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I scoot closer to Hail, mostly because I want to assure him that he’s my top pick, and partly to give Malek room on the small couch. Hail’s arm comes to rest behind my head, his fingers swiping under my hair to draw shivers down my neck. I find myself wanting him to pull me closer. I want to bury my head in his neck. Nip at his ear. Suck a hickey onto his skin. Make him moan my name.
Those illegal thoughts are interrupted by the buzz of Hail’s cell in his pocket. He fishes it out, still scowling. After some mumbling on the other line, Hail addresses all of us. “Hey, Liam’s hitting the store on the way back. What do you fuckers want for movie night after the show?” He looks at me first, eyes softening.
“Anything sour is good.”
His features twist. “Oh no. Z, this arrangement isn’t going to work. How can you eat that stuff?”
My brows shoot up. “What? Sour sweets?”
“Yeah.” He fakes a look of disgust. “Fucking makes my teeth hurt thinking about it.”
“Tell Liam to buy me all the airheads they have,” Malek adds.
“Two-liter of Mountain Dew. I don’t want to sleep tonight!” Griff whoops, clicking into the menu to start up the game.
I settle in, though there’s a looming sense of dread in my gut, knowing I’m allowing them to thread themselves into my very being. If I brace for the pain now, maybe it won’t destroy me when I have to rip those stitches out at the end of this tour.
Sixteen
Hail
We’reinKansasCityand I’m on fucking fire.
I have the fans on strings, and I am the puppet king, drawing them this way and that. Forcing them into aggressive dance. Driving them into madness as we finish our last song and bow.
Stepping up to the mic one last time, I shout out, “Much love, Kansas City! Can I snap a pic?”
It’s something I’ve started doing for my own selfish reason. I want to document Liam’s final tour. I want every last piece of this incredible dream we built from the ground up. From senior dropouts to the top of the metal charts. From unwanted teenagers to wanted by millions of fans.
Cheers echo through the venue, loud enough to have me chuckling and shaking my head. “Is that a no, then?”
I love turning the dial up on the noise level, pushing these fans to the limit. They pay good money to escape the mundane. I like to make sure they get our best.
Malek and Griff deserve that, too. If I do decide to call it quits in the metal scene, I want to make sure their careers skyrocket even further. So high that nothing could topple them back to the ground.
Surprisingly, it’s Z that rushes my phone out. We lock eyes for too long, both of us panting from physical exhaustion as our hands brush.
Then he’s gone, and I feel a creeping sadness as Atonement lines up with our backs to the crowd.
Seeing our grins against a backdrop of fans has guilt striking me in the chest. Is it right for me to think about giving all of this up?
Though, it has been eight long years of this. Constant travel, eating out, late nights and early mornings, catching sickness and pushing myself through it to perform, and yeah, I’ll admit a few hangovers in the beginning when we were young and stupid.
Add in the years before we formed Atonement when Liam and I struggled to find loyal bandmates free of addiction, and I’ve spent almost half my life fighting for this dream. I was okay with the chaos most of the time because I didn’t have much else occupying space in my life. But that’s how Lizbeth justified cheating. And now Liam won’t be at my side.
Stasi and the band are it for me. Well, theywere. Until Z.
To say all the screaming and heart-pounding adrenaline doesn’t wear me out would be a lie. It is as much a mental drain as it is physical, but I won’t ever air those complaints out loud. I know I’m blessed. One of the lucky ones, despite the fact that I’ve worked my ass off to get here, desperate to prove to my family that I’m not a complete fuck-up.
Hoping they’ll admit they were wrong and welcome me back in with open arms.
And if Z decides to tour with the band when Liam’s out of the picture, hell to the fucking no, I’m not calling it quits. I’ll follow that man to the edge of the universe.
Backstage, I wipe the sweat from my brow on a towel thrown to me by Sondra. My thumb hovers over the send button on a group message to my parents and Max, my older brother, with the pic I took on stage.
I back out of the message and shoot the photo to Stasi instead. A few minutes later, she FaceTimes me. She’s huddled up in a blanket on her apartment couch, piles of textbooks surrounding her. I can hear reality TV playing in the background.
“Hail, that is incredible,” she exclaims. “Where are you tonight?”
