Page 20 of Unleashed By Eden

“Hey, man.” Kai peels away from the group, drumsticks already in hand, tapping a beat on his thigh. I tip my head at him in greeting.

I punch Theo lightly on the arm and shoulder-check Xander as I pass. It’s habit now. These guys are my brothers-in-arms, the family I got to pick. Between tours, we scatter to our corners of the world, pretend to be normal human beings for a minute, see our real families or hide from them, and fill up on quiet before we’re trapped together on buses and planes for the next year.

“We ready to do this?” I ask, taking them all in.

“Hell yeah.” Kai nods, bouncing on his heels. People who don’t know him assume he’s always on something, what with the jittery energy and the constant movement, but that’s just Kai. In all the years we’ve played together, I’ve never seen him snort a single line, which is more than I can say for myself or anyone else on this tour.

“Let’s fucking go.” Theo cracks his neck to one side, then the other. He’s built like a WWE wrestler with a thick neck and wide shoulders. A regular bass is essentially a toy in his hands. Liam had to get a custom one made for him so it didn’t look like a ukulele. He could crush my skull with one hand if he felt like it. Instead, he rescues street dogs and sends his mom money every month.

We pull in close, arms slinging over shoulders, forming the same tight circle we do before every show. The noise backstage fades a little in the middle of it.

“You good, X?” I ask, glancing at him. He’s quieter than usual, his eyes glazed like he’s somewhere else.

“Yeah,” he starts, then lets out a heavy breath. “It’s just . . . being back here. You know?”

I squeeze the back of his neck, and he closes his eyes for a beat.

I know.

We grew up in different houses in different towns, me and Xander, but we come from the same kind of hell. Now that we’re living in New York, it makes the old shit feel like someone else’s bad movie you watched once and forgot. Being back in Sydney makes it too easy to remember every frame.

“Ten months. Fifteen cities. Hundreds of thousands of fans. Let’s fuck this bitch.” I grin as excitement pulses through me, synced to the chanting crowd on the other side of the stage door. I look around at their faces in the crappy backstage fluorescent light, and I’m hit by how stupidly grateful I am that these are the guys in my foxhole. Without them, I’m nothing.

We break apart, and Liam steps forward, cupping his hands around his mouth as he raises his voice. “Alright, everyone, listen up!”

I hop up onto one of the black equipment cases so I can see over the heads, the metal creaking under my boots. A wall of faces turns toward me: techs, riggers, soundies, stagehands, all of them paused mid-conversation.

“We want to thank you all for being here with us,” I call out. “We cannot do what we do without you. Let’s make this the best fucking tour the world has seen!”

The cheer that comes back at me is loud enough to shake the concrete. People clap, stamp, whistle. Best fucking feeling when we’re all on the same team, running at the same thing.

I jump down. Liam claps me on the back. “Let me introduce you to the PrimeTime+ crew.” He angles his head toward a smaller group waiting to the side.

“Hey,” I say, walking over. “Nice to have you on board.” I shake hands down the line.

“This is Dave and Mika”—Liam gestures to the two guys—“they’re the camera operators. And this is Megan, the producer.”

Megan steps in with a big smile and eye contact that lingers a fraction too long. She looks a few years older than me, but the interest in her eyes is obvious, sliding over me in a way I’ve seen a thousand times. I know exactly where this will go. I could have her on her knees in two minutes, my cock rammed down her throat, and her looking up at me like I hung the fucking moon. The image flashes through my head, and my jeans get a little tighter.

I also know that hooking up with the woman in charge of the footage is a stupid idea, even by my standards. Shitting where you eat is one thing; when there are cameras involved, it’s asking for trouble.

“Nice to meet you, Megan.” I give her the lazy smirk that has a proven track record.

Her fingers curl tighter around mine. “Likewise,” she says, the eye contact still fierce.

Alright. Message received. Chill the fuck out.

“Sorry, I gotta take this,” Liam mumbles, pulling his buzzing phone from his pocket. At my nod, he moves toward Chris, already talking as he walks.

“And there’s one more,” Megan says, looking around. “Our photographer. She was here a second ago.” Her gaze skims past the gear, and then her face brightens. “Ah, there she is. Violet Henderson.”

The name strikes me like a chord played too hard.

A smile splits my face before I can get a handle on it, big and genuine, probably stupid-looking, too. This is better than any surprise Liam has ever managed.

She stalks toward us with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her ripped black denim shorts. Her pale legs are toned, and the fabric is pulled ridiculously taut across the front—I’m surprised she managed to fit her hands in there. I can only imagine how her ass looks from behind. Her black crop top hangs off one shoulder, exposing smooth skin and a bra strap, and her hair is a thick, glossy curtain of ink that falls all the way down to her waist. My gaze drops to her boots, heavy and jet-black.

I smile again. She may have changed, but her style hasn’t.