Page 43 of Pistol Whipped

It’s their faces that give me the courage I need to walk on stage. The lights go dark, and the whole stadium is plunged into black until Dutch’s drum beat counts us in and everything, myself included, is lit in purple. I find their faces again. And hundreds of others like them. Some holding signs with the guys’ names instead of mine. Many wearing older Preaching Pistols merch or waving whole albums in the air. I sing for them. For this moment, for all the kids and adults in the audience who heard these songs all those years ago and recognized a touch of themselves in my words or Cohen’s music, in Dax’s low humming bass or in the anger that Dutch only pours into drumming, so it doesn’t explode elsewhere. These people, they may not know us, but we have the music, these songs in common.

Those girls in the front row, they sing along to every goddamn word. And by the time we get to the last song, ‘Breathe Together’, I sing it for every person in that stadium.

It used to be about Cohen and me, about how we couldn’t quite breathe whenever we were apart. Tonight, it’s no longer the love song written about first loves. It’s no longer the song I hate on every jukebox and dread hearing on the radio. Now, it’s my love letter to them. The people who kept our music alive in our absence. Who sang our songs long after we stopped. Who called into radio stations and made requests. The fans. We were nothing without them then, and we wouldn’t be standing here without them now.

I’m seconds from diving into the bridge, gratitude buoying me up, when there’s a ripple of awareness to my left. After the past two hours, the crowd is a single organism, moving and shifting as one and for the first time all night, their focus isn’t on us.

Thanks to the stage lights, I can see when the girls’ attention shifts. I follow their stares to the side of the stage. From behind the rigging, from out of the dark shadows where only the crew should be, comes Trey. He walks across the stage, like he’s supposed to be there, and my voice dies. Literally dies, mid-song. Followed by a screeching sound as Cohen’s hands abandon the chords. There’s a violent thud as Dax drops his bass. Worse, there’s a deafening silence where there should be a drum beat, and I feel Dutch panic.

What is he doing here?

Even the crowd holds its breath as I ask, “What are you doing?”

He’s mic’d up. How he got that way, I can’t begin to fathom, but when he speaks, the whole crowd can hear.

“I’m here to do something very special, Rain. Something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

He says it with a smile. That same God-awful smile. He steps closer. We’re nearly as close as we were the night he assaulted me. Only this time, I know he won’t do anything that horrific because there are too many people watching. Instead, he does something worse, something incomprehensible.

He drops to one knee and pulls a velvet box from his back pocket.

“Rain Gamble, will you marry me?”

I gasp. Fifty thousand people gasp. To my right, a guitar smashes. Behind me, a cymbal clatters to the ground. And in my head, a wall I’ve spent the past few hours, hell, the past few years, rebuilding, shatters in an instant.

Chapter 21

Sugar, We’re Going Down

Cohen

The last forty-eight hours have been confusing and enraging in equal measure, from finding Dax snuggled against Rain like lovers, to seeing this rat-faced fucker drop to one knee and ask the very same girl, the one I thought would always be mine, to be his instead.

I hear the words. I know what he’s asking. But I can’t deal with it. Not at all.

There are more than 10,000 people in Vetruviut Stadium tonight, but you wouldn’t know it from the silence that hangs in the air. Our fans, like us, wait for Rain to answer, to say something. To say anything. To say NO.

In true Rainy fashion, she doesn’t say anything. She runs. And that asshole follows. He races after her. We’re not far behind either. Guitars are dropped, microphones and gear knocked over, drums roll and their skins crack. All without a single word to our fans. Their silence morphs into screams and shouts. Our audience is as shocked as we are by this turn of events. Yet, neither of the Kelly brothers nor I deign to look back.

Dutch and I are neck and neck in our run, with Dax trailing behind, when we catch up to Rain and what-ever-the-fuck his name is. Thanks to the empty concrete halls, the fucker’s shouts echo off the walls.

“What the fuck, Rain? You embarrassed the shit out of me!” he screams, spittle flying in her face as he backs her against the wall.

The corridor is empty. I could easily rush them both, yet we all wait. We hold. Part of me thinks we’re all holding our breath waiting for the too-familiar stoking of Rain’s inner fire. I stare at the woman who, in the long time I’ve known her, has been nothing short of an absolute brat in the face of confrontation. I wait for that version of her, the one that is nothing but sass and attitude, to shove this guy back.

Instead, she mumbles one word, “Trey,” and then she crumbles. She literally crumbles. Her legs give out. She drops to her knees before this loser, submitting to someone who does not deserve it, who could never be worthy of it.

At my ear, Dallas admits, “That’s how I found her the other night.”

He tried to tell me. Right after I found them like that, then over and over again. I didn’t believe him because I couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t picture a world where the same girl who could grip my balls in a vice would be so shattered by the shit-stain of a man I’m looking at now. He stands over her, eating up more and more of the space between them while he berates her.

“Poor, pathetic Rain. I told you I’d be back. I told you, you were mine. There is no escaping me. Ever.”

Dutch sucks in a breath. “Fuck. That’s exactly what he said to her in Cambria.”

“What do you mean?” I hiss. “He said that to her, and you let him live.”

Dutch shakes his head. “A mistake.”