Chapter 27 – Phoenix
PHOENIX
"So let me get this straight," Carmine says, pacing the length of the live room with the measured cadence of a man who has dealt with many bands and many catastrophes but suspects this particular band might be the one that finally gives him an ulcer. "Cinnamon bark."
"Yep," I say.
"Turmeric root."
"Great for inflammation."
"Star anus."
Raf coughs behind me where I know he's sitting on his amp with his bass across his lap, his face a masterwork of neutrality. I can feel his gaze boring into the back of my skull. I refuse to turn around because if I see his expression right now, I will lose it.
"Anise," I correct, my voice strained because if I breathe, I'm going to laugh, and if I fucking laugh, our cover is blown and Carmine will think we're mocking him and he'll hit the roof.
Literally.
As in, he'll go up to the roof, where I'm positive Bells is getting railed by Rex because my alpha instincts are flaring in instinctive possessiveness right now and there has to be a reason for that.
And Rex would fold Carmine like a pretzel.
Carmine consults his tablet. "That's what I said. Star anus."
Raf makes a sound like the air being slowly squeezed out of a balloon. "Anise. An-ees."
"And galangal," Carmine says, mercifully moving on.
"Thai cousin of ginger," I confirm, clearing my throat. "Life-changing."
Carmine stares at me. "These are cooking spices," he says slowly.
"They're versatile."
"You told me these were drugs."
"No, Rafael told you these were drugs. I was trying to correct him."
"That is not what happened," Raf mutters.
Carmine drags his hand down his face. "I Googled galangal. I was on the phone with Meridian's legal team asking if galangal use could violate morality clauses."
"Can it?" I ask.
"It's a root vegetable, Phoenix."
"So that's a no."
Carmine sets his tablet down on the mixing console with deliberate care that suggests he'd prefer to throw it.
"I need you to understand something. I have managed bands through heroin relapses, DUI arrests, paternity scandals, and one incident involving a stolen horse.
A horse. I can handle drugs. What I cannot handle is being lied to about spices. "
I open my mouth.
"If you say 'technically galangal is a rhizome,' I will terminate my contract tonight."
I close my mouth.
Raf coughs.
"The truth," Carmine says, fixing me with those gray eyes, "is that none of you are on anything. Are you?"
"Technically, Raf and I smoke weed and Bells drinks those energy drinks that could probably strip paint off a car. Uh. That's about it."
Carmine stares at us for a long beat.
"You're telling me the hardest substance in this band is weed."
"And the energy drinks," Raf adds. "Those things are genuinely terrifying. Bells likes this one called Unicorn Cumboost—"
"Unbelievable." Carmine picks his tablet back up.
"Sorry to disappoint," I say mildly.
"Don't be. This is the best news I've gotten all week." He sighs and taps something on the screen. "Now where the fuck are your singer and guitarist? I didn't drive this far to research seasoning."
The fire door groans open down the corridor.
Footsteps. Two sets. One heavy and measured, one lighter and quicker.
Bells rounds the corner first.
She's flushed. Her choppy white hair is a disaster. Her lips are swollen and damp and there's a streak of dirt on her jeans that's shaped like—
I look away.
Very quickly.
I accidentally make eye contact with Raf and he's the deepest shade of purple I've ever seen from fighting the laughter demons that are now threatening to explode out of him.
Because Bells has a dirt print on her leg the exact shape of her silicone dick, and Carmine is staring at it.
Rex joins Bells a moment later, and I realize they're holding hands. She led him down the stairs by the fucking hand and he let her. His jacket is slightly rumpled and there are dirt smudges all over it.
His mask is firmly in place, posture rigid, jaw tight, expression carefully controlled as if it isn't painfully obvious to even a stuffy exec like Carmine that Rex fucked her brains out up there.
Carmine's gaze flicks between them.
Over them.
And I know that sharp industry brain is sorting every wrinkle and dick-shaped smudge into a folder marked potential liability.
"Were you toking marijuana on the roof?" he asks.
The words toking and marijuana.
Said with the full weight of a buttoned-up man who has never once called it weed in his entire fucking life before now.
Bells barks out a shocked laugh and her hand flies to her mouth. Her eyes go wide above her fingers and her shoulders shake with the effort of containment.
"Yes," she chokes out, composing herself somehow. "We were toking it so fucking hard up there."
I chomp down on the inside of my cheek.
Hard.
My face is doing something. I can feel it twisting like I sucked the juice out of a lemon.
Raf sees it.
His eyes lock onto my face and whatever he sees there hits him like a truck.
He goes ramrod straight on the amp, his spine snapping to attention like someone shoved a steel rod up his ass.
His bass nearly slides off his lap. He catches it, turns around completely—full one-eighty, back to the room—and starts fucking with his tuning pegs, shoulders shaking with silent laughter and ears a deep vibrant purple.
"What?" Carmine demands, looking between all four of us. "What is so funny?"
"Nothing," Bells manages, her voice strangled behind her palm.
"Allergies," I say. "We need. Uh. Mold mediators."
"Remediation," Raf says hoarsely, plucking a string.
"Let's just—" Bells drops her hand, visibly wrestling her face into submission. "Let's practice. The stunt. That's why we're here, right?"
Carmine narrows his eyes but lets it go. He gestures toward the small stage platform at the far end of the live room. "Whenever you're ready."
Rex hasn't said a word.
He walks to the practice stage like he's walking to the gallows.
Each step deliberate, his boots hitting the platform with dull thuds that echo through the room.
His guitar is still propped against its stand from earlier, the broken string dangling.
He doesn't pick it up. Just stands there, center stage, under the overhead lights.
His hands are at his sides.
His fingers are still.
That's different. Usually when Rex is stressed, his hands give it away first. The trembling, the clenching, the white-knuckle grip on whatever's closest. But right now his hands are hanging loose and motionless, and I don't know if that means he's calm or if he's so far past panic that his body has stopped bothering with the physical symptoms.
Bells climbs up after him.
She's smaller under these lights. The stage was built for alphas and she barely fills the space, but something about the way she moves—that confident, deliberate stride—makes her seem larger.
She positions herself in front of Rex.
Close. Closer than stage blocking would usually require. Her chin tilts up to find his face, that height difference absurd even with her platform combat boots.
"Ready?" she asks.
His jaw flexes.
"Do it."
She reaches up and grips the edge of the mask.
Click-click-click.
The outer mask separates with a clean, theatrical flourish and Bells holds it at her side.
Rex stands there under the lights with a white skull prosthetic seamlessly covering the right side of his face.
Beneath the stage spots, the effect is striking. Half man, half dead grinning skull. The painted black eye socket absorbs the light, concealing his damaged eye while the visible icy blue one is locked on Bells.
He looks like a monster from a gothic painting.
I swallow hard.
Bells puts the mask back.
Click-click-click.
"Again," she says.
Rex nods once.
She pulls.
Click-click-click.
Clean. Fast. His body tenses but holds. No flinch. No recoil. Just a slight widening of his eye and a controlled exhale through his nose, his eye locked on Bells like she's the only reason he's still breathing at all.
Back on.
Click-click-click.
Again.
Click-click-click.
Raf has turned back around to watch. His bass rests forgotten across his thighs. He's watching the stage with both awe and ache, the kind of face he makes when music hits him in a place he wasn't expecting.
I watch Rex's hands.
Still steady.
Whatever Bells did on that roof—and I am not thinking about what Bells did on that roof—it worked.
The alpha who couldn't let his mask be touched without dissociating is standing under lights letting his omega pull it off over and over while his manager watches from ten feet away.
And I don't think he even knows she's his omega yet.
Click-click-click.
Off.
Click-click-click.
On.
Bells varies the tempo. Fast pulls, slow pulls. Angled approaches from the left, from below, even once from behind when she circles him.
Each time, the magnetic release fires clean.
Each time, Rex holds.
His breathing is audible. Steady, deliberate combat breathing. His shoulders are locked. But he's here. Present. Not in the dark room, not dissociating, not fleeing or attacking anyone.
On the eighth or ninth pull—I lose count—Bells pauses with the mask in her hand.
"Good?" she asks quietly. Just for him.
Rex gives a single, stiff nod.
She puts it back one final time. The magnets engage with that soft triple click and the familiar silver-and-black mask settles over the prosthetic, seamless. Under the lights, you'd never know there was anything underneath at all.
Bells steps back half a pace. Her chin stays tilted up, those honey-gold eyes searching his face.
Then she rises on her tiptoes.
Her hand finds the front of his shirt for balance, fingers curling into the fabric, and she presses her lips to the exposed side of his mask.
In front of everyone.
Holy fucking shit.
Rex freezes.
His hand drifts up, hesitates, then cups her cheek. His lashes—still light because he doesn't dye those—flutter shut.
I stop breathing.
Raf's fingers dig into my thigh.
And someone fucking claps.
Carmine.
Bells drops flat on her heels and spins.
Rex's eye snaps open. His hand falls and the whole thing—whatever just lived in his face for those three seconds—is gone. A growl rolls through his chest.
And Carmine is standing at the edge of the platform with his tablet tucked under one elbow, clapping slowly with a grin spreading across his usually stern face.
"The audience would go insane for that," he says.
Bells blinks. "For what?"
"The kiss." Carmine uncrosses his arms. "After the unmasking. Bells tears the mask off, reveals the skull, the crowd loses their minds. And then the singer kisses the monster."
Bells flinches at the word monster and opens her mouth to protest.
I meet her eyes and shake my head hard from behind Carmine, out of his sight, swiping the side of my hand across my throat for good measure to hammer it home. Carmine obviously has his suspicions, but he doesn't know what Rex is really hiding beneath the mask.
Bells is about to leap to the scarred alpha's defense and blow his cover.
Thank the gods she sees me and her mouth closes with a soft growl.
"Gothic romance. Phantom of the Opera," Carmine continues. He's already pacing, tablet out, tapping notes. "It sells the entire narrative. The leaked photos become a teaser. The unmasking becomes the centerpiece. And the kiss is the closer. Every show. Every night."
Rex's hand is still open at his side.
The one that was on her face.
I watch his fingers curl in. One at a time, and then his hand slips into his pocket and he just… stands there.
Bells is arguing. I can hear her—something about that wasn't part of the show and not a fucking freak show—and Carmine is nodding the way people nod when they've already decided and they're just waiting for you to run out of air.
But I'm watching Rex.
He's looking at the stage lights. Not at Bells, not at Carmine. Straight up into the fresnels, which you're not supposed to do, because it hurts and it's fucking terrible for you, which is maybe the point.
He hasn't said no.
Rex argues about everything, but he hasn't said a single fucking word since Carmine opened his mouth.
And I know why.
Because if it's part of the show, she has to kiss him every night.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZT.
What the fuck?
"Did someone order food?" I ask.
Raf shakes his head, but he doesn't say anything. No one does. A weird silence has fallen over all of us.
Something's not fucking right.
"I'll get it," I sigh, already moving.
When I open the door and look outside, I don't see anything. Just curling fog reflecting the amber streetlights and the security motion lights that come on automatically when the door opens. Maybe they were on before, but there's no way of knowing.
"False alarm," I call back. "Must be a malfunction—"
Oh.
There's a fucking bouquet on its side on the concrete, the clear cellophane damp with fog.
Roses.
My hands go cold.
I grab the bouquet and shoulder back through the door with the roses in my fist.
Bells sees them before I open my mouth.
Her face goes blank and her mouth opens. Closes. Her hand drops to her knife pocket and stays there.
"Who the fuck knew we were here tonight?" Raf's voice is low and tight.
Nobody answers, because the answer is almost nobody.
And that's the problem.
Rex meets my eyes from the stage with cold fury.
This is fucking war.