by Jamie Shaw
Some random guy hollers his approval, and I laugh. The best way to get fans to love you is to love them back, and I already do. Come to see them, and they’ll come to see you.
“Joel!” Adam shouts with Rowan pinned to his side. “Kit says we’re going to the bar afterward!”
Joel looks up from a girl who’s uselessly trying to give him her number, giving a thumbs-up. It takes two and a half more seconds, but he weaves away from her like some kind of seasoned ninja, and then he’s at my side, his blond Mohawk adding another few inches to his already solid six-foot-two.
“You doing okay?”
I beam up at him. “I’m doing awesome.”
“She’s a pro,” Mike says from my other side, and I beam up at him too.
Joel’s arm wraps tight around my shoulder to escort me through the crowd, and Mike helps part the sea to get me to the merchandise booth.
It’s near the bar and absolutely swarmed, with girls buying Dee-designed T-shirts and asking where and when they can buy my dress. There are chicks with blonde hair and pink hair and brown hair and blue hair, but when I finally see Shawn again, the girl hanging off of him is one with auburn hair that made it through the show in much better shape than mine. I’m covered in at least five layers of dried-on sweat, with my runny mascara probably making me look like I belong in Twisted Sister instead of The Last Ones to Know, and she’s standing over there looking like she just had her lip gloss applied by Kim Kardashian’s makeup artist.
While the band and I mingle with fans at the merchandise booth, she waits. When the house music starts and we make our way to the bar, she follows. When we sit, she sits.
“Can I buy you that drink now?” one of the guys from before asks me, and I stop scowling at the girl’s stupid catwalk-ready face long enough to answer him.
I should be celebrating right now. I should be happy and excited and not daydreaming about swinging some chick around by her hair. I turn a manufactured smile on the guy and tell him I’ll have a rum and Coke, and he buys it for me while telling me how awesome I was, how hot I look, how talented I am.
I soak it all in, sipping on the drink he buys me and a drink another guy buys me and a drink another guy buys me, and there might be another guy or two but I honestly lose count. I mingle with girl fans and guy fans and try to give some of my attention to everyone who wants it, which isn’t nearly half as many people as those who are competing to talk to Adam and Shawn.
An hour after the show has ended, the house music is pounding against my eardrums, the alcohol is thinning my blood, and Shawn makes eye contact with me from down the bar. Most of the fans have left or gone back on the floor, but the auburn-haired girl from before is still hanging off of him. She’s treating him like her own personal jungle gym, talking his damn face off, and I’m suddenly on my feet.
“Dance with me,” I order, grabbing his hands and leaving no room for argument. The other guys watch me drag Shawn onto the dance floor, and Rowan and Leti stand side by side grinning like cartoon characters, like their mouths are going to stretch off the sides of their faces at any given moment.
I imagine the girl with the stupid hair is glaring poisoned daggers at the back of my head, but I’m too busy towing Shawn into the crowd to enjoy it. The drinks I’ve had are making the shiny dancers blur, the laser-filled room tilt, and my lips feel numb, but my feet don’t fail me. When Shawn’s hand squeezes mine, it’s enough to keep me sober . . . Kind of.
In the middle of the floor, I spin around and wrap my arms around his neck. He’s tall, but so am I, so I don’t have to crane my neck very far to catch his bright forest eyes. They’re locked on me, but the rest of him doesn’t make a move. He’s a statue, and I’m desperate. I step into him, pressing my every soft curve against his every hard plane, holding his eyes with every centimeter I close between us. He looks like he has no idea what I’m doing—and that makes two of us. My fingers play in the back of his hair, and when he still makes no move to put his arms around me, I make a soft plea against the shell of his ear. “Please.”
Shawn’s head is the only thing that turns, his hands hanging at his sides and his body stuck in place. He angles his chin toward my ear, his stubble brushing my cheek when he says, “Please what?”
Please touch me. Please hold me. Please want me. “Pretend I’m someone else.”
He pulls away to stare down at me, but I keep my arms around him, begging him with my eyes to please just let me pretend. Tonight, I don’t want to be the girl he left behind in high school. I don’t want to be his buddy from the band. These past few weeks with him have been torture, and right now, I just want to be a hot girl in a hot dress. I want to be the girl he was with at the bar. I want to be one of thousands.
When he shakes his head, my heart sinks. The word “No” leaves his mouth, and I turn to walk away from him. But then his hand catches my waist and pulls me backward. My back molds to his chest, my ass fits against his jeans, and his fingers slide up my arms, lifting them until my hands are curling behind his neck. With my body flush against his and me not daring to let go, his capable fingers slide back down my sides until he’s clutching my hips again.
I turn my head to stare up at him, and he doesn’t shy from my gaze. Instead, he pulls me even tighter—as tight as we can possibly be—and his hips rock mine from side to side. I turn away and close my eyes, tunneling my fingers into his soft, messy hair and grinding against him on the floor. There’s no mistaking that my dress is thin, that his jeans are stiff, and that whatever I’m doing, I’m doing it right.
Where Shawn’s hands move, a trail of fire follows. He ignites my sides, my arms, my thighs. A safety pin in the side of my dress gets unfastened, and then that hand is boldly sneaking inside my dress, caressing my blazing-hot stomach before flattening against it to hold me even tighter against him as his hips rock with mine on the floor. I long for him to move that hand up, or down, or, fuck, I don’t even know. I just want to feel him. I want to feel him like I felt him six years ago.
Kale told me I should hate him, should make him get on his knees. But how can I hate him when he makes me feel like this? When his fingers set my world on fire. When his eyes make my heart flip in my chest. When his voice calls to something in me that no one else knows is there.
When I slide his hand out from my dress and spin around, Shawn’s eyes are almost as dark as mine. I wrap my arms around his neck and forget everything. I forget the past six years, I forget all the drinks I’ve had tonight, I forget the warning Kale gave me.
“I forgive you,” I blurt.
And I kiss him.
I don’t even give him time to respond before I rise onto my tiptoes and do what I’ve been wanting to do for days, for weeks, for years. And God, his mouth is so warm, so soft. I savor it and breathe him in, letting his spicy-clean scent fill my lungs and thicken the fog in my head. His lips taste like a young whiskey, my heart drums against my ribs, one song stops and another begins—and everything I forgot comes back in a fucking rush.
I open my eyes and jerk away, covering my mouth with my hand because oh my God, I just kissed him. Shawn looks stunned, like I just ambushed him—because I just ambushed him. “Oh my God,” I gasp, dropping my hand from my mouth in a panic. I seriously just kissed him. I just kissed Shawn. “I’m so sor—”
One second, I’m panicking. The next, his lips are crushing mine. His fingers dive into my hair, leaving no room for me to get away if I’d even want to, and he kisses me like he’s stealing something. Like he’s on fire and needs me to put him out. But as his lips brush and tease and feed on the raw heat of mine, that fire blazes even hotter. His tongue teases the open seam of my mouth, doing things that have me melting into him and desperately gripping at the sleeves of his shirt. He’s close, but I need him so much closer. I pull and tug and relish the feeling of his fingers in my hair as he writes a song in the rhythm of my breathing. His kiss is an inferno, consuming all of the air in the room and lighting every nerve in my body
on white-hot fire.
“Fuck,” he pants against my mouth, the hardness in his jeans throbbing under my hand, which got there all on its own.
When I pull it away—pushing it under his shirt instead because I need more of him, now, right now—Shawn plucks it from his body and links his fingers with mine. He starts pulling me from the dance floor, but stops three steps later to put those delicious lips on mine again. “I’m taking you to the bus,” he growls against my mouth with one hand squeezing my ass through the silky fabric of my barely there dress. He tugs me tight against him so I understand exactly why he’s taking me there, and I bite my bottom lip to keep myself from moaning. His stubble brushes against my temple as he moves his lips to my ear. “Right now.”
“Okay,” I purr against his throat, and then my hand is in his again and a hundred bodies are blurring by us. We break through a steel exit door into the frigid night air, and then we’re across the parking lot and Shawn is practically carrying me onto the bus.
I don’t make it easy for him to get me up the stairs to the first level. As soon as the door is closed behind us, I’m in his arms and his lips are mine. I’m insatiable, but so is he. I don’t try to make it nice for him, he doesn’t try to make it nice for me, and I’m so fucking hot for him I feel like I’ll explode if he doesn’t tear this dress off me soon. “What are you waiting for?”
The backs of my legs collide with the edge of one of the long leather benches on the lower level, and when Shawn lays me down on top of it, I bunch my fist in his shirt and pull him down with me. He settles between my legs and I arch up to meet him, loving the way he groans and pushes back against me, the way he grips my hip so desperately that it’s sure to leave marks for days. He rocks against me as he controls the kiss, making me light-headed as he claims every last centimeter of my lips. I turn my head to the side and pant for fresh air, and when he drops his hungry mouth to the curve of my neck, my eyes roll back behind closed eyelids.
I feel like I’m not even inside my body anymore. I feel like I could pass out. I feel . . . fuck . . . I’m going to throw up.
All of the free drinks I had at the bar hit my stomach at once, threatening to come back up before I even have a chance to get out from under Shawn. I frantically push at him until he gives me enough space to roll out from underneath him, and I shake my head when he asks me what’s wrong. When I slap a hand over my mouth, realization dawns on his face.
“That way,” he says, pointing toward what I’m praying is the bathroom. I turn on my heel and race my way there, nearly tripping over the lip between rooms before yanking open the bathroom door. I drop to my knees in front of the toilet and grip its edges to keep from falling face-first into the bowl. The entire room spins as I puke my freaking guts out. My hair gets pulled away from my face and a rough hand rubs my back. Shawn’s voice attempts to comfort me, but it doesn’t stop the tears from springing to my eyes as I heave over the toilet.
I’m puking in front of Shawn. After almost puking in his mouth. Nothing could make this night any worse.
No, that’s wrong—the only thing that could make it any worse is me fucking crying.
I lock down my emotions and finish throwing up all of my cocktails, resting my forearm on the seat of the toilet and dropping my forehead to my elbow—because I’m too wasted to stand, I’m too stubborn to lie down, and I’m too embarrassed to let Shawn hold me.
“Can you stand up?”
I try to say “no” but end up puking some more instead. My head is spinning faster and faster with every second that passes, and eventually I start dry-heaving into a toilet bowl that won’t stay still. My arms are noodles, tossing me from side to side while my entire stomach climbs its way into my throat.
“I’m going to carry you upstairs, okay?”
Someone who sounds kind of like me mumbles something unintelligible back. Then there’s Shawn’s scent against my cheek and his voice in my ear. I become vaguely aware that I’m floating. And then, it’s just dark.
In the morning, I can’t remember how I got into my bunk, and Shawn isn’t around for me to ask, not that I would if I could. I’m tucked under sheets that smell like him, wishing I was dead. Drinking too much is one thing. Drinking too much, throwing myself at Shawn, mauling him on the bus, and then puking my guts out in front of him?
I close my eyes and pretend it was all a bad dream, but the black hole that’s blossomed in my head screams otherwise. It sucks painfully at my brain, my eyeballs, my eardrums—like it needs to devour the entire contents of my skull before it can escape and suck the rest of the world into its hole as well.
My feet are heavy as I throw them over the edge of the bunk and plant them on the icy floor. I stare down at my star-print socks, imagining Shawn carrying me up here, taking my boots off, tucking me in . . . and shaking his head at what a complete mess I was—the so-called rock star who thought she could hang with rock stars.
I rub a hand over my face and fit my feet into my boots one at a time. Then I attempt to finger-comb my hair, give up, and swipe my fingers under my eyes instead to clean up my mascara. Each step down the stairs to the lower level of the bus feels like an ice pick to my frontal lobe, and I’m praying there’s some coffee I can make in the kitchenette—because if not, I’m going to lie on the floor and just die.
The smell of dark-roasted beans hits me as soon as I step off the last stair, but my brain is too hungover to process what that means. I follow the smell like a worn-down bloodhound, dragging my sorry ass toward it until I emerge in the kitchen and meet forest green eyes.
Because, apparently, humiliating myself last night wasn’t enough. Now I need to rise from the dead with my brain throbbing out of my ears, my hair looking like something straight out of a B-rated horror film, and my wrinkled dress still ten sizes too small.
“How are you feeling?” Shawn asks, like it’s not written all over my face. I plop down in a chair at the corner table and immediately curse myself for it when lightning bolts shoot into the backs of my eyes. I hiss a curse word and bury my face in the darkness of my elbow.
I have two options. I can be an adult, apologize for going all alien-sucker on his face, promise it won’t happen again. Or . . .
“What happened last night?” I groan into my arm when I hear him sit across from me and slide a cup of coffee in my direction.
When Shawn doesn’t answer, I lift my head enough to peek up at him, and he asks, “How much did you have to drink last night?”
His five o’clock shadow has turned a day old, making him look even sexier and more disheveled than he normally does. His navy blue band T-shirt is hanging loose across his collarbone, stretched by my frantic fingers the night before.
“I don’t know. Five? Six?” I sit up and prop my forehead on my fist for a moment just to get myself used to being in an upright position. “Too many.”
Shawn studies me while he sips his coffee. His eyes are bloodshot like I’m sure mine are, a sign I wasn’t the only one who overdid it last night.
“How much do you remember?”
Everything. I remember the way his fingers skated across my stomach on the dance floor, the way his hips moved with mine. And I remember the weight of those hips on the bus, the way they rocked between my thighs.
It’s the moment of truth, and I lie my ass off. “I don’t know,” I mutter. “Did . . . ” I give him my most confused look. “Shit. Did I kiss you? In Mayhem?”
Shawn stares at me while rubbing calloused fingertips over his eyebrow. “A little.”
If that was just a little kissing, this dress is just a little short. “Oh God. Then what? I was so wasted, I can’t remember shit.”
“You got pretty sick,” he says as I blow nervous ripples into my coffee. Then he skips all of the in-between and jumps right to the end. “I brought you back here and put you to bed.”
So I’m not the only one who’s full of shit. Interesting. I continue blowing on my coffee while my swollen brain tries to make sense
of what’s happening. Shawn is lying, and it’s either to save me the embarrassment of remembering what I did, or more likely, because he regrets it just as much as I do.
My coffee burns my tongue when I take a sip, but the sting is nothing compared to the sudden burn in my heart.
“Did anyone see me kiss you?” I ask, and Shawn shakes his head.
“If they did, they would have said something. Peach texted me, but I told her you were trashed and I was dropping you off at your place.”
“Won’t they think it’s weird you didn’t come home last night?”
“Not if I tell them I called that annoying chick who was digging her claws into me after the show.”
I nod and take another scalding sip of my coffee, wanting desperately to ask him why he’s lying, why he kissed me back. I was drunk, but I wasn’t too drunk to know what I was doing, and I don’t think he was either.
But I guess it doesn’t matter, because whatever spark flared between us, it’s clearly been put out.
Or maybe it was never there. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I was just what I wanted to be—just a hot girl in a hot dress.
Maybe I meant nothing more to him than that girl with the auburn hair, nothing more to him than I did the last time he made me feel like this.
I hate myself for letting him. For letting him make me feel like this again.
Chapter Nine
I WAS LATE to the first band practice we had after Shawn and I made out on the bus. I was late, but he said nothing. I missed my marks, but he said nothing.
So I started missing them more. I started plucking the wrong strings. I started telling the guys that Shawn was the one who was off.
Still, he said nothing.
Whatever lies he told the guys about what happened after I dragged him on the dance floor at Mayhem, they believed him. And whatever lies he told himself, he believed those too.
The entire practice, I searched for any sort of acknowledgment in his eyes—I looked to see if he’d look at me the way he did when he was kissing me, when his hands were on my skin and his heart felt like it was beating in my own chest—but he barely even looked at me at all.