“He’s mine,” I say to her.
Hannah, having overheard the exchange, smiles at me approvingly. Then, for good measure, she shouts, “They’re all super taken. Like, way off-limits. Except for the rhythm guitarist. That guy’s single. And a boxer! You should totally go for him.”
The blonde woman shoots her a hostile look, and she and her friend blend into the crowd.
Hannah shrugs. “Mick can never say I didn’t try.”
Smiling, I turn back toward the stage, and this time Cormac’s eyes land on me. It’s as if someone flicked a light on inside of him. He practically glows withhappiness.
For a moment, I can only watch him in wonder.Idid that. Somehow I made him feel that way.
A voice inside me is screaming. Telling me I’m not so tough after all. I’m going to fall in love with him—maybe it’s already happening—and it’ll ruin one of us.
But the warning voice in my head isn’t as loud as the music he’s playing—the song that thrums through me and makes me want to believe that being happy and in love is possible for me. That maybe it isn’t just a phenomenon reserved for better people.
When they finish their inevitable encore, the guys start packing up their instruments. Briar and Liam are nowhere to be seen, so either they left to attend to a brewery emergency or they found a darkened corner where they could make out. Knowing them, either possibility is equally likely.
“After-party?” Hannah asks, turning to Sophie and me, her face bright with excitement.
Leave it to Hannah to take this same buzzing positivity into everything—if I’m afuck the glassperson, she’s firmly aglass is half fullperson.
I’ve told her as much before, and she said it was “the fate of a redhead.”
“No,” I say, “I’ve got other plans.”
“Look at you, you woman of mystery.” Hannah hip-checks me. “And will you share those plans with your best friends, by any chance?”
Sophie smiles softly at us. “Leave her alone, you big bully. You know exactly what her plans are. She wants to be with Cormac.”
Well…she’s not wrong. Idohave plans for him.
My friends and I approach the stage and wait by the stairs. Travis comes down first, arms full of equipment. Hannahbustles forward.
“I’ll be taking that,” she says, taking an amp from him.
Mick comes down the stairs next. He pauses next to me, his arms full of equipment too. “Hey, is that older lady all right? It didn’t sit right with me what the Soviet guy tried to pull.”
“Yeah.” I gesture toward the table where we left our Wise Elders. “She’s sitting back there. Go say hi, if you want to give her a thrill. She had a lot of nice things to say about your ass.”
He throws his head back and laughs. “You know what? I think I might just buy her a drink. She reminds me of my grandmother.”
Leave it to Mick to have a secret soft side. Then again, what have these last couple of years been other than a lesson in layers? We each wear so many of them.
Finally, Cormac descends with his guitar bag slung around his shoulder and a couple of boxes of equipment.
“You’re here.” Grinning, he reaches the bottom of the steps and moves to the side.
I sidestep with him, taking in the sweat on his brow. He worked hard for that sweat. The perverted side of me wants to lick it, in the same way people lick desserts to claim them.
“I’m here,” I confirm.
He glances down at the boxes regretfully. “I’ve got to get these out to the VW?—”
“The one you stole?”
“I did give it back, but yes, apparently that’s still frowned upon in the eyes of the law. Who knew.”
“You, probably.”
