The audience applauded. Thanking them, she set her ukulele on the stand next to her guitar and wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans.
As the house music started up, releasing Emeline from her role of entertainer, the moss and bugs receded, taking the scent of the woods with them.
Emeline blew out a relieved breath. She’d done it. She’d managed to get through all three sets without causing an incident. No one noticed the mossy presence in the room tonight. No one except her.
It made her wonder—not for the first time—if her mind was going the way of her grandfather’s.
An ache flared in her chest as she remembered the last time she’d seen him. That sterile room. How lost he looked—like he didn’t belong there.
She forced herself to breathe.
You did the right thing. It’s what he wanted you to do.
It was what she always told herself, and yet it never soothed the ache.
Parched from singing, Emeline reached for the bright pink Hydro Flask beneath her stool. The one Joel had given her for her birthday. She’d filled it with water at the beginning of her last set.
Her fingers grabbed air.
She leaned down, scanning the floor. But her water bottle was gone. In its place rested a flower: a white anemone, pretty as a star.
Emeline narrowed her eyes.What …?
She plucked the anemone out from beneath her stool and studied it. Light caught in the translucent white petals circling the black center.
“If this is a prank,” she murmured to the woods, “it’s not your best work.”
Emeline cast her gaze like a net over the pub until her attention snagged on something bright pink.
Her missing Hydro Flask.
She glanced from the bottle to the young man holding it. He was little more than a silhouette standing just beyond the reach of the bar’s dim lights. Watching her. The shadows hid his face and clothes—but not his tall frame. Nor the intensity of his stare.
Awareness crackled like electricity across her skin.
He lifted Emeline’s water bottle as if to salute her, then tipped it back, drinking deep.
Her mouth fell open.
How had he taken it without her noticing?
She glanced down to the anemone in her hand. He must have left it for her to find when he stole her water bottle.
Anger sparked through her. Emeline had dealt with men like this before. Fans who had no respect for boundaries.
He thought he could stalk her without consequences?
She would cure him of that notion.
Rising from the stool, Emeline stepped out from beneath the bright lights. Keeping her target in view, she zigzagged around tables, closing the gap between her and the bar.
Between her andhim.
He set down her Hydro Flask on the bar. Even with him veiled in shadow, Emeline sensed the struggle in him. Pleasure that she’d risen to his challenge; unease at her approach.
That’s right.She curled her hands into fists.You picked the wrong girl to mess with.
Emeline was used to being underestimated. She was a nineteen-year-old girl in a cutthroat music industry—a fact that seemed to give people license to dismiss her.
