Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Sadie
Break the Rules
Charli xcx
Post-show, the hallway smells like sweat, spilled beer, and too many bad decisions. Crew shout over each other. Cases slam shut. Someone cranks music too loud in one of the dressing rooms and gets yelled at by security.
I wedge myself into a corner on one of the couches in the greenroom, laptop on my knees.
My hair’s still damp from the heat of the show, the ends sticking to the back of my neck.
I need a clean shirt, a dry bra, and a case of deodorant.
Some of the not so fun perks associated with being on the road that no one bothers to share.
The first pass through the night’s shots are mechanical. I flag obvious keepers, dump the blurry ones, tag a handful for the magazine’s social team. It’s muscle memory by now.
Then I hit that sequence. The one I knew the moment I started taking the pictures that they would hit different.
Side-stage. Dean in profile. The light through the haze forming a halo around him.
And that look on his face. It’s sharp, searching, lit from within by something I’ve spent my whole career pretending I don’t want pointed at me. And it was definitely directed at me.
“Fuck,” I whisper so low no one can hear. It’s too loud in here anyway. My stomach flips. It’s not just the way he looks, it’s the way it feels. Like if I zoomed in far enough, I’d find my own stupid face reflected in his pupils.
I hover over the delete icon. This is where the old version of me, the glory-chasing stringer, would already be composing the caption in her head. Legendary guitarist, caught unguarded. Who’s he really playing for? But, I’m not that girl anymore. Not exactly.
I don’t hit delete. I also don’t drag them into the public folder. I flag the image, then tuck it into a separate folder with no label, just a date and a number. Hidden, but not gone.
Because this isn’t just his truth. It’s mine too, whether I like it or not.
“You always work through the afterglow?” Lily’s voice yanks me out of my spiral. I glance up to find her standing in the doorway, makeup smudged, still glowing from the show, a hoodie tied around her waist and her Chucks-clad feet silent on the dressing room carpet.
“Occupational hazard,” I say, closing the laptop halfway. “If I don’t get the first pass done now, it’ll be 4 a.m. and I’ll be hating myself.”
She pads over and drops onto the couch beside me. “Luc went to check on Larkin,” she explains. “He’s insisting on being the one to rock her. I think he missed bedtime more than she did.”
“That tracks.” My lips curve up in a smile, the image of Luc rocking a baby so opposite to the man so many think he is.
Her gaze dips to my computer, then back to my face. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “Just… cataloguing.”
“Is he being awful?” she asks, not bothering to specify which he. There’s only one whose name weighs that much.
“He’s being himself.” I huff out a humorless laugh. “Which is kind of awful by default, but at least he’s consistent.”
She smiles, sympathetic. “Dean’s complicated.”
“That’s the PG-13 version way to put it,” I contend on a small laugh.
“He watches you,” she shares, resting her chin on her hand.
My heartbeat stutters. “He watches everyone. He thinks it’s his job.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “Dean scans everyone. That’s different. He watches you.”
I want to deny it, to laugh it off, to say something sarcastic and offhand that proves I’m above this, above him, above all of it. Instead, what comes out is, “You’re not helping my ability to keep my professional detachment, Lily.”
She laughs quietly. “You’re allowed to be a person and a professional, you know. Those things can coexist.”
“Not according to my editor.” I chuckle, because it’s easier to joke than admit how badly my hands want to shake.
“Well, your editor doesn’t have to live on a bus with the people she’s covering,” Lily points out. “There’s history here. Pain. Love. Friendship. You’re not a sniper on a rooftop watching through glass. You’re in it. You’re becoming a part of it.”
I swallow hard. “That’s the problem.”
She studies me for a moment, then reaches out and squeezes my hand. Her fingers are warm, steady. It hits me that I haven’t had a friend lay a hand on me in months. Years?
“You won’t hurt him,” she says simply. “I can tell.”
“That’s not always my call,” I whisper.
She smiles sadly. “It’s more your call than you think.”
A shadow falls across the doorway. My head snaps up, expecting Dean, bracing for impact.
It’s Hayden instead, fresh shirt thrown on over ink and long lines. “Cherry’s doing a debrief in the hall if either of you care,” he informs, then gives us both a look that says you two sitting here talking is probably more important anyway. “Lily, Luc was just looking for you.”
She chuckles as she gets to her feet. “He moves from his little baby straight to this baby I guess.”
“See you later,” I shoot over my shoulder as she pads back out the door she came in.
When she’s gone, Hayden lingers in the doorway like he’s debating stepping in. “You doing okay, Sadie?” he finally asks.
“Fine.” I nod.
His lips form a tight line, like he hears the lie and chooses not to call it. “He’ll come around.” His tone is apologetic and honestly it doesn’t need to be. And I also don’t have to ask which he.
“Not really my priority,” I say, more to convince myself than him.
He smiles just a little, his eyes knowing, then disappears. I stare at the half-closed laptop and the reflection of my own face in the dark screen. Damp hair, tired eyes, something too soft threaded through the set of my mouth.
I hate that I know it now. I hate that Lily said it out loud. I hate that Hayden didn’t deny it. Dean Ross is watching me. And the worst part? I’m watching him right back.
I open the laptop again, hover over that one image, him side-stage, silver light, his gaze locked right where I was standing and I feel my pulse stutter.
“You are not the story,” I tell the screen softly. “You are not the story.”
But the more I say it, the less I believe it. I close the laptop and push it away, then tip my head back against the wall and shut my eyes, wishing sleep could be ordered on room service.
Down the hall, someone laughs. Someone cranks music. Somewhere, Dean is brooding like it’s his full-time job. And me? I’m starting to understand that somewhere along the line, I stopped being just the girl behind the camera. I’m in the frame now. Whether I want to be or not.
Enough spiraling. Enough letting him take up space in my head that he didn’t earn.
I grab my camera bag, sling it over my shoulder, and slip out of the greenroom.
The hallway is finally cooling down now that half the crew has vanished to the bars and the rest to their beds.
My boots echo faintly against the concrete as I make my way toward the loading dock.
Outside, the night air hits me like a blessing. A cool, dry, quiet in a way arenas never are.
I weave past a line of semis, compressor engines humming quietly. Our buses are parked farther down, near the chain-link fence. The path is lit with those awful industrial floodlights that make everything look like a prison yard.
I’m halfway to the buses when movement catches my eye.
Someone leaning against a trailer. No, not someone.
It’s Dean. Of course it is. He’s got one foot braced behind him on the metal bumper, a cigarette dangling between two fingers, hair wild from the show.
Sweat is still drying along his neck, leaving a faint sheen on his collarbones where his shirt hangs loose.
His head is tipped back against the trailer, eyes closed.
He looks wrecked. Not in a bad way. In a dangerous way. The kind of wrecked that makes my stomach dip. I should keep walking. But when do I ever do what I should?
He must hear my steps because he cracks one eye open. Just one. A lazy, slow drag of his gaze up my body like he’s taking inventory.
“Well,” he drawls, voice rough from the show. “If it isn’t camera girl.”
“Don’t call me that.” My nose crinkles.
He smirks. “Then quit acting like you don’t love when I say it.”
I stop a few feet away from him, resting my shoulder against the side of the trailer. I don’t trust myself to get any closer. “Are you drunk?”
“Little buzzed.” He shrugs. “Celebratory shot after the show. Or three.” He lifts his hand, wiggling his fingers. “I might’ve lost count.” His voice is warm. Loose. Not sharp like earlier. Not armored. This version of him is worse, because it’s tempting.
“You shouldn’t be smoking,” I toss out because I’m at a loss to say anything more sensible.
He glances at the cigarette. “Why? You gonna save me from my vices?”
“No interest in saving you,” I shoot back.
“That’s such bullshit.” His mouth lifts, slow and sinful. “You tried earlier.”
“That was me trying to be a decent human being, not your personal therapist,” I clarify, crossing my arms over my chest.
“So, you do think about my well-being?” He chuckles around the cigarette, which lights the edges of his words in smoke. “Noted.”
God, he’s infuriating. And God help me, he knows exactly what he’s doing.
“I’m going to bed.” I roll my eyes.
“Of course you are.”
“What does that mean?” I tut in annoyance.
“It means,” he pushes off the trailer in one lazy movement tossing the cigarette away, “you walked over here like you hoped someone would stop you.”
I freeze. His steps are slow as he approaches, not crowding me, not touching me, just reducing the space between us until the air between us is hot enough to melt steel. He smells like sweat and stage lights and bourbon.
“You’re imagining things,” I spout, but my voice thins at the end.
He hears it. Of course he does.
“That’s part of the problem.” His voice almost a growl. “I’m trying not to imagine things.”
My pulse stumbles. “Dean-”
“You keep looking at me,” he continues softly. “Side stage. Backstage.” He pauses, stares directly at me. “Right now.”
“That’s my job,” I sputter.
“Bullshit.” He takes a couple steps closer. Too close. Not close enough. “I see everything, Sadie.” His voice drops, low and private. “And I know when someone’s looking like they want something they shouldn’t have.”
Heat flashes through me so fast I’m sure he can see it. “You’re drunk.”
“And you’re deflecting.” A feral grin decorates his face.
We stand there, breathing the same stupid air, charged and crackling and stupid.
Then he leans in, just enough that his breath brushes my cheek, his voice a wicked slide down my spine. “You think I don’t know you want me to touch you?”
My knees actually go weak.
I hate him.
I hate him.
I hate how much I want him.
I lift my chin, refusing to back up even though my heartbeat is turning into a damn drum solo. “You don’t know anything about what I want.”
Another smirk. Slower this time. Meaner. Hungrier. “No?” He squints, taking another step, eliminating any space that was between us as he props a hand on the steel behind my head. I can almost taste the bourbon on his lips. “Then tell me I’m wrong.”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. He sees the slip and he devours it, a sneer lifting one side of his mouth. “Yeah,” he murmurs, voice a sinful rumble. “Didn’t think so.”
For a terrifying, breathless second, we just stand there. Locked. Balanced on a knife edge neither of us should be anywhere near. His eyes drop to my lips for two long seconds, then he steps back on a chuckle, breaking whatever spell we slipped into. “Night, camera girl.”
It’s soft. Too soft. Too knowing. He walks past me, heading toward the buses. His shoulder brushes mine. It’s not by accident. Not even a little.
I exhale shakily, my body molten and furious and alive. He doesn’t look back. I stare after him anyway. And for the first time, I know with absolute certainty that Dean Ross is going to ruin me.
And God help me, I might be willing to let him.