I kiss her one last time—two, three last times—and then we take the stage. Me, Kit, Adam, Joel, Mike. We’re as high as the crowd, adrenaline-fueled by the time Adam finally pulls his mic from its stand and riles up the crowd.
“We just signed with Mosh Records!” he shouts, and cheers rise up from the crowd—along with a few boos. Adam laughs. “And they totally kissed our asses! I’m pretty sure I could say they suck a giant cock right now, and they wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it!”
“But we’re not going to do that,” I chime in while the entire room screams, and Adam grins at me.
“What, do you think I’m an idiot? Of course we’re not going to do that!”
I chuckle into my mic, and Adam spins back toward the crowd.
“Shawn has been working this out for us for years. And you guys helped make it happen. So I just want you to give yourselves and Shawn a huge fucking round of applause before we start this show!” The crowd screams, and Adam turns toward Mike. “I don’t think that was loud enough, do you?”
Mike takes Adam’s cue and shakes his head.
“When you think they’re loud enough, go ahead and start.”
Mike grins, and Joel, Kit, and I motion for the crowd to get louder. Louder. Louder. When every single person in the venue—including the bartenders, the security, our roadies—are screaming at the tops of their lungs, Mike taps his sticks together and hits his first drum. The venue lights cut, the stage lights flare, and with the air glowing blue, I play my first chord. The music hums through my fingers and up my arms, swallowing my thoughts as I work my fingers to the bone. I shout backup into the mic, twining my voice with Adam’s in a way that’s as familiar to me as the weight of my guitar, and he plays to the crowd, the girls, the fans.
The groupies are ravenous tonight, screaming and reaching and threatening to bring down the barricade. We play song after song, watching everyone in the pit sing back to us with their hands in the air and their bodies bouncing to the beat. Two, three, four songs. I stare through the spotlights, skimming over the frantic first row, until—
Until my heart lodges into my throat and I nearly pluck the wrong damn string. If my Fender wasn’t strapped to my neck, I probably would have dropped it.
“You see her, right?” Adam asks me as soon as the song is over. His mic is switched off, and I step away from mine and just nod my head.
Danica fucking Carlisle. Mike’s fucking ex. Cheering from the front row. Desperate for Adam’s attention, my attention, anyone’s attention.
“What do you think she’s here for?” Adam asks, and my fingers strangle the neck of my guitar.
To make Mike miserable. To mess with his head. To summon her hellhounds and ruin the show. “I have no fucking clue.”
Six years ago, she tore Mike’s heart right out of his chest, and now she’s acting like his biggest fan, like she didn’t completely destroy him when she tried to make him choose between us and her.
“Do we tell Mike?” Adam asks, and when I give him a look and shake my head, he nods in agreement. He gulps down his water and walks back to his spot front and center, ignoring Danica like she’s invisible.
For everyone else, she’s impossible to miss. When we start playing again, she jumps up and down, screaming her head off while the poor chick next to her barely avoids flying hair and elbows. While everyone else in the front row is reaching for Adam and losing their minds, that poor girl’s arms are crossed over the railing she’s hugging to avoid getting knocked backward into the pit. She’s a tiny thing who keeps glaring at the bitch next to her, and when Danica yells something down to her and tries to lift her arm into the air, I realize they’re here together.
Not surprising. Even Danica’s own friends can’t stand her. But Mike . . . I still don’t think he’s over her. Six years, and he’s still never given another girl the chance he gave her. He probably still thinks she’s the one who got away.
I try to put her out of my mind, finding Kit’s gaze across the stage. She knows something’s up, and I smile at her to ease the tension that’s tightening the inside walls of my chest.
My smile gets bigger when I think about what she’d do if I told her that the girl who broke Mike’s heart is here. She’d probably tear her guitar from her neck and do a kamikaze dive off the stage. Her entire family has a penchant for violence, and my girl is no exception.
“What’s wrong?” she asks as soon as we’re backstage before our encore, and I curse my face for giving me away.
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?” she asks, her hands curling into the soft fabric at my waist as she scrunches her nose at me.
“Know what I’m thinking,” I answer.