by Wendy Knight
So with herculean effort, he pulled away from her, raising his hand to brush his knuckles across her uninjured cheek. "Stay with me tonight. I'll keep you safe."
"It's a school night."
"I'll take you home in the morning." He tugged her gently toward his bed, wondering how he would ever keep his hands off her all night long. But as she slid in next to him, curling against him with her head on his chest, he knew she needed him and if he had to lay awake all night, tortured with a need he didn't quite know how to fight, he would do it. He hadn't told her he loved her yet, but there wasn't a cell in his body that wasn't obsessed with her. He was just waiting for the right time. And now wasn't it.
"HEY. WAKE UP, SLEEPYHEAD. You're missing all the fun." Harli felt her sleeping bag move and pried open one eye to glare at Kim.
"I drove over half the way here last night while you and Jace were snoring. Go. Away."
But Kim smiled. "That was your fault. I told you to wake me up in an hour. I even set my alarm. You turned it off."
Harli dragged her sleeping bag over her head and rolled over. "Yeah, well. You were all adorable and sleeping and stuff. I didn't want to wake you," she grumbled.
"Come on. There are some super hot guys out there with a great big jeep and they asked if we wanted to go climb rocks or something with them."
Hot guys. Like that was what Harli needed right now. She'd had one of the hottest guys on the planet—his picture was in a magazine to prove it—and she'd walked away.
Stupidest decision ever.
She wasn't sure if that was Angela or her own thoughts, but either way, she was starting to agree.
"Take Jace with you."
"Take Jace with you where?" she heard him ask from just outside the tent.
Oh yeah. Tents aren't sound proof.
"To ride with the super hot guys."
"What?" Jace asked, slightly strangled.
Kim's voice was perfect innocence. "They were going to take us rock crawling in their jeep."
"So what… I drive you all the way down here and you ditch me for some stupid rich boys who bought that jeep with daddy's money?"
Realizing Jace was genuinely pissed, Harli rolled over and sat up.
"Maybe she wouldn't have to if the boy she wanted wasn't completely oblivious to her presence!" Kim fired back, crossing her arms over her chest.
Harli eyed them both, wondering if this was really about her at all.
"Harli doesn't care about money. She has loads of it, and she never spends it. She's not going to be impressed by those stupid guys," Jace snarled.
Harli's head snapped up. "I don't have loads of money."
Jace waved his hand through the air. "Yeah you do. Come on, Harli, don't act like this. Your grandmother is JoAnn Lee. She's the queen of country. Do you think we somehow missed the fact that you live in a house as big as our school?"
Harli blinked stupidly. "We've been friends for six years and you're just bringing this up now?"
Jace had the consideration to look abashed. "It never came up," he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.
She pursed her lips and flopped back on the pillow. "It's too early for this."
"If she has so much money, why does she work two jobs, Jace? You think she's a janitor at our school for fun?" Kim to the rescue. Harli almost smiled.
"It looks good on a college application. Just like everything else she does."
She glared at the top of the tent, which had done nothing to keep her warm all night long. "Keep your mouth shut. He's hurt right now. Just keep—"
She cut Angela off, sitting up again and flinging her sleeping bag aside. "I don't use my grandmother's money, Jace," she snarled. "I buy my own groceries, my own clothes, my own car and the gas for it. This little trip? I'm paying for it. Out of savings. Savings that I was putting aside for college."
Jace's jaw dropped. "But—but why? Your grandmother's loaded."
"Because if I used her money, she'd ask why Selicia—"
"Shut up, Harli!"
Harli snapped her mouth shut so quickly her teeth clattered together. "Because I didn't earn that money. She did."
She got up and stormed out of the tent, which was somewhat difficult to do gracefully, all hunched over like a moose. She shoved her feet into her tennis shoes and headed to the public restroom, snatching her bag with her precious toothbrush out of the car on the way.
"Hey. You're Kim's friend?"
She paused and turned, wondering belatedly what her hair must look like. Ah, yes. This would be Hot Guy #1 that Kim had been talking about. Tall and built and blond and walking toward her from a monstrous jeep. Behind him was another guy, whom she could only assume was Hot Guy #2. He was also blond with bright white teeth and a golden tan.
She'd never been fond of blonds. Levi's hair was jet black. His eyes were dark brown, not blue. And neither of these boys with their shirts off had any visible tattoos. Not her type at all. "Yeah, I'm Kim's friend."
"She said she was just going to grab you and we'd be ready to go."
Harli pulled her most sympathetic face. "Yeah. Her… boyfriend-ish-person… he's not very happy with that."
"Whoa. She has a boyfriend? She didn't mention that." He held his hands up like she might shoot him.
"No. No, she doesn't." She winced. Their lives were so complicated. "He should be, though. They both want to be." Shrugging, she rolled her eyes. "I don't know what you'd call them. But he's not happy about it, and I was taught not to get in cars with strange men."
Hot Guy #1 chuckled ruefully. "Damn. It would have been fun."
"Yeah. Sorry about that. But—" What to say to not seem like such a witch? "—Oh! But be careful!"
Guy #2 laughed. Free at last, Harli waved at them and jogged away, wishing she had tied her tennis shoes because the risk of tripping and falling on her face was a real one.
"Well, this road trip has certainly been fun. So glad we did it," she muttered as she squished toothpaste onto her toothbrush and then trying to scrub a day's worth of grime off her teeth.
She didn't realize she was humming until she had to pause to spit out the toothpaste.
She'd found Levi's song.
Suddenly obsessed, she grabbed her stuff and raced out of the bathroom, hastily waving at Hot Guys #1 and 2. She dove inside, interrupting stony silence by Jace and Kim both, and dug through her bag to find her notebook.
"What are you doing?" Jace asked. "Aren't you supposed to be going out with those guys?"
"No," Harli said dismissively, searching for a pen.
"No?" Kim asked.
Harli shook her head. "Too much talking in here." She crawled back out and spun around, looking for somewhere to sit that wouldn't get her bitten by snakes or spiders or those giant red ants that looked like they could carry her off to their hill.
The picnic table would have to do.
"She's not normal," Jace said with a small smile, watching her from the tent's opening.
Kim nodded. "Not at all."
Chapter Eight
"I HAVE YOUR MUSIC. WANT ME to email it to you?"
Levi nearly fell all over himself trying to get to his phone. Jace had been ignoring him all weekend, and he was desperate to hear from her. If possible, it was worse now that he'd talked to her than it had been before.
Hope. Hope was trying to kill him.
"Yeah. That'd be perfect."
Oh yes. His wittiness knew no bounds.
"On its way."
"Thank you. You guys have fun?"
She waited almost an hour to text him back. In that amount of time, he had gotten dressed, checked his guitar on stage, and was nearly through hair and makeup.
"Yeah. Sorry. Driving. Jace and Kim both fell asleep on me. We're back now."
"You okay?"
"Yep. Don't you have a concert in, like, a half hour?"
He smiled, earning him a glare from Jayde, who was trying to smooth the stage makeup into place, and his smile wasn't helpi
ng.
After all this time, Harli still knew his schedule. Hope, that damn emotion, gained ground, blooming in his chest.
"We're on in five. You boys ready?" Michael yelled, his face bright red and covered in a sheen of sweat. Not for the first time, Levi wondered if he was a heart attack or stroke risk.
He could hear the roar of the crowds. Colin led them through their voice warm ups and Levi followed, trying not to think of Harli, trying to get his head here, where it was supposed to be. He bounced nervously on his toes, ragged adrenaline shooting through his blood. He always got nervous before a concert, even after the many that they'd done over the last two years. But the excitement, the excitement was stronger than the fear. He loved the screams, loved the heat of the writhing bodies, loved the movement of the crowd. He loved to pull them into his songs.
It was a feeling unlike any other—and his music caused it all.
"It's time, boys. Let's go." Dorian appeared with his bass already in his hands. Levi's guitar waited on stage with the drums and Colin's keyboard, but Dorian had a weird relationship with his bass. No one touched it except him. Once, a groupie had attempted to seduce him by playing his guitar. It hadn't ended well. He'd thrown her out and burned the instrument. Then he'd been in a funk for months, until he'd found his current bass at a flea market in Europe. It smelled funny.
No one cared.
Silently, they followed Levi under the stage to the lift. The noise from the crowd was so loud, it shook the exposed beams of the ceiling. The lift raised, the floor of the stage opened, and fire shot all around them. Controlled fire, luckily. Dry ice sent fog slithering across the stage and into the crowd, so that when Levi walked through it to the microphone, it was like he was appearing through the mist of a dream.
The girls on the front row screamed and bounced, nearly falling out of their barely-there tops. Meant to get his attention, but Harli would never wear something like that. It just seemed cheap to him—and he had lived his whole life with cheap. He was done with it.
The rest of his band, though, weren't. Colin grabbed their hands, kissing fingers and signing skin. Graham fell into the crowd, letting the girls pull at his clothes. Dorian waited behind him, waving to the crowd and pointing at girls he thought were hot. Michael would send someone to give them passes to meet the band backstage after the concert, and of course they'd be invited to the after-party.
Thinking about everything he still had to get through that night made Levi very, very tired.
Graham climbed back up on the stage and Colin took his position behind his keyboard. Time for Levi to step up, whether he had the energy to or not. So he buried the human half of him, the half that felt broken and scarred without Harli, and dragged the rock star half front and center. He raised the mic to his lips. "Hey Denver! Are you ready for us?" The crowd roared and screamed and he stepped backward like they were blowing him away. "I'll take that as a yes. Let me introduce you to Shattered Assassin. Some of you might have heard of me." He gave them a slow smile and the girls nearest the stage screamed like banshees and clawed all over each other. "My name is Levi Vasi and I'm Shattered Assassin's lead singer." More screaming. He acknowledged it with a widening grin. "This here is Colin. Colin and I, we've been through a lot together, am I right?" He fist bumped Colin and stood back while his friend's long, elegant fingers slid across the keyboard, the solo echoing through the huge concert hall.
"Next, I'd like you to meet Dorian. He's our bass player, and I've heard that sometimes late at night, he serenades good girls outside their windows." More screaming as smoke swirled across the stage. Levi walked over to Dorian, setting the mic in its stand so they could play a short riff together.
Graham waited, settled behind his drums, twirling his sticks in the air. The faster they got started, the faster Levi could go back to his hotel room. He left Dorian and slid across the stage with his microphone. "Last, but certainly not least, is our drummer. Some of you girls might be… acquainted with him already." He laughed as the screaming reached a painful pitch, waving his hands down like he was fanning them off. "That's what I thought. This is Graham, our drummer." He bowed at Graham and Graham shot off a beat across the drums. He took twice as long as anyone else, and Levi was all the way back to the center of the stage by the time he finished.
"Who's ready for some music?" he screamed as the crowd roared. Colin started them in, and Levi went on autopilot. It wasn't something he'd ever done before, but it was all he could do to survive this. His heart and soul were a thousand miles away, and they were telling him to go home.
"I'M SUCH A HUGE fan. I own all your albums. I have all your songs on my iPod." The girl talked so fast Levi could barely keep up. Graham, standing next to him, didn't try. He stared at her with glazed eyes, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. "Will you sign my chest?" It didn't matter how many times he'd heard it, it still made him uncomfortable. He'd learned to hide it well—he'd learned to hide everything behind his signature flirtatious smile. The pain, the disgust, the exhaustion. Everything tucked way down deep in his heart where no one else could see it.
Graham grinned and grabbed the marker, scrawling clear across her chest. She giggled and her boyfriend looked mildly annoyed. Levi took the marker, gritting his teeth and hoping she didn't see how nauseous it made him to sign his name on places strangers should never see. "Take a picture!" she squealed, handing her sparkly pink phone to her boyfriend. He opened and closed his mouth, but with the entire band sitting there smiling awkwardly, he caved and took the phone. "Say cheese," he grumbled.
"Cheese!" Colin yelled, raising his fist into the air while Levi signed his name on the woman's skin.
"Look, you've branded me. I guess I'm yours now!" she giggled and shoved her blackish-blond hair over her shoulder, throwing herself into Levi's arms. "Take a picture!" she called to her boyfriend, who looked more and more like he'd enjoy punching Levi in the face.
Levi forced a smile and at the last second, raised his hand, curling his finger just right.
For you, Harli.
No one else would know what that little hand sign meant, but she would. He just had to pray she'd see it.
Michael, thankfully, chose that moment to announce that they had to go. "But you should both come hang with us at the after-party. You never know who you'll end up spending the night with." He winked. The girl squealed and turned to her boyfriend, already making plans and texting as fast as her French-manicured nails would let her.
"I'm out of here." Levi snatched up his phone, trying to pretend he wasn't checking to see if she'd written him.
"Wait a minute, Levi. You have to make an appearance at the party. Everyone's waiting to see you." Michael literally blocked Levi's way off stage, his arms folded across his chest. And given that the man's stomach alone weighed more than Levi's entire body, Levi couldn't move him.
"Not tonight." Levi growled, low in his throat. He wasn't sure when he'd turned into a fire breathing dragon, but he would love to roast this guy on a spit.
Michael's nostrils flared and he leaned in close. "We have a contract, Levi. You go where I tell you, you do what I say, you sing what I want. Have you forgotten that?"
Levi's fists clenched so hard he could feel his nails digging half-moons into his palms. "How could I? You remind me every damn time I turn around."
Michael smirked. "Good. Go to the after-party and stop being a pain in my ass."
"You forgot to add the part where we'd still be nothing without you," Levi snarled back, storming past him. He was exhausted and angry and the ever-present ache in his chest was threatening to eat him alive.
She hadn't written him back.
"DOESN'T LOOK LIKE YOUR boyfriend's suffering much, does it?" Brandon, whose sole purpose in life seemed to be dragging Levi's name through the mud, dropped the newspaper on the table Harli was cleaning.
She rolled her eyes and went to shove the paper off and out of her way, but instead, she picked it up. Brandon was right. Levi did look amaz
ing. Just as tall and dark and broodingly beautiful as ever. He was surrounded by women, most of whom were far older than he was. Harli's heart ached for four whole seconds before she noticed his hands.
He was flashing their sign — the sneaky little hand signal they'd made up when she was fourteen — to say hi in the halls and then later, so he could tell her he loved her even when he was thousands of miles away. In almost every photograph that was taken of him, he had his hand just so — it looked like the 'i' at the end of both their names.
He'd stopped doing it, though, about a year ago.
But there it was again, and some of the broken pieces of her heart smoothed back into place. She picked up the paper and smiled at Brandon — maybe the first real smile she'd ever given him — and hurried away.
It seemed like the more time she spent away from him, the less she remembered why that was.
Chapter Nine
HARLI'S ALARM BEEPED, SCARING HER AWAKE. She gasped and tried to escape before she remembered she was in a sleeping bag and not, in fact, trapped in an ancient sarcophagus. Struggling to catch her breath, she reached over and shut off her singing phone, swearing. She flopped onto her back and stared at the ceiling tile of the janitor's closet. "My hair is going to smell like ammonia for the rest of my life."
The sleeping bag was warm and soft, but if she didn't get her tail in gear, someone would show up and find out she was sleeping at the school.
And wouldn't that be hard to explain?
With one final groan, she wriggled out and struggled to her feet. She rolled up her sleeping bag like she'd been doing every morning for two weeks, and grabbed her bag. If it weren't for her janitorial job at the school, sleeping over would be a heck of a lot harder.