The fact that the label caved with almost embarrassing haste was telling. They’d known how big Dante was going to be, and in return he’d secured his friends a completely unexpected payday. Now she smiled at Harry. “Is he going to hook up with some of his old friends while he’s here?” she asked him. “I can call off the video cameras for that if that’s what you’re getting at. IMO will eat me alive, but—”
To her surprise, Harry barked out a laugh. “Darling, you can’t stop Dante from doing what he wants. And if he wants to avoid your damn cameras, he’ll find a way to do so. He’s been playing this game hard-core for close to ten years, remember. In musician years, that’s like a hundred and twenty.” He was worrying a piece of paper in his hands, and finally sighed and seemed to make up his mind. He pushed the small sheet toward her. “This is probably a dumb idea. If Dante sees you, he might hit the roof, and nobody wants to deal with that. He can be as big of a prick as the next guy when he wants to be.”
Lacey looked at the little piece of paper. It was an address on Howard Street, which probably would have meant something to her if she’d known anything about Baltimore. Still, it didn’t ring any chimes in her database of Dante Falcone hangouts. “Is this where his friends will be?” she asked.
“No.” Harry shook his head. “It’s where Dante will be—the real Dante, the one he’s becoming. Maybe the guy he always was, I don’t know. But you seem to care about him. Hell, if I didn’t know better, if I didn’t know you were here to police the product and keep him in line, I’d say you maybe cared more about him than you wanted anyone to know. And if you do, you might want to see what he does there, the kind of music he plays.”
“But why are you showing this to me, Harry?” Lacey asked. Harry was a good guy, a solid tour manager. But he wasn’t really here trying to play matchmaker for Dante Falcone. There had to be a reason.
Harry flashed her a tired smile. “Because he’s good, Lacey. I mean, really good—better than Paradiso, better than some stupid video tour. He’s the kind of good that could make a whole new generation of musicians put down their synth toys and pick up real instruments again. And someone besides me needs to see it.”
He stabbed a finger at the paper. “You won’t see him leave. You won’t know he’s gone.”
Lacey frowned. “But he’s got the show—”
“Exactly. And after the show, that’s where he’ll be.”
Chapter Fifteen
Dante felt the old energy take him the moment they entered Maryland. He smiled at the irony of it. His family was long gone from here, his folks retired to the southwest as soon as he’d had the money to send them there, his sibs off and living their own lives. As for himself, he’d been all over the world—not just Seattle to New York City, but every major music city on the planet. London. Berlin. Rio. Tokyo. But it was the old home vibe of Baltimore that made him remember what he’d wanted to do when he first picked up a guitar, and made him think that maybe, eventually, he’d be able to do it again.
Sitting on the stage now, he went through the motions like he did before every gig. Only this time, he was maybe a little happier about it, a little more excited. He was about to go AWOL, and nobody suspected a thing. A few of the roadies and crew should have figured it out, of course. They’d been to Baltimore with him before, and of course Harry and Steve knew his favorite haunts in the city. But Harry probably thought he wouldn’t be up for sneaking out with the cameras everywhere and the show tonight, and Steve already had a line of women half a block long waiting for the show to end. Which made it all the sweeter for Dante to think about breaking free, cutting loose.
He loved his life, and he knew he was one lucky bastard. He’d known it from the moment his high school band had made the news. But still … he had dreams that hadn’t come true yet. He was twenty-four years old, and he spent more days on a bus than he was off it. That was cool, that was good. But he didn’t want to be on the road for the rest of his life. And he didn’t want to be playing on cruise ships by the time he was thirty-four.
“Yo, man, earth to Dante. Don’t tell me you’re chucking it all and going country tonight, okay?”
Dante looked up to see the smiling face of his perpetually happy guitarist. Steve eyed Dante’s own guitar pointedly, and Dante realized he’d been tuning his electric acoustic, not the standard all-electric Gibson that he preferred on stage. He chuckled and put the older piece aside. There’d be time to tune it later, in the cab on the way over to Howard Street. “Nah, man,” he said now to Steve. “Just working off the jitters. Don’t know what’s gotten into me tonight.”
“This YouTube stuff dragging you down?” Steve asked, settling in beside him. “Seems to be going well.”
“Life of a superstar,” Dante said noncommittally, deflecting Steve’s questions with one of the guy’s favorite phrases. “How do you think it’s going? I can’t really tell if it’s hurting the crew.”
“Usual shit still happens, only now it’s just bigger and more psycho.” Steve shrugged. “The agency chick broke up two catfights today, made everyone play nice together. The guys could give a crap about being caught on camera, but—” he shrugged, as if that expressively covered the wonders and weirdness of the female gender.
Despite himself, Dante found himself grinning. He never got tired of Steve. He’d been a part of the first set of Paradiso musicians, and had stuck with him ever since. “How long you gonna be doing this, man?” he found himself asking now. Kind of a dumb question, and certainly out of the blue. But Steve surprised him by answering in a more serious tone than he would have given the constant joker credit for.
“I’ll play with Paradiso as long as there’s space, then for whoever is next, then whoever after that,” he said. “I figure I’ve got a decade or more left in me, making music at this level.”
“Chasing the dream?” Dante asked, but he looked out over the empty stadium now, imagining it filled.
“Nah, man.” Steve shook his head. “I caught the dream a long time ago, you know that. Now I’m just living it. And one day I’ll find a stretch of sand where no one knows who I am or cares where I’ve been, and I’ll just play for me.”
“Yeah.” Dante caught a flash of color out of the corner of his eye, and looked up to see Lacey coming toward him. She’d finally chilled out after a whole day of jumping every time he looked her way. They hadn’t talked about last night in the hotel, and they weren’t going to talk about it, he was pretty sure. He’d been down this road before with women, and he knew all the exit signs. Lacey would spend the several days doing everything she could to show him she was a good little professional doobie, and he should let her do that. He would let her do that. Never mind that he couldn’t get the feel of her skin, the smell of her hair, the taste of her lips out of his brain. Never mind all of that. She was just a girl, like any girl. She didn’t matter to him.
Forcing his thoughts away from Lacey, Dante settled onto the stage surrounded by his equipment. He was an island unto himself here, doing the work that someone else would only gladly take off of his plate so he could go meditate in his trailer or amp himself up on energy drinks and caffeine.
But tuning his guitars and messing with his equipment was his meditation. They reminded him of why he’d gotten involved with music in the first place—the sweet slide of notes, the perfection of a multilayered harmony. These instruments had been built by masters, and they would only give up their songs if they were cherished and appreciated with a knowing, patient hand. He loved the feel of the guitars, the tautness of the strings, the energy caught tightly within the perfectly crafted curves. If he ever gave up the beauty of the music itself, the rest of it would become meaningless. Unlike Steve, he hadn’t caught the dream yet. It was still out there for him, waiting.
And tonight he’d maybe be able to take one more small step toward it.
Lacey was so wired by the end of the show that she practically vibrated. Even the camera crews had to keep checking themselves fro
m resting a lens on her, clearly catching her mood. She’d thrown herself into the set up of the show, wishing—wanting Dante to speak to her. But he hadn’t, and now he was gone—disappeared. Just like Harry had predicted, she’d missed her chance to follow him.
Lacey turned and fled through the crowd, not pausing to see the flickering YouTube webisode flash to life on the Jumbotron above. She made it out of the venue and to the car she’d hired for the night, vowing that IMO would be tipping her driver and tipping big—on some other day. She wasn’t going to put this car on any company expense report. This car she had to pay for herself.
The address on Howard proved to be a noisy, hopping club, with a line out the door even on a Tuesday night. Probably because it was such a tiny place, but either way, being on the outside of even the smallest venues was still being on the outside. Lacey sagged, then had an idea. She wasn’t somebody, yet, but she sure as hell wasn’t nobody either.
And it was about time this job paid some dividends.
She walked up to the bouncer and pulled out her ID, along with her VIP credentials and small collection of official-looking backstage badges. “Dante Falcone’s here, right?” she asked, and the bouncer looked at her more shrewdly, clearly wondering if she was a girlfriend, security, or the guy’s babysitter. Lacey gave him her best “agency executive” smile. “Right,” she said. “Let me in—I’ll make it worth everyone’s while.” She folded a fifty-dollar bill into the man’s palm, and he nodded her along.
She was conspicuous in her plainness of dress, but that didn’t keep guys from looking at her—women either, for that matter. But she felt comfortable in her own skin, she realized with some bemusement. Perhaps more now than ever before. When had that happened? Another twenty to a bartender got her upstairs and into one of the three acts playing that night. The only act she wanted, however, was past the other two writhing, pumping spaces. In a room that was wall to wall with people who stood in silent appreciation, staring and swaying, and soaking it all in.
Lacey squeezed into the back of the group, threading her way until she could finally see the front of the room. Dante Falcone sat on a stool in a loose group with three other musicians, all of them equally intense in their dark sunglasses—and suits. Honest to God suits. They looked like something out of another time, and when Dante’s voice broke out over their bluesy riffs, Lacey held her breath.
She’d never heard him sing with such classical, pure beauty. The song was a ballad, something out of the backwoods of beyond, a love song of heartbreaking sweetness. Not Dante Falcone’s style at all. Not the hard-edged, slick rocker vibe or even the earnest, positive teen heartthrob’s dulcet tones that had taken him multiplatinum. This was a broken-down man’s gospel with a mocking edge of high-tech sophistication, a song of shattered dreams and lost vision, of love that was hopeless and unable to be given up. A haunted passion for a woman who was never named. She may not have even been a person, but a hope, a possibility, a path not taken and never to be forgotten.
Lacey stood, captivated, her eyes too big for her head, her heart too big for her chest. She should be thinking about merchandising angles, about duets with opera singers, about an entire brand extension for the Falcone line of music products and venues. But she couldn’t. All she could think of was the purity, the pain, the impossible gorgeousness of every perfect note, every trill on the guitar, the swaying nods and commiserating smiles of the musicians playing backup. And the audience hung onto those notes right along with her … also wide-eyed, also transported. She could tell the musicians in the group—and there were dozens of them—by the way their fingers twitched and their mouths moved, memorizing, imprinting, picking up hooks and licks and riffs, that they could borrow and steal and create something new out of, something larger yet also more intimate than what had gone before.
Lacey sighed so deeply the exhalation seemed to come from her toes. She’d seen this part of Dante before, actually, in the oddest of places. That first reality TV show where Dante had covered gospel, turned it on its ear and made it his own—she’d seen his potential. She hadn’t known much of anything about music all the way back then, but she’d felt the difference. The passion and poignancy, paired up with a brutal cutting edge. This was the Dante she’d fallen in love with, all of those years ago. And tonight, with this music, this was the man she’d known he would become.
And … this was the Dante who chose that exact moment to look up. Lacey felt him pin her with a glare even through his dark sunglasses.
She couldn’t move, she couldn’t run. She didn’t know how he’d noticed her there. It was dark, and she was wearing black. She had not a bit of makeup on her face. She blended.
He’d seen her anyway, and though he kept on singing, the music shifted, intensified. The room picked up on it too, everyone edgier now, the energy hotter, rougher. Still amazing. Possibly more amazing. But not the heartrending love song that had gone before. This song was now fused with loss, desolation. And an underlying vibe of raw and angry confusion, of questions gone too long without answers.
Lacey backed away and tucked herself behind another knot of listeners. She couldn’t leave, however, even though she knew she should. Instead she waited until Dante had finished one set, then another. The evening waned and still the music carried on, moving around her, keeping her company throughout the long night.
And through it all, she knew that nothing would be the same again. Not for her, anyway.
Here all this time, she’d been struggling with her leftover emotions for a boy she could never quite reach, when the man who was right in front of her was so much more extraordinary than she’d ever expected he would become. Not because of his star power, either. There would always be stars in this business. But in this moment, on this night, Dante was following his dream. He was making the kind of music that mattered to him, and he was doing it now. He didn’t have to put himself out there like he was. He could just keep churning out what people expected of him, hit after hit after hit. But he wasn’t doing that. He was a musician, and he was finding ways to learn, to grow, to become who he was meant to be.
Which all begged the question—who was she? And what was she meant to be?
It must have been past two A.M. before Lacey finally realized the musicians had left the stage. Shit. Dante no doubt thought she’d come to spy on him. She needed to get out of there.
Moving quickly through the still-robust crowd, Lacey made it out of the building in something like five minutes. She stood at the street corner, desperately glad to see the car she’d hired waiting behind the long line of taxis queued up for the night. She’d just lifted her hand to signal the driver when a warm, solid, all-too-familiar body pressed up against her, reaching past her to flag down the cab himself.
“I believe this is my ride,” Dante murmured into her ear.
“Dante!” Lacey turned to apologize as the car pulled up, but to her surprise he didn’t seem angry—he seemed relaxed. Energized. And focused solely on her.
“Hey there,” he said, searching her face. “You okay?”
She frowned at him, shutting away all of her troubling thoughts as the cab pulled up. “Of course I’m okay! The show was—incredible,” she said. Another synapse fired, and she blurted her next words without thinking. “Really and truly. It reminded me of that song you did for that reality TV show finale—remember?” she faltered as he blinked at her, clearly surprised.
“You saw that clip?” he asked. “How in the—”
“It was in the file,” Lacey began, cutting her own words short as they got into the car and Dante gave the directions to the driver. Then Dante sat back, his face inscrutable in the half-light, so Lacey decided to push on. “I’m not going to tell anyone where you were tonight, Dante, so please don’t worry about that. I saw you leave, and Harry told me where you were going. It sounded intriguing, so I followed you. And I’m glad I did. I’m so, so glad I did.”
“Yeah?” he asked, seeming to pay more attention to
her words now, no longer staring at her like she was some puzzle he was trying to figure out. “You liked it?”
“I loved it,” she said, her enthusiasm completely unfeigned, and Dante rewarded her with a small smile, the lights and shadows of the passing streets making shifting patterns over his face. Lacey felt her heart twist in her chest. She’d always known that Dante was the kind of rock star who could make teenagers scream and swoon just by walking in a room. But now she knew he was also once a kid who’d watched his brother go in and out of hospitals, unable to do anything to help. She’d always known he was a performer who wanted to achieve something different with his music. But now she knew he was also a man still looking for meaning in that music, long after most people would have given up and just enjoyed the fruits of their success. Suddenly she couldn’t speak, and she turned to look out the window, trying desperately not to show the emotions flooding through her.
“Well, good,” Dante said after a minute, almost as if he was surprising himself by talking. “That’s the kind of music I want to make, Lacey. After the tours, after all of it. I want to do something different. Something that matters. I thought I could be satisfied just by helping people but—” He shook his head. “It’s not enough. That’s just what I do with my money, not what I want to do with my life. For my life I just want—music.”
Lacey bit her lip as Dante looked away, her heart feeling too full again. It all was so obvious now. Dante wasn’t some teen dream boy-bander all grown up. He was a man, an artist, a musician with his whole creative life still ahead of him. “I think you could do whatever you wanted to do, Dante,” she murmured, and she meant it. “Be the musician you truly want to be—the man you truly are.”
He slanted her another glance. “And who is that man, Lacey? Who is it you think I am? When I first met you, I got the feeling you thought I was this one kind of guy—but last night, I felt like you thought I was someone else. And then you showed up this morning, and it seemed like you’d made up your mind I was this different guy entirely—all without asking me what I thought.” His smile went a little crooked. “Do I ever get a say in any of these decisions you’re making about me?”
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