1. Rae
1
RAE
April
Eight months after the fire
H ow do you know you’ve reached the end of a journey?
Is it when the pressure eases enough that you can breathe? When you can sleep through a night without waking up sweaty, questioning the choices that got you there?
I keep waiting for that feeling to kick in. The one that says, “I’ve made it.”
I thought it would happen at Debajo. Or one of the half dozen premiere shows since. Maybe when the top one hundred DJs list came out.
It hasn’t.
Now, I’m backstage after playing Wild Fest on a cool night in Colorado.
The Red Rocks Amphitheater is a natural wonder, and I rocked my set.
Sweat rolls down my neck and between my shoulders, joins what’s already collected at my low back over the past ninety minutes. My outfit sticks to my body as a circle of guys look over from their booze-filled cups.
“A girl made it to top twenty,” one DJ comments as I tug off my wig. “Can’t remember that happening.”
“You beat Maxx,” another says. “Where is that fool?”
“Who the fuck cares?” Eldon, a DJ in his late fifties with wrinkles around his eyes, lifts his cup at me.
I nod in return before going in search of my gear bag backstage. Wig in one hand, I take off my headphones and wind the cord around my hand.
In a dark corner, I bump into someone. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to?—“
Two guys look up. One has slumped posture and bleached blond hair buzzed short, and the other is Maxx, the DJ I beat out on this year’s list.
Maxx tucks something into his pocket and shoves past me, and the other man follows, shooting me side-eye on the way.
I grab my bag, tucking my wig and headphones inside. My attention lingers on the gems flickering stubbornly in the dark. The diamonds soak up every bit of light, as if they refuse to be ignored.
Not unlike the man who gave them to me.
For the past eight months, I’ve been to every corner of the globe, but I haven’t set foot in Ibiza or seen Harrison King. The man who made a stubborn, suspicious girl fall in love.
The one who took it away because love wasn’t as important as his vendetta.
For the first time in my life, I felt what love can do. How it changed me, made me feel alive.
Until it didn’t.
I’m not that girl anymore. I have a career I work my ass off for every day, music I love, fans who surprise me… even friends who have my back.
I’m not missing anything.
Say it often enough, you’ll start to believe it.
I shut the bag, the tattoo on my wrist flashing.
When I look up again, Maxx has rejoined the circle, settling onto a speaker and pulling a tiny, clear bag from his pocket.
“You think you’re the shit?” He sneers. “You aren’t until you’ve played La Mer.”
“I don’t have anything to prove,” I reply evenly.
“Come on. Johnny?” He smirks at the stage manager, who looks away from the act on stage and crosses to the stairs. “You made it if you haven’t played La Mer?”
“Fuck no.” The guy chuckles before returning to his work.
A hand on my arm has me looking over. It’s Eldon.
“Don’t listen to him,” he chides. “He’s jealous.”
“Of my tits?” I demand, and Eldon laughs silently. “Because it’s not of my career. Asshole makes seven figures a gig.”
He shrugs. “After a while, the gigs can blur together. It’s the curse of humanity. The price we pay for having the best fucking job in the world—after a while, it starts to feel like a job.”
The words reverberate through me. I know what he means.
I glance at Maxx, who’s cutting a line of the white powder he bought from the blond guy on the speaker in front of him.
“I was glad to land higher up the list,” I admit under my breath. “But how do I even know if I’m better? I stay clean and work my ass off while some of these guys spend more on coke than I do on rent, and they still make a killing.”
“You have some good gigs lined up this year.”
I’ll be performing in LA, New York, London… Plus, I just squeezed in a month at new club in Ibiza called Bliss. “I saved some time for producing.”
But I can’t kick that thought of La Mer, and Eldon sees the look in my eye.
“If you go chasing after the next club high,” he warns, “you’re no different from him.”
I shake my head, turning to face the older DJ. “Easy for you to say. You’ve played La Mer.”
His lips twitch. “Once or twice.”
I shove a hand through my hair to shake it out after hours beneath the wig. “When we’re even, then we’ll talk.”
Tonight was good, but the high of a job well done is getting shallow and short-lived. Beneath it, I feel empty.
I turn away, but he calls after me. “You ever even visited this Olympus of yours? How do you know La Mer’s all that?”
Because I danced under the stars and fell in love with a man who would never stay mine—a man who smelled like the sea and tasted like desperation—and I wanted them both.
“I just know,” I murmur.
The man I hated held me as if I was the only thing he needed.
The only thing better was having the man I loved hold me the same way.
But that’s over and it’s never happening again.
The phone ringing in my hip pocket jars me out of my head.
When I see who it is, I nearly drop the phone.
“Rae.” The familiar voice is flat, the British lilt making my gut tighten. “I didn’t know who else to call… I need you.”