Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
The Dallas arena was a dark field strewn with thousands of cell phone lights. The sound of the eager crowd was rising and falling like ocean waves, punctuated by sudden sharp calls, random whistles, and enthusiastic outbursts.
A guitar lick, short but edgy and promising, filled the darkness. The crowd roared, and then stilled, like God’s hand passing over the water. DJ’s voice filled the stadium.
“The first concert I went to was Van Halen.”
A thunderous sound of approval, followed by another silence, his audience waiting to hear where he was going with it. “The darkened lights, the first lick from the guitar vibrating inside my chest…”
He did a riff from “Hot For Teacher.” As they recognized it, the crowd yelled some more. DJ waited them out before speaking again.
“I knew that every cent of the ticket was going to be worth it. The band was the fire breathing horses pulling the chariot, and me and everyone else were about to have the ride of our lives.
“This is the place you're meant to be, right here, right now. With us.”
The lights blasted on, and the band launched into “Smoke It,” Tal’s drumming building like a thunderstorm, and DJ and Pete circling each other, dueling warriors using their instruments instead of swords. During his solo, Steve grinned like a demon, hands flying over the fretboard, his hips rocking.
Apparently DJ nearly getting shot had goosed the band’s passion for what they did. The show had extra energy, DJ’s voice, the band’s music, the way they strode, pranced and leaped around stage, reaching new heights.
The music influencer standing near Roy in the wings had three million followers. And yet his face was suffused with an I can’t believe I get to be here look.
“They just get better and better,” he said to Moss. Moss looked like he wholeheartedly agreed.
“We are Survival,” DJ screamed into the mic at the end of the song, lifting his hand up to the crowd. “It is what we are, what we do.”
With a wide sweep of his muscled arm, he struck the opening chord to “Comfortable In My Own Sin.” He flirted with the mic for several verses before breaking away from the mic stand and joining Steve, heads beating time like Tal’s powerful drum kicks.
When he returned to the mic, his thigh moving beneath his instrument to keep time with the beat, he was so damn sexy Roy could barely ignore him the way he needed to do.
But he did, because his job was to pay attention to everything else.
The part he kept locked down would yearn for and anticipate his review of tonight’s footage.
Even now, snapshots of it, like that intriguingly flexing thigh, were sliding past the lock, feeding the anticipation and desires that lay behind it.
Dory offered himself up to the crowd with the gut- wrenching words he sang, with his flashing eyes. His body quivered and arched toward the mic.
Some things we can't fix.
I can't fix.
Some things we can't heal.
I can't heal.
Lost in a wasteland
Watching the onion peel
Away to the core.
Wishing there was more.
To me. To us.
At one point, when he was moving from the center stage mic to the one on the right, his gaze met Roy’s.
Since Roy’s attention was usually everywhere else but on DJ, eye contact was so rare it felt fated, giving it a significance far beyond what it should mean.
Two men looking at one another for a split second during a concert.
But in that blink of time, Roy felt the full impact of DJ’s flushed face, his mouth in a sensual snarl.
He’d worn Roy’s shirt. Roy had seen it up close before they went on stage.
No way that blood had come out, but small patches had been sewn over the splatter pattern.
Crimson hearts outlined in black, each no bigger than a quarter.
The buttons had been replaced by decorative ones, pewter fox faces.
Rolled up to his elbows, the sleeves were held with silver pins that looked like miniature versions of Roy’s money clip.
The rips had been sewn with glittering red thread.
While the garment had been glammed up by his costume people to fit DJ’s image, it was still Roy’s shirt, and DJ had covered it with reminders of what they’d shared at the club.
Kid was relentless.
The wind machines blew the shirt back from his lean body in the low-slung jeans. His diamond-studded belt flashed as he pivoted, his hips jerking, ass twitching.
He was a damn incubus, begging to be captured, wanting to be the prey instead of the predator. Wanting someone he could trust to help him hold onto everything, keep it from taking him over in the wrong ways.
He knew Roy was strong enough, and so did Roy.
When the crowd went home, Roy could demand Dory offer himself to one person only—his Master. Because that was what DJ needed. Maybe Roy, too.
What had happened in Miami, with the shooter, with the stalker, had shaken things loose from Dory’s past. He didn’t ignore or avoid them, but it was bad shit. If he accepted DJ as his submissive, Roy could give him an aftershow workout to purge it.
Something to think about, but Roy was on shift right now. He could fuck Dory’s brains out later. The fact he was acknowledging it as an option was a startling shift, but he’d deal with that later, too.
The energy that seized a crowd could turn passion into hysteria. The crowd version of sub drop, and it had to be managed. DJ proved he understood that.
“Time to calm us down a bit.” He took his mic out of its stand.
The physical energy of the last song gave his breathlessness a sensual rasp.
To the delight of the front row fans, he sat down on the edge of the stage, putting the mic into a different stand a roadie placed there.
As he accepted a semi-acoustic guitar from Shaun, DJ gave the happy fans a little wave and then tipped his head toward his band, a charming gesture.
Steve, who’d also switched to an acoustic guitar, started a ballad-like intro, backed up by Tal’s soft drum beat and Pete’s slow, smooth bassline.
“We’re going to rock you to sleep, take us into your dreams. Take us home with you.
Want to do something different? You’ve been standing this whole time.
Lie down. Sit down. Use someone else’s body as your pillow.
Yeah, there’s sticky shit on the floor, but you can shower later.
Hold hands, connect, and let’s rock this cradle together. ”
As Moss looked amazed and the influencer appeared ready to swoon, twelve thousand standing room only people went down like wheat pushed by a gentle wind.
As they did, DJ began to pluck at the strings idly, creating a drifting kind of song, caught on a breeze. It was like what a person heard while in a hammock, lying in the arms of someone they loved. And who loved them.
The big screen captured DJ’s sweet smile, the faint glistening in his eyes as almost everyone on the ground level accommodated his suggestion.
“When I was younger, and things were hard, my soul sometimes felt shredded. I thought it wouldn’t come back together, not without scars so deep I’d fall into them, get stuck and never see the most important thing the world has to offer. But I’d hold my guitar and the music would come, the words.”
You are out there.
Waiting for me.
Already loving me.
I reach out to touch
And I think you’re not there.
But that’s when a voice comes
It says
I’m the air you breathe
Take me in, hold me in, feel me.
Feel me.
Feel me.
Love me.
We will find one another.
We have found one another.
Standing face to face with our eyes shut.
What will it take to open our eyes?
Sight unseen. Unheard,
but always known.
You know me.
You know me.
Here I am.
Don’t give up hope.
Here I am.
Just around the next corner.
Across the next bridge to the other side.
Through the door I haven’t yet opened.
The world is big, but it’s round.
We will find one another.
We have found one another.
Standing face to face with our eyes shut.
What will it take to open our eyes?
His voice went from soft to powerful and back down again. It hiked to the pinnacles and slid down to the low notes with ease, like a bird soaring on wind currents. He lifted a hand up in the air, keeping up a one-handed arpeggio, and the crowd lifted their own hands, waving back and forth.
The smile disappeared from DJ’s face. When he returned his left hand to the fretboard, he didn’t falter, but Roy’s brow creased at the brief lost look in his compelling eyes.
He wondered if the past had pulled him into a not-so-good memory.
His expression conjured a boy alone on a shore, staring out. Waiting, but the hope dying.
Which had Roy murmuring the line to himself.
We have found one another. He wanted DJ to look toward him.
The kid was making him lose his mind.
As the final note ebbed, a ripple of whistles became a swelling cheer. DJ propped a hand on his thigh, then scrubbed his face with the other.
“Well, that was some deep shit, right? Let’s finish on a high note. Everyone back up. Be careful. Help each other, so the arena lawyers don’t yell at me.”
Jumping to his feet, he smoothly relinquished the acoustic instrument and took his electric guitar from Shaun before he spun in a circle and threw a fist toward the band. They shot into “We Will Not Forget,” their usual closing song.
Tal became a maniac on the drums, his feet driving a powerful rhythm and arms moving almost too fast to follow.
Steve and DJ pointed their guitars in his direction as they kept up, Pete’s bass snarling out the song’s low end.
Lights outlining the wall of amps kept time, and colored spotlights swept the crowd.
When they finished, the band members lifted their arms to the crowd. “Take care of each other,” DJ shouted. “Love one another. Get yourselves home safe. And rock on. We are Survival.”