to."
Stu breaks the moment when he shouts, "CAR'S HERE IN TWENTY!"
Reece and I laugh off the moment and head inside
"I can't believe you stole half of my coffee!" He jokes.
I raise my eyebrow and smile, "You so knew I would."
Reece heads upstairs. TJ and Nick are watching YouTube videos and Stu is sitting with his guitar working on some music.
"Hey Stu, new song?"
"It's one of Reece's, he asked me to play with the tune a little."
I sit down with him and watch how he works, the way his fingers perfectly glide from one chord to another, his hearing picking up on the best sound for the song.
"Sounds beautiful to me," I say as he continues to play, "What's it called?"
Stu closes his eyes and after a minute he turns to me.
"He still playing with the title, I suggested 'She just isn't you'. Do you want to read it?"
I quickly stand up and shake my head.
"Definitely not!" I blurt out suddenly feeling embarrassed, I turn and leave.
It doesn't take long for the car to arrive and the guys gather outside. All the guys notice that Reece is in a foul mood so they all deliberately wind him up and the play fighting begins until the car arrives and then they push each other through the gate all the way to the car's doors.
The drive is the same as usual, loud. All but Reece are singing and joking about random topics online and some of the fan's comments.
Once we arrive the guys all stand at the location, shocked. As I step forward to ring the bell at the entrance the guys finally speak up.
"A farm.... You've brought us to a farm?" Nick says a little surprised.
I turn around and smile. "Well, that's pretty obvious, isn't it? The sign says welcome to Sunflower farms. And there are also animal sounds coming from over the gate."
"Yes, that part is clear. The only thing that's not clear is, WHY?" Stu asks.
"Look, I've not let you down yet, have I? So, trust me."
We are greeted by two farm workers who sign us in. They head off to prepare todays activities while I show the guys around and explain my crazy plan.
"Ok, so I know you all think this bonkers, but this farm rescues abused and neglected animals. As a business it has struggled more recently and needs some good publicity, and let's face it, so do you guys.... During the week they have a riding school for differently abled people, which I thought Joey would enjoy?"
"That sounds awesome, what do you think Joey!" Hazel beams.
Reece smiles, "Well played"
"Oh, I haven't finished!"
I take them to the horses and Joey runs straight to the barriers. One of the workers comes over and takes Hazel and Joey to see the horses.
TJ approaches and the dread is instantly obvious as he speaks, "What have we got to do?"
"So, you guys are going to learn and help with some farm work. I promise it will be fun stuff, with a little bit of cleaning poop. A photographer will be taking some shots of the day which we'll use for the website and promotions for the farm. Now for the exciting bit!! Follow me...."
I lead them to a large open space.
"We have arranged with the farm to use this space for a Deadly Sins one off gig. Half of the proceeds will go the farm and the other to productions and you guys. There will be exclusively designed farm merchandise for the farm to sell and for the gig itself. You'll perform your comeback single and announce your return!" I smile.
"We have a gig? An actual gig?" TJ asks stunned.
"It's going to be great. We have a lot of planning to do. Well guys, what do you think?' David asks as the guys just look around the empty space.
They suddenly turn and start cheering my name and bundle me in a hug.
"Ok, point us the direction of the shit." Reece smiles and upon that request the guys are shown where they will be working and what to do.
I give the photographer instructions and as the morning progresses, the shots we get are incredible and I can't wait to post some online as a teaser.
Joey and Hazel have joined everyone for lunch, except for Stu, who is finishing off feeding the baby goats. The conversations are all about the upcoming gig, which now has David writing notes on all the great ideas being said. I wander off to find Stu. He's stroking the baby goats and bottle feeding one. I walk over to him and grab a bottle off the ground and help.
"I can't believe you've scored us a gig and we are helping a really cool place at the same time. If we can't fix you losing your job, I'm going to be pissed." Stu says without looking at me.
"You guys will do great without me." I smile.
"Jamie, I need you to know, I really do like Amy. I know my reputation hasn't always shown me in a good light, but I would never deliberately hurt her. I really like her."
"I know you do Stu, but your career is finally starting to take off again. I don't want her to be left in the dust." I sigh.
"I would never do that. Before Amy, yes, I've played the field a bit, but that's because before that I was hurt by my then girlfriend and I never thought I'd meet anyone who could make me smile again. I was in love, engaged. I toured a lot and she got bored, I guess. She started hooking up with other guys and even when she knew it was over between us, couldn't even tell me. She stole my last shred of happiness and dignity. She enjoyed the fame of being with me, using my money to keep her happy but she never thought of my feelings, not once. Because if she had, she wouldn't have done it more than once." Stu says with such sadness my heart instantly breaks for him.
"Stu, that's bloody awful. Nobody deserves to be used and treated like that. I'm sorry."
"When I finally found out, and not from her, I was blamed for the breakdown of the relationship because I didn't make enough effort, but neither did she. We both became lazy in the relationship, but it was easier for her justifying cheating and dump the blame on me."
"I get it. The truth would have hurt you, but it would left less damage. I can relate to that. Why are you sharing this with me?" I ask, shyly.
"I need you to know Amy is safe with me. You both are. Jamie, we all adore you, in a hugely different ways to Reece. You have done so much for our band and we are going to fix your contract. I promise," Stu wraps his arm around me and kisses my head, "I'm done and starving, let's go."
Stu stands and pulls me up with him and we head to off to join the others.
We both freeze when we hear two familiar voices arguing, we turn to each other.
"Shit, she'll kill her!" We quickly run in the direction of the shouting.
Once we reach the argument, I stand there shocked for a second, Amy has finally arrived and is shouting, waving and pointing at an amused Chloe.
"What are they doing here?" Stu says as he runs over to stop Amy.
"I invited Amy, I need her help for some of the pictures this afternoon and I thought you'd like her here." I grin and he gives me the cutest smile.
"You have NO right to be here! You weren't invited!" Amy shouts.
"Maybe I was...." Chloe gloats.
"You think anyone would invite you here after what you've done to Jamie? I will destroy you!" Amy continues.
"Try it. For your information, I haven't done anything to Jamie."
Chloe steps forward into Amy's face and Amy clenches her fist. Stu wraps his arm around Amy's waist and lifts her back.
"Woah, calm down Xena." Stu says as Amy wiggles, trying to shake him off.
The rest of the group, clearly also having heard the commotion, have started wandering over except for Joey and Hazel. David who is further ahead than the others, looks annoyed.
"Did you post on social media again Stu?"
Amy quickly speaks up, "It wasn't him... I have his phone," She hands it back to Stu as he finally lets her go, "He left it at mine on the sofa."
David turns to Reece.
"After everything, you still invited her here? REALLY?" David says annoyed.
"Though I appreciate the faith you have in me, no, I didn't invite her." Reece, snipes back.
"None of them could have, not really. They didn't know where they were going and have been busy all morning." I chip in.
"Well, I'm here now and can't wait to hear about the comeback plans." Chloe smiles wandering over to Reece who realises where she's heading and moves closer to me and lets out a low growl.
"Look Chloe, you can't know about the plans because you're not a part of our team. I'll catch you later."
Chloe laughs him off, "Don't be so silly. I'm your biggest fan. Well, I guess size wise, Jamie is." (Stretching her hands apart).
Reece angrily steps forward but David blocks him and shakes his head.
"We need to play this very carefully." David says glaring at Chloe's back as she walks off towards the horses.