The scent is vanilla and something citrusy. I spot three candles—one on each of the side tables and the last positioned in the center of the coffee table. On the other side of that table, Tyler is on the couch next to Cal. Their heads close together as they talk.
“You put scented candles on your rider?” I ask, stretching my arms out in front of me.
“The candles are Sin’s new thing,” Wyatt answers. I look around the garment rack to find him sitting on a stool on the opposite corner of the room. No surprise, he’s smoking like a freight train, but luckily, Sinjin’s candles pretty much cancel out the odor. I wrinkle my nose as Wyatt stubs it out and immediately fires up another. “Helps him relax.”
I follow Wyatt’s gaze until it lands on Sinjin, who’s stretched out on the loveseat. There’s a folded cloth over his eyes and a bottle of Southern Comfort within reaching distance on the floor.
“How’s the relaxation going, Sin?” I tease. He answers by giving me the finger. Laughing, I begin to distribute everything from my cart. When I get to Wyatt, and he lifts the hangers out of my arms, I arch my eyebrows together. “So what weird shit do you have on there?”
“On what?”
“The rider for the dressing room. Sin’s got his candles and booze. I’m not even sure I want to know what Cal asked for. So what about you?”
Wyatt tosses his clothes on the back of the armchair that’s closest to him. “Gum. Cigarettes. Energy drinks. I’m simple as hell compared to the rest of these fuckers.”
Cal snorts loudly, dragging my attention back to him and Tyler. “You should tell her how all the weird shit on the dinner and lunch menus belong to you.” Tyler remains wordless—he’s literally said a total of twenty words to me since the tour kicked off—but he nods his strawberry blonde head in amusement.
Wyatt changes the subject. “How are the guitar lessons going?”
I move my hand from side to side. Lucas has been teaching me a little each day since he surprised me with the mahogany Gibson. When I throw that in with the few chords I learned from my grandfather as a kid, I’m average. “It’ll take some time.”
“You’ll learn,” Wyatt says scratching his straw-colored hair.
He doesn’t say another word about the food rider, and I make a mental note to pay better attention to what we’re served during the next couple of days. Spinning around, I pace back to the wardrobe rack, which is empty except for a pair of Diesel jeans, a black, short sleeve Henley tee, and black and white Converse. For Lucas. Who’s nowhere to be found.
Rubbing my hands down the back of my tight, navy blue skinny jeans, I glance around at the rest of the band. “Do y’all know where—?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll have him all to yourself after the show,” Sinjin says, sitting upright. He tosses the cloth that was over his eyes behind him, where it lands a few inches from the candle on the end table. “But if it makes you feel better, he’s on the phone in the bathroom.” He points two fingers at the restroom in the back of the room. Sure enough the door is closed.
“Look at you cooperating,” I say sarcastically. “Was that so hard?”
Cal gets up from the couch, his straight black hair swinging around his shoulders. “He’s twitching from having to be a good boy,” he states dryly. “Oh, and your ass better come back here tonight after the show.” He winks theatrically. “I heard a rumor you’re supposed to do body-shots. What I want to know is if it’s supposed to be with me or off of me? Or off of you? And how Lucas feels about that?”
I shoot a hell-freezing look at Sinjin who’s the only person aside from Lucas that I’ve mentioned Ashley’s YTS bucket list to. He smiles like the Cheshire cat and then stretches back out on the loveseat, rolling over on his side so that his face is turned away from us. When he speaks, his voice is low, but it’s quiet enough in the dressing room for everyone to hear what he’s saying loud and clear.
“Lucas will break the fucking bottle over your head if her lips even come close to you.”
Ignoring Sin, I address Wyatt. “Can you let Lucas know that I’m putting his wardrobe for tonight in that closet over there?” He confirms that he will, and after I take Lucas’s belongings off the rack and hang them neatly in the dressing room closet, I pull my garment cart toward the door.
Before I leave, I pause.
My eyes flit to the restroom door once again, and I twist my lips to the side. I try to convince myself that it’s not Sam he’s talking to and that she hasn’t tried to snake her way back into his life. I haven’t heard from her since the night before we left, and I’ve almost talked myself into believing that she won’t send another. That she wanted to retaliate against Lucas after reading an article about us being together and the easiest way for her to do so was to reach out to me.
Ripping my gaze away from the door, I give the band—minus Sinjin, whose back is still turned—an upbeat smile. “Good luck. Or break a leg.”
After I return the rack to the crew dressing room, I make it a third of the way up the hall before I hear yet another voice shouting my name. This time it’s a shirtless Wyatt McCrae.
I meet him halfway. “Yes?” I ask.
He rubs his hand across his shoulder, pulling my attention to the intense bluebird tattoo that runs to the center of his chest. “Can you stick around for a few minutes?”
“Do you need me to come back for something?” I start to return to the band’s dressing room, but he stops me.
“No, trust me, we’re good. But Sin and me thought it would be a good idea to get someone to escort you to the stage?”
I fold my arms over my stomach. “I know how to find it.”
“I bet you do, but you’re on a lot of women’s shit list because you’re with Lucas. Believe me, I would do the same thing if Kylie was here.” When I try to get a word in, he continues, “And she wouldn’t give me shit over something like this. Give David ten minutes, okay?”
“He’s walking with me?”
Wyatt rolls his blue eyes, obviously irritated with all of my questions, but his voice is patient when he answers, “No, but he’s calling someone on the radio to do it for him.”
David ends up taking less than five minutes to find me an escort. He introduces himself as Aaron, but after that, he’s silent as he walks me with me out of the backstage building toward the direction of Cilla Craig yelling into a microphone. Aaron doesn’t leave until the security crew near the stage has cleared me to enter the pit and I’m immersed in the crowd that’s rocking out and screaming along with Cilla.
Even though it’s jam-packed out here, with sweaty bodies rubbing against me at every angle, I turn my face up to the stage and watch as Cilla struts around and goes through the chorus of one of Wicked Lambs’ more popular songs.
No matter how much I want to head-butt that woman 95% of the time, there’s no way in hell I could deny how talented she is, or how amazing she looks on stage in a lace-up corset top, tiny black shorts, purple fishnets stockings, and black leather boots. She doesn’t seem to notice the groupies pressing themselves against the stage, shrieking her name at the top of their lungs, or how all around there are cameras flaring as they snap photo after photo of her.
Toward the end of the song, as she scans the crowd, her blue-green eyes lower into the pit and lock with mine. At first, shock registers in her expression—this is the first time I’ve come out to see Wicked Lambs—but then a grin sweeps across her face. She winks at me before flipping her shock of black hair back and crooning the last line of “Let’s Get Messy.”
The crowd goes crazy. As she catches her breath, Cilla seems to soak it all in, reveling in the worship. Once the thunderous applause dies down somewhat, she brings the mic up to her lips. “Wow,” she sighs, her deep voice sounding full of surprise. It sounds so genuine that I almost believe she is. “Can I just say that Dallas makes me so stupidly happy.”