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“We’ve got a real treat tonight,” Travis was talking. “Some of y’all might have heard a rumor about my little sister Krystal teaming up with a certain singer?” He paused, letting the roar of the crowd rise. “Any ideas on who I’m talking about?”
It started out soft but rose. Over and over, a little louder each time. His name.
Jace. Jace. Jace.
“Hear that, Krystal?” Travis asked. “Guess the cat’s out of the bag.” Travis turned and waved him forward.
The crowd went crazy.
He didn’t remember making the conscious decision to walk, but he was moving. Without tripping over the spiderweb of cords and cables that covered the stage. Without being blinded by the white spotlight narrowing the stage to one spot.
Krystal, seated on a stool, and an empty stool beside her. For him.
She patted the stool, smiling at him like this was an everyday sort of occurrence.
He tipped his hat, earning a few screams from the crowd, and sat on the stool beside her. He looked out over the crowd, a mass of dark shapes and a few hundred telltale lights from all the cell phones recording. “Evening,” he said into the mic on the stand in front of him.
More screams had him shaking his head.
He strummed his fingers over the strings of his guitar and turned to Krystal. The stools were close enough to see her, close enough to feel the heat and energy rolling off of her. She was nervous. No, the look on her face said something else. She was…terrified?
This wasn’t about him. This was about her. And this song. It mattered to her, maybe more than he could truly understand.
He winked at her, took her hand long enough to offer a reassuring squeeze, and began to play in earnest. He drew a deep breath and sang. “I remember you, standing in the sun, smiling at me, and suddenly my world caught fire. Blinding, beautiful fire.”
The audience went crazy.
“I remember you, taking my hand, holding me close, and suddenly my world caught fire. Blinding, beautiful fire.” Her gaze stayed on him, the husky notes of her voice wavering and rich and mesmerizing.
A few notes, his fingers moving on their own. “You were everything…” He sang his part then he paused a beat. “…you tried to run from the heat.”
Krystal swayed with the music, raw and anguished; she didn’t hold back. “…the sweetest pain of all.”
All he could do was stare, the words and music tying them together as they sang. “Love isn’t love when the flames burn it down. There’s no hiding or forgiveness from the damage that it’s done. When the smoke clears away, you’ll still find me searching here. Searching for the ashes of my heart.”
If he woke up tomorrow and this was over, he’d be satisfied. He was a roughneck. A midnight bail-bondsman. A blue-collar man with a beat-up truck and a mobile home with a leaky roof and a groaning air conditioning unit. But tonight, he was singing a damn good song with Krystal King in front of a few thousand people screaming his name.
He stood, playing through the extra notes she’d added for a guitar solo. He’d thought she’d meant to play it. Instead, she’d told him to. “Girls love guys who play the guitar,” she’d said. He hadn’t argued.
From the screams and whistles of the audience, she’d been right.
But they weren’t who he was looking to impress. She
was right here, next to him. He shot her a smile and she slid off her stool, coming to his side. Her hair was mussed, her cheeks were red, and her eyes flashed. Whatever jitters she’d been feeling, they were gone. The music carried them both.
He stepped closer, his fingers stilling on the strings of his guitar.
She smiled up at him, breath a little uneven, the flash and shimmer of her earrings catching the lights. All of her sparkled—she was lit up from the inside, proud and happy and so damn gorgeous he didn’t want this moment to end. The whole coliseum seemed to be holding their breath, waiting. Krystal pushed a wayward curl from her shoulder and held her mic with both hands, her eyes never leaving his face.
He nodded, stepping close enough to share her mic.
“Love isn’t love when the flames burn it down. There’s no hiding or forgiveness from the damage that it’s done. When the smoke clears away, you’ll still find me searching here. Searching for the ashes of my heart.”
She hummed a note and repeated, softer and husky, “Searching for the ashes of my heart.”
It was his turn to hold his breath. Exhilaration mixed with a healthy dose of doubt settled hard and tight in the pit of his stomach. He waited, staring into her green eyes as the lights went dim.
The noise was deafening, rolling out of the dark and slamming into them. The crowd’s applause and screams and whistles swept over them like a wave of living, breathing energy. The sense of uncertainty he’d been grappling with for most of the day fell away instantly. This was good. Not just good, awesome. He knew it, felt it, and—according to Travis—needed to own it. When the high he was riding crashed, he’d consider it.
