27. Reed
I’m waiting in the wings with both my sons for the moment where Darius goes on.
“Is she there?” Darius asks.
“Yes,” I reassure him. “I saw her take her seat.”
“Are you sure? Check again.”
I peer around the curtain. The seat is empty. Fuck. Do I lie to him? No, I can’t do that. Where has she gone? A fresh worm of worry squirms inside me. God dammit. This is the last thing we need. Now I’m worrying about Laney as well as Dax.
“Well?” he asks.
“She’s probably just gone to the bathroom or something. She was there a minute ago, I swear.”
His expression grows stony. “But she’s not there now.”
“She’ll be back.” I sound more confident than I feel. She hadn’t been keen on coming tonight, but she’d done it for Dax. I hadn’t even wanted them to ask, but Cade had gone behind our backs. Maybe it was all too much for her.
Will he play if she’s not there? Should I have lied?
The first notes of the orchestra in the pit fill the air.
It’s Darius’s signal to step onto the stage.
He lifts his chin, his grip tightening around the neck of the violin and the bow.
He mouths something to himself, something that looks like ‘This is who I am,’ and then strides out onto stage.
The audience erupts in applause, and he holds the violin and bow above his head as he takes center stage.
I hold my breath, my body rigid. I can tell Cade is the same beside me. All focus on Dax.
He plays the first note, and then the second, and for a moment I allow myself to think everything is fine. Everything is normal. He actually was just sick with a stomach bug the other night.
But then he plays the third note, and there’s something off about it, and he falters. His whole demeanor changes.
He tries to get back on track, but he’s rattled. Even from this distance, I can see his hand shaking as he plays.
He might not be able to see, but his face is still turned toward the space where Laney was supposed to be.
I know all he can picture in his mind is that empty seat.
Fuck, Laney, where did you go? But this isn’t fair to her, either.
She’s had enough to shoulder without having to worry about being Darius’s fucking muse, or whatever it is he’s decided she is.
She doesn’t need that kind of pressure or responsibility.
I know he’s not doing it on purpose, but that won’t stop her feeling the burden of his entire career on her back.
Darius tries to play, but the violin screeches like a cat when someone’s stepped on its tail. He lowers the instrument, a broken man.
“I’m sorry,” he manages to say to the audience before he turns and stumbles off stage.
He’s gone the opposite direction to where his brother and I are standing. He drops his violin and bow and hunches in the corner.
Fuck.
I exchange a glance with Cade.
“Still think it’s a stomach bug?” he says.
Darius has been fine all day. It definitely isn’t a stomach bug.
My youngest son has a new case of stage fright.
It isn’t something I’ve ever seen in him before.
From the first moment he’d picked up a violin when he’d only been a boy, it had transformed him.
The instrument had made him stronger, somehow, given him a new confidence.
It had made his shoulders go back and his chin lift.
The violin had lit him from the inside. Now it seems to be doing the opposite.
“I’m going to check he’s okay,” I tell Cade. “Can you speak to the concert director? Explain and apologize.”
“He’s going to have hundreds of angry people on his hands. Once was bad enough. Twice is a fucking disaster.”
“There’s nothing we can do about that. Darius is more important.”
The curtain comes down, and I use the cover to cross the stage to where Darius is still bent over.
I place my hand on his back. “You okay, Dax?”
“Where’s Laney?”
Hundreds of people are all expecting to see him play, but the only thing on his mind is his stepsister.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “She was in the seat one minute, and the next time I glanced out, she was gone. I’ll call her.”
I take my phone from my pocket and swipe the screen to bring up her name. I hit call and place it to my ear.
“Shit. She’s not answering.”
“We need to find her,” he insists. “Something might have happened to her.”
“I’m sure she’s fine.” Was she, though? Why had she left? Had she really gone to the bathroom? If she was all right, she would have been in her seat at the start of the performance.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find her.”
“Go. Now,” he insists.
There is little point in arguing with him.
While I don’t want to leave Darius, he’s a grown man.
Laney’s vulnerable. My heart punches the inside of my ribs.
What if something has happened to her? My brain flips me back to when we’d been with Smith in the cabin.
As men, what we’d gone through was nothing compared to Laney, but that still didn’t stop it being traumatic.
Being forced to listen to Smith assault her with the gun, while being at gunpoint ourselves, listening to her cries coming from behind the door, and being unable to do a single thing about it, had been a special kind of torture.
Getting my brains blown out wouldn’t have helped Laney, but doing nothing hadn’t helped her either.
Is that why Darius is so focused on her now? He’s terrified of us ending up back in that situation.
Now people are starting to realize Darius won’t be coming back on stage, there’s movement in the audience.
Pretty soon, the auditorium is going to be filled with people, and finding Laney is going to be even harder.
That’s assuming she’s even still in the building.
She might have caught a cab home, though I thought she’d let me know if she wanted to leave.
The first place I check is the bathrooms. I don’t even care that I’m entering the women’s bathroom, though I suspect any women in here might have different ideas.
“Laney?” I call and check the stalls.
Thankfully, the place is empty, but that also means it’s empty of Laney, too. I try the door of the unisex bathroom, but she’s not there either. I don’t bother with the men’s. She’s got no reason to be in there.
The minute the thought crosses my mind, it’s wiped out by another. What if someone forced her in there? A man might be attacking her right now, but I walk right by because I assume she’s not in there. Adrenaline spurts through my veins, and I shoulder barge the door.
“Laney? You in here?”
The space appears to be empty, but I check the stalls anyway. She’s not here. I exhale a breath of relief, but just because she’s not being attacked in the bathroom doesn’t mean she’s not hurt elsewhere.
I try my phone again, but it rings out. Why isn’t she answering?
I check everywhere I can think of in the concert hall and come to the conclusion she’s not here.
With nowhere else to go, I race outside into the balmy Los Angeles evening. Frantic, I look around for her.
I spot her on the other side of the street, sitting on a bench. Her head is down, her hair falling over her face, so she doesn’t see me.
“Laney!” I shout. “Laney?”