AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That he deserved.
That Izzy deserved.
That Aimee deserved.
He played for himself and he played for Izzy. But Aimee would learn tonight, that he would never perform for her again.
He stepped out of the shadows, his voice a low roll of words he hadn’t known existed inside of him.
Whisky beats and a hard rain save me tonight.
If you only knew what it cost me to fight.
The taste of your memory reminds me
That you’re anything but mine.
The lyrics had come in the dead of night. He’d sat in the moonlit atrium and had written the song at three in the morning. And now he was putting himself on display. An apology and a plea for her to have a good life. It was buried under metaphors and innuendo, but the heart of it was for her.
Would always be for her. As her song flowed into another, he stood taller.
His gaze drifted over Aimee in the front row. How she got by security every single time, he’d never know. Probably a crisp hundred dollar bill. How many times had they played just that trick to get around a security guard at a hotel?
His heart stuttered, and his words grew weak for a split second. Then his voice soared as he pointedly turned from her. He strode to the other end of the stage and laughed with a twelve-year-old sitting on her dad’s shoulders. He concentrated on those kinds of faces. Of the true fans, of the indulgent men that were obviously there with their girlfriends or wives.
He wanted to win them over for the first time in so very long. He poured himself into the show. His b
and’s songs, cover songs, sing alongs. Anything that kept the crowd pumped. And when he finally couldn’t do one more song, he landed on his knees with his throat as raw as it had ever been.
He found her in the crowd. At the back, with her friend at her side.
With no choice, he signaled to Morgan for a song they didn’t do often, but he kept as an audible on every setlist. When the spirit moved him, it was the perfect song. Morgan was his jack-of-all-trades when it came to instruments. And his sad saxophone was particularly poignant.
Seger’s “Turn the Page” drifted into the night. Logan closed his eyes and let the lyrics wrap around the crowd, let the song give him strength. Because he didn’t want to leave. For the first time he’d wanted to stay for longer than a week.
He’d found someone he wanted to start over with. And he had to walk away. He’d find solace on the road.
For now.
* * *
Logan draped a towel over his head as he sat on a folding chair at the back of the gazebo. It had been a helluva lot milder than any other night of the festival, but it was still brutal under the lights. He hunched forward, bracing his forearms on his knees, a bottle of water dangling from his fingers. The guys were laughing and getting their flirt on with the women that always managed to get backstage, even at a small town festival.
He didn’t want to play nice tonight. His head throbbed from dehydration and a raging hangover. And he honestly just wanted to get drunk again. At least when he was blurry-eyed he could sleep. And he stopped reaching for her.
At least he’d kept his shit together at the show. That’s all that mattered. The entire weekend had shown him that he could still feed off the stage, that it still meant something. If he took nothing else from this weekend, he could take that.
“Sir, you can’t—Sir!”
Logan looked up as one of the security staff strong-armed a guy that looked like a linebacker gone soft. Logan caught the jowly profile and sighed. He definitely wasn’t in the mood for the paparazzi.
“Logan! Hear me out.”
“Not interested, Brian.”
“I think you will be,” he called out.
Logan swiped the towel off his head. This was the same guy that had ambushed him at the darts and balloon game. Did he really think that Logan would feel like talking?
