Chapter 20
CHAPTER
TWENTY
The bass owns the room. It rides the spine of the song and turns the dance floor into one breathing animal, shoulders and hips moving like the DJ has his palm around everyone’s heartbeat.
Strobes snap across faces—laughing, flushed, glossy with sweat—and the air tastes like citrus, liquor, and electricity.
We’re already three drinks in—“merry, not stupid” is the house rule tonight—and it’s the loosest I’ve seen my band in weeks.
Eli has a glow-stick crown someone shoved on his curls, and he’s doing that ridiculous shoulder roll that makes people circle up and cheer even though he has zero business looking that good off a drum stool.
Drew keeps veering between the bar and our little pocket of floor, pressing cold bottles into hands like a benefactor.
Miles is a quiet menace in black-on-black, watching the DJ chain two songs without dropping tempo, then shouting in my ear about how we need to sample that snare for a future track.
And me? I’m grinning like a thief because he’s here. In public. With me.
Ollie stands close enough that I can feel the heat of him along my side.
Hood down, cap low, the kind of camouflage that works on people who aren’t looking for him.
I’m always looking for him. He’s not wasted; honestly, I kind of wonder if he ever has been.
But there’s a looseness to his mouth that I only see when the scoreboard’s off and the world’s hands aren’t tugging on his sleeves.
The song flips—kick heavy, synth dirty, vocal dragged like velvet—and a ring of bodies opens without anyone asking.
Eli clocks it first and grins at me over someone’s shoulder.
He shifts left, Drew shifts right, Miles steps in behind, and just like that they’re a wall—casual, laughing, not obvious—between us and a hundred eyes that don’t need to know anything.
“First public outing,” I shout into Ollie’s ear. The club is all throb, so I have to lean in to be heard. “How’s it feel?”
He tips his face toward mine, that barely there smile that ruins me. “Like a bad idea I’m glad I had.”
“Best kind.”
I slide a hand down his arm—only once, quick—and catch his fingers. He squeezes back, then lets go, but we don’t step apart. We press thigh to thigh as if the crowd did it for us. It didn’t. I did.
It’s stupid, how much it hits. A public brush. A close press. That’s all. Onstage earlier I had a thousand strangers screaming lyrics I wrote in the dark, a possible contract on the horizon, and still this—this—is the high I keep chasing.
He leans in again, close enough that I can feel his breath against my neck. “You’re staring,” he says, a half smile in his voice.
“Can you blame me?”
“Maybe a little.”
“I’m trying to memorize you before you disappear again.”
His expression softens, caught somewhere between amusement and ache. “I’m right here, Rafe.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “For now.”
The lights strobe pink across his face, and for a heartbeat, everything feels impossibly clear.
He’s real and solid, but there’s a part of me that still doesn’t quite believe he’s here—that I didn’t just dream him into existence.
He’s supposed to be miles away, already prepping for his next game, not standing in the middle of a Vegas club with my hand still warm from touching his.
He laughs softly, leaning in so his mouth almost brushes my ear. “You look like you’re overthinking.”
“I’m trying not to.”
“Try harder.”
I grin. “You’re dangerous, you know that?”
He gives a tiny shrug, pretending to look around the club even as he presses just a fraction closer. “You make me brave.”
And that—fuck, that almost undoes me. The words are right there, heavy on my tongue.
I could say them. I want to. I can taste the shape of them—I love you—like a secret trying to break free.
But not here. Not with bass shaking the walls and lights flashing over us like we’re in someone else’s dream.
So instead, I touch the back of his hand, tracing the veins that run to his wrist, and whisper, “You make me everything.”
He stares at me for a beat too long, eyes full of an emotion I’m terrified of misunderstanding.
Then, as if the universe can’t stand to let us stay still, a voice cuts through the crowd—high and thrilled and so completely Vegas.
“Hey!” a woman nearby shouts, teetering on heels too bright to be legal. She points at the guy next to her, who’s got a cheap band of tinfoil twisted on his finger and a grin so big it looks like it hurts. “We’re getting married!”
Her friend whoops. Our group cheers like we’ve been personally invited to fate’s dumbest good idea.
The DJ sees it, clocks it, and slams a track change so fast the whole crowd stumbles.
Another cheer goes up. The bride-to-be—if that’s what she is; she could be a very committed liar—holds up a single-serve bottle like a torch. “Vegas, baby! Tonight!”
Eli lifts his beer. “To terrible decisions!”
“Speak for yourself.” Drew laughs, then yells at the couple, “What chapel?”
The guy points vaguely toward the door like all roads lead to neon love. “Our buddy’s got a couple of limos. We’re going now!”
The circle expands, bodies jostling, people clapping them on the back and tossing bills for more shots. I look at Ollie. He looks at me. His eyes are glassy in the lights but clear underneath—alive, reckless in a way he never lets himself be.
I lean in, mouth near his ear. “Want to crash a wedding?”
He huffs a laugh that I feel in my teeth. “That sounds like chaos.”
“Yeah,” I say, and let the word mean everything. “Come be chaotic with me.”
Before he can answer, the newly engaged couple is making a sweep, collecting whoever’s in screaming distance.
The groom points at our wall of band idiots.
“You guys! Come on! It’s happening. We got extra seats.
Bring your friends.” And then—because Vegas—someone else shouts, “Chapel Royale has space open!” which might be true or invented; it doesn’t matter.
Three people yell for limos, despite them already waiting.
“Wedding field trip!” Eli crows. “Let’s corrupt some holy ground.”
Miles checks his watch, then me. It’s the smallest nod, but I understand it immediately—not a question so much as a cue: Now or never. Keep the night alive, or call it.
Fuck yes I want to keep the night going.
“Let’s go,” I say.
The band moves as one organism through the press of bodies. Hands thump our backs, someone kisses my cheek, someone else tries to put a feather boa on Ollie (he dodges, mortified), and then we’re spilling into the warm night, the desert air soft after the club’s conditioned bite.
Two limos idle at the curb like fate got us a casino high-roller’s comp ride. People pour into the first one—bride, groom, three friends, two more who might be celebrities or just rich. The second limo door opens like a mouth. Miles ushers us in with a little bow.
It’s ridiculous inside: leather that probably has a name, lights like a spaceship, a bar with tiny bottles and limes sliced to surgical precision.
Eli whoops and takes the corner. Drew sprawls like a cat as a bunch of others join us.
Miles slides in last and shuts the door.
The city tilts as we peel away from the curb.
Ollie is beside me, thigh pressed to mine on purpose now. His cap’s gone—somehow he lost it in the tide of congratulations—and his hair’s a mess from the heat. He looks twenty-one in the way that counts: young but not naive; old enough to know he’ll remember this forever.
I don’t know who called the limo, where they chose, which chapel really has a slot, or what time it is. I just know that the moment the tinted world goes dark and our faces are lit in blue pulses, he turns to me like he’s been waiting for a door to shut all night.
“You—” he starts, then stops, shakes his head, tries again. “Tonight. Onstage. I keep replaying it.”
I smirk because I’m an asshole, but my chest is molten. “Which part?”
“All of it?” His mouth goes shy, then braver. “You looked like you’d been waiting for the room your whole life and finally found it. You looked so… free.”
The word hits like a hand on my sternum. I don’t say thanks. I lean in and kiss him, quick, like a promise I mean to keep. The limo’s loud—music from someone’s phone, our crew yelling back and forth—so we’re a quiet pocket in the middle of chaos.
“Say it again,” I murmur.
“Free,” he says against my mouth, and then he does something that short-circuits me: he adds, “I was so fucking proud and couldn’t believe you were mine.”
I’m not a blusher, but my body tries to make me one.
I swallow it down and kiss him deeper, slow enough to make time behave.
We’re not tucked into an alley or hiding behind a tree.
We’re in a moving box with six other people, and still we manage a private moment because the world can go to hell for sixty seconds if I want it to.
When we break, he drops his forehead to mine. The limo bumps a pothole; his hand finds my knee like it’s reflex. “I just had to come tonight. It seems like forever that we really spent time together.”
I drag my thumb across his lower lip and watch his eyes go dark. Despite having breakfast together this morning, it wasn’t enough. Fuck knows if it ever will be.
“I missed you.”
“Yeah?” I ask, my lips curling high.
“Don’t make me repeat it.”
“Never,” I reply, then lie, saying, “Always.”
He swats my chest, then lets his hand stay there, spreading his fingers like he’s testing the shape of the moment.
The city outside slides by—neon slashes, casino names, a billboard for a show.
Inside, it’s all soft light and alcohol breath and that thing I can’t name that feels like we came here for a reason that’s bigger than the joke we’re riding.
“Tell me you have a room.” My voice is lighter, but my body means it. “If not, I’m calling in every favor we’ve ever earned, and even the ones we haven’t.”