Chapter 45 – Bells
BELLS
Ican breathe.
I can fucking breathe.
That's the first thing my body registers when the stage lights hit and the bass drops, thousands of people screaming my name.
BELLS!
BELLS!
BELLS!
Who would've thought being outed as a girl would make everyone go fucking crazy?
My ribs expand, all the way this time. Both lungs filling completely, every square inch of capacity I've been rationing for years suddenly available, and the rush of oxygen is so intense my fingers tingle.
Fuck yeah. That's more like it.
I wrap my hand around the mic stand and my chest moves freely under the loose white t-shirt I chose for tonight.
No compression fabric grinding my ribs into dust. No underwire digging trenches into my skin.
It’s just cotton and air and the wild, terrifying freedom of existing in my actual body in front of people who are looking right at me.
The prosthetic isn't there either. Just my knife, strapped to the outside of my thigh this time, right where it belongs.
And no fucking collar.
Tonight's my first night on stage as myself.
I'm still Bells.
But I'm me.
I open my mouth and sing.
Without my ribs being crushed by a binder, the note comes out bigger and fuller. The registers I've been compensating around for years tear open when my voice drops into my chest where there's actually room for it now and comes out rich and powerful.
This is what I sound like.
This is what I've always sounded like.
I just couldn't sing through the cage.
"Seattle!" I yell into the crowd's roar. "Did you fucking miss us?"
They scream back hard enough to shake the stage.
Four songs in, I'm drenched in sweat and grinning so wide my face hurts. I circle Raf during the bridge of Flesh and he gives me that devastating smirk, the one that makes his dark eyes harden.
I hook a finger in his leather collar and pull him down to my level.
"Hey," I say, close enough that the mic catches it.
"Hey yourself," he murmurs back, and his free hand settles on my hip.
I grab the front of his mesh shirt and crash my mouth against his and his bass hits a sustained low note that vibrates through both our bodies. His tongue brushes my lower lip and I pull back just enough to smile against his mouth.
I spin away from Raf and find Phoenix behind his kit, his mane wild and obscuring everything but his grin. I cross to him, lean over the toms, and press my lips to his. He tastes like the cinnamon gum he chews before shows.
His massive hand cups the back of my skull and he holds me there when I start to pull away, sweet and fierce.
The arena is losing what's left of its collective sanity.
Then I turn to Rex.
He's standing stage right, guitar slung low, the silver-and-black mask catching every spotlight. He plays like he's setting the air on fire, fingers graceful and at odds with the violence in his music.
And I've learned just how graceful those fingers can be.
I cross the stage to him. His visible eye tracks me coming. His fingers don't falter on the strings because Rex doesn't stop playing for anything, but his body angles toward me and we grab each other at the same time, him by the collar of his leather jacket, me by the collar of my t-shirt.
I haul him down, or he hauls me up. I'm not sure which and it doesn't matter. His guitar screams feedback as his picking hand abandons the strings to grip the back of my neck. I kiss him and the roar of the crowd becomes a wall of pressure against my skin.
The haters can kiss my entire fucking ass.
Rex pulls back and somehow, his steel-blue eye is both soft and intense, that impossible combination only he can manage, and the guitar finds its melody again as if it never left.
I had a whole fucking speech.
Even rehearsed it in the shower this morning, running through the words until they felt polished and appropriate. Something about identity and courage and living authentically and blah blah blah.
The safe kind of bullshit statement Carmine happily approved. The kind that would make a pretty quote in a press release.
Fuck the speech.
Sorry, Carmine. Guess you're gonna go a little grayer tonight.
I step up to the mic. Raf's bass note rumbles underneath me, holding the room in suspended animation.
"So." My voice comes out rough and completely mine. "You already know I'm not who you thought I was."
Roaring and phone lights and hands straining for me. The unleashed chaos of an audience that knows something is about to happen that just might break their fucking minds.
"You know my name. You know my face. You've read the articles and the think pieces and whatever the fuck else people write about you when you're unconscious in a hospital bed and can't tell them to fuck off."
Laughter. Real, warm laughter.
More screaming. More roaring.
"But there's one more thing I've gotta tell all you fucking psychos."
The bass drops to a whisper.
The arena holds its breath.
I tilt my chin up, baring my throat. I glance up at the screens displaying the silvered triple mark lighting up under the stage lights, three overlapping claims destroying the crescent scar I used to hide.
This time, the crowd goes fucking nuclear.
And I can't keep the grin off my face.
"I'm a motherfucking omega."
Fin.