Page 9 of Before You Fell

The crowd gets louder. I could tell them the world was ending and half of them would ask if I wanted company while it burned.

Fuck yeah. The more company, the better.

I play to the front row because I know exactly what it does. I shift closer, mic hot in my hand, sweat sliding down my throat as the lights burn across my skin. I let my eyes drag over the girls pressed against the barricade, slow enough to make them believe I see them. Slow enough to make them think this moment belongs to them.

One blonde in a tiny black shirt reaches for me with both hands, lips parted. Beautiful mouth. The kind I could do so much with after this show. Her eyes are glossy with want.

I know that look.

I live off that look.

I step closer.

Security stiffens at the barricade.

I grin down at her and drop into the next line as if I wrote it for her.

But I didn’t write it. Willow did. She wrote the wound. I just make it bleed in public.

The blonde screams when I crouch near the edge of the stage, her whole body pushing forward as if three more inches of space might change her life. Her fingers brush my wrist, quick and desperate, and her face crumples with it, as if touching my skin means she has touched something real.

Poor girl. There is nothing real about me under these lights.

Another girl grabs at my boot. Someone yells that she fucking loves me.

I love that she thinks she does. Love is easy from a distance. It gets ugly up close. Up close, love sees the bad parts. The selfish parts and the rot under the grin. The places where a man stops being a fantasy and starts being a problem with a pretty mouth.

I stand again, body slick with sweat, the crowd roaring my name so loud and faces tilted up at me as if I have something sacred to give them.

I don’t. All I have is a voice, a guitar, a filthy smile, and enough damage to make people mistake me for art.

The whole place turns holy and obscene. This is a church for the emotionally unstable. And I am their favourite sin.

The verse builds.

Jax drives it harder, smashing into the drums.

Cruz stalks across his side of the stage, all loose hips, sharp grin, and bad intentions, throwing a wink at a group of girls who immediately go rabid. Knowing Cruz, he will have a handful of them tonight, all falling over him, begging for a turn to be the girl he forgets before sunrise.

Jett stays back in the shadows, head tipped down, bass steady, eyes lifting every now and then. He probably sees me looking for her the way I always do.

I hate that.

Not only that, I hate that I do it at all. But I do it anyway.

My eyes cut to stage left and there she is.

Willow Hart. Black dress. Big boots. Notebook pressed against her chest. Standing half in shadow as if she is not the reason this whole fucking stadium is screaming.

Her honey-brown hair falls loose around her shoulders, soft under the side-stage lights. Her eyes are on me, calm, dark brown and unreadable. She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t even smile at me as if I hung the moon. She’s not impressed by the noise, the lights, the smoke, or the women reaching for me.

She just stands there watching. Grounding me without even realising it.

The second I see her, something inside my chest steadies. The way it always does. That pisses me off more than it should.

I am twenty-three years old. I have sold out stadiums, trashed hotel rooms, had women wait outside my door in lingerie, fucked so many I have lost count, been so high I did not know which city I was in, and still, one glance from Willow Hart makes the stage feel less insane.

Makes me feel less insane.