A guy probably only a few years older than me grins widely as he strolls confidently toward the stage, and his presence alone tells me that he must be the lead singer of the opening band tonight: the infamous Van Erickson of Cutting the Line. He has jet-black hair, dyed a sparkling silver at the tips, and the cocky smile on his face screams “rock star.”
“Hey!” Adam shouts back, launching off the stage to pin Van in a hug. Shawn climbs down a little more sensibly, followed by Joel and Kit—and Mike, who wraps his hands around my waist to help lower me to the floor
Van’s bandmates and a pretty pair of girls enter behind him, and after everyone is finished getting reacquainted, Mike introduces me. “This is my girlfriend, Hailey.”
“Oh,” Van says smoothly, the corner of his mouth lifting into a smirk, “the girl in the red dress needs no introduction. We’ve seen the video. We’re all big fans.”
My cheeks burn as red as my dress in the music video was, and Mike’s arm grows snugger around my shoulder. Van shoots a smile at him and reaches out to shake my hand.
“I’m Van.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say, and when I shake Van’s hand, he chuckles.
“No wet willies—I like her already!”
Kit snorts and punches him in the arm, and Van laughs as everyone starts gravitating toward the bar.
“Mike’s waited a long time for you, Hailey,” Van says in parting as he leads the way, and Mike smiles down at me as we fall behind.
“Can I show you something?” he asks in a hushed voice, and when I nod, he steals me away.
Outside, in the March chill, I sit on the metal railing lining the steps leading down from Mayhem’s side door, and Mike’s hands wrap around the metal beside my thighs. He frames me with his strong arms, sculpted from beating the drums since he was old enough to hold a pair of drumsticks.
“What did you want to show me?” I ask, and a bashful smile plays around his perfect lips.
“How I feel about you?”
My cheeks dimple when I remember him using that line just before our first kiss, and I crawl my fingers up his shoulders as he steps in closer.
“And how are you going to do that?”
When Mike starts leaning in, my heart pounds in my chest just like it always does when I know he’s going to kiss me. I close my eyes, breathless, but then his cheek brushes against mine.
“Don’t pull away,” his sultry voice whispers in my ear as the wind blows my wild curls from my face, and when his lips graze mine, I don’t. I melt against him as he takes his time, and I feel the sparks ignite all around us. They fire against my lips and inside my chest and up and down my skin—until I’m molten lava, his for the shaping.
Van’s words echo in my mind: Mike’s waited a long time for you, Hailey.
But as the sparks consume me—as they consume us both—I think of the happily-ever-after I’ve dreamt of since I was old enough to dream, and I realize I’ve waited for him too.
I waited for my prince, I found him on a stage, and I’m going to hold on tight to him until the very, very end.
Epilogue
Mike
Fans slept outside Mayhem last night. While I slept in my warm bed with my girl in my arms, dozens of kids lined up and slept outside on the sidewalk to guarantee a prime spot in the pit. The guys and I watched from backstage as the doors opened and they rushed in, a stampede of fans racing for the metal railing. Within minutes, Mayhem was packed from the stage to the bar, and even though we’ve played sold-out shows before, this one felt different.
They’d slept outside. In March. I still can’t get over it.
The first time the guys and I played Mayhem seven years ago, we were just a desperate garage band trying to make a name for ourselves. The owner couldn’t decide if he wanted this place to be a nightclub or a concert venue, so he built a stage, installed a bunch of high-tech lighting, made room for a DJ booth, and called it both. Mayhem: the name of a place that has no idea what it’s supposed to be, and the club we’ve called home since we moved here right after high school graduation.
None of us ever considered settling for a nine-to-five. We never even thought about it. We just grabbed hold of this dream with both hands, and we formed a silent pact to follow it wherever it led us.
Since then, it’s led us around the country. It’s led us around the whole world. And now it’s led us back here, to the same familiar stage, under the same blue and purple lights. They flash around me as I pound the drums for the wild beast in the pit. There are so many faces in the crowd tonight, I can’t even make them out. I play my heart out for the animal: the thrashing creature down below that grows restless with every hit song we play, every famous chorus we hit.
Famous—our songs are famous. The kids sing every word by heart. I set the beat to the rhythm of their feet as they jump up and down, a sea of bodies rocking out to songs we wrote—the songs that Adam and Shawn and Joel and Kit and I wrote. Some of these songs were written while we were all still in high school, back when none of us could have imagined playing for a crowd this big or fans this loyal.
They slept on the sidewalk. They slept on the freaking sidewalk.
Cutting the Line opened for us tonight, and Cutting the Line opens for no one. But Van Erickson stood at the front of that stage introducing us each by name: Adam Everest. Shawn Scarlett. Joel Gibbon. Kit Larson. Mike Madden.
Walking across the polished black floor to my drums tonight felt different than it had for the sold-out shows in China and Australia and England. It felt . . . it felt like we’d made it. It felt like I’d made it. And as my muscles burn and my sticks bang furiously against the drums stacked in front of me, I realize that feeling has as much to do with the girl waiting offstage for me as it does with the hundreds of fans screaming our names from the pit.
Hailey Harper: I never even saw her coming. I was so sure I’d never end up with one of the girls waiting for me outside our tour bus, but there she was, waiting alongside my high school girlfriend on the night that changed my life.
I was an idiot for hooking up with Danica that night, and I was an even bigger idiot for taking so long to realize we weren’t worth a second shot. But the mind has a funny way of playing tricks on you—like when you go to a theme park as a kid and you think it’s the greatest place in the entire world, but then you go back as an adult and you realize the rides are shit and the food is toxic.