Chapter 12.
Chase
Ian once said I’d face impossible challenges in my career.
I’m not sure this is one either of us imagined.
The fireworks of clapping, cheering, and screaming are gone.
The crowd isn’t there. In the space where they’re supposed to be stands a single person.
He’s staring at me, only me, and he sees me with such clarity, I may as well be naked on this stage, exposed to the world, exposed by that single set of pretty eyes.
I should’ve seen this coming, but somehow didn’t. I thought he would understand somehow, give up this conquest, and return to his life in Spruce. But that isn’t Timothy. He doesn’t give up.
Of course he’d come looking for me at one of the shows.
I just don’t think he was expecting to find me on the stage.
Especially judging from the look on his face right now.
A look that terrifies me.
Is he amazed? Angry? Betrayed? He’s looking at me the way you look at a spot in the night sky and being unsure if what you’re looking at is an airplane, twinkling star, or extraterrestrial entity.
Before I know it, the drums rush into the next song at full speed. Wily slaps his bass, threading in the deep, playful G notes. Fiona hangs back as she’s supposed to, waiting until the chorus to start her chords.
But to get to a chorus, you gotta sing the first verse.
And when it comes time for the first lyric, I’m not even there. I’m with Timothy in the middle of an audience I can’t see. And he’s with me. Is he seriously staying for the show? Am I supposed to keep on singing like this isn’t happening?
I hear Wily loop around seamlessly into the beginning again, though this time his eyes are on me, concerned. I pull my eyes off of Timothy to glance back at Raj and Fiona—both of whom are also looking at me, Raj with curiosity, Fiona with her brow furrowed.
Then I face the mic again. Everything rushes back in—crowd screaming, bass kicking, drums pushing, and Timothy right there in the middle of it, now with his eyebrows lifted, making even him look puzzled by me.
My eyes are only on Timothy when I finally thrust shaky fingers over strings, letting Glorious sing first, and then part my lips to join him.
It’s a miracle we make it through.
Every song on the setlist, too.
The lights that occasionally comb over the audience play with my eyes, causing me to lose sight of him now and then.
Sometimes I lose sight of everything, giving myself to the music, eyes closed as I let the lyrics and chords flow through the vessel of my body.
Even when I don’t see him, I feel him there.
But I don’t want to. What’s he here for? Answers I don’t have?
I wanted him far away from this. From me. Safe, back in his totally-not-as-bad-as-he-made-it-out-to-be hometown of Spruce.
Not standing in a crowd of potential maniacs who would eat him alive if they knew we kissed. If they knew we had something.
If they knew anything at all.
Why are you here, Timothy?
It feels both like ten hours later and the blink of an eye when the show’s over and I’ve gotten my phone from my dressing room to check for calls or texts from him, something I may have missed.
Nothing.
“Are you sure?” I ask Rob, who’s standing by the door leading to the lobby in all his arms-crossed muscular glory. “No one?”
“Chase … c’mon, man,” he groans.
“It won’t be a big deal,” I plead with him. “I just need to check something. I’m pretty sure I saw someone I know out there, and—”
“No can do. Sorry, man. Give me a description and I can send someone to look, but you can’t go out there and you know it.”
Of course I can’t give a description. No one can know about Timothy, let alone what he looks like. Also, I understand where Rob’s coming from. He was the head of security during our scary stalker era. His caution isn’t coming from nowhere. “Rob …”
“Hey, if you’re wanting to meet fans again,” he goes on with a shrug, misunderstanding what I want, “maybe talk it over with Ian and the others, see if we can set up an official meet-and-greet next show, but I can’t open these doors.”
Next show.
He may not be at the next show—or any show, ever again.
But I can’t push it here. If I do something crazy, it’ll be Rob’s head, and the last thing I need is to be on someone else’s shit list.
I thank him and dismiss myself, Rob watching me with some questions still in his eyes—questions I hope he forgets.
When no one’s looking, I sneak back into the wings of the stage, dodging both house crew and our own as they tear down and load things away.
The whole auditorium is clear, the big lights up, only venue staff and workers left doing their things, sweeping and mopping the floors, breaking down equipment, taking things down.
No one is left out there. I slip back into the hallways and search for a side door, but the only one I find leads to an unused loading bay with no access to the main parking lot.
I could go around the perimeter of the whole damned building, but just the thought of Rob getting in trouble for my antics stops me.
I can text Timothy, but something holds me back. Maybe it’s him knowing who I am now—who I really am. It makes a difference what I do now. How I handle this. Whether I send a simple fucking text or not. I hate this so much …
“Mr. Holt.”
I turn. Raj stands there in a sweated-through tank, blinking. We’re in a back hall near the dressing rooms and the loading bay door. No one’s been by this way for a short while now.
And he keeps blinking. Intentionally. “Mr. Holt …?” I ask with a lift of an eyebrow. “Since when do you call me that?”
He smiles strangely. “I was studying the audience tonight, as I so often do during these shows, and … couldn’t help but wonder to myself if you still like horseshoes?”
Now it’s me blinking at him. “Is that a riddle?”
“Partly. Anyway, I think you may enjoy some time in private. To think about horseshoes. In a dressing room.” He comes really close to me, close enough to lick my ear.
“And my room is so much more private than yours. No one ever checks up on me. Not even Dee. My drawers are always stocked. Just around the corner across from Wily’s.
I’m going to chat with Emmett about literally nothing at all for thirty minutes exactly. Please don’t touch the sticks.”
He’s gone quicker than he appeared.
And I’m completely lost what the hell any of that meant.
I feel like I’m on some covert mission that makes no damned sense when I turn the corner and find Raj’s room.
Wily is in his own across the hall, his door wide open, back facing the hallway as he scrolls on his phone.
I surrender to an instinct to be as quiet as possible when I slip into Raj’s room and close the door.
Someone in an oversized Soul Biter shirt and hat sits in front of the snack table. He looks up from a basket of fruit, eyes on me.
I stop short. “Timothy?”
He rises from the table at once. “Austin.”
I can’t tell whether that’s an angry Austin, happy one, or a “still-processing-this” tone of voice. I plain can’t tell anything. He is blank. Wide-eyed. Standing by a basket of fruit.
He’s here. He’s really fucking here.
And shouldn’t be. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Austin … Chase … Holt,” he mutters, still in a daze.
“It isn’t safe to be with me. If someone sees you …”
“I feel … so stupid.” He just spent the last hour and a half with this information and still looks like he learned it five seconds ago.
“How’d I not know it was you? I’m smarter than this.
I’m the one everyone in my class came to for test answers.
I’m singlehandedly responsible for AJ passing statistics. I tutor advanced calculus.”
I come up to him, if anything but to bring down his voice. “I’m serious, Timothy. You shouldn’t have come here.”
“I was just returning your hat.” He takes it off his head. Then he looks down at it. “Except it isn’t your signed hat. It’s just … a signed hat—which you signed—from the merch table where those two horny guys need to figure out they love each other already.”
That last part flies over my head. “Look, I didn’t want to lie or hold back the truth about who I am, Timothy. I was just—”
“I know.” His response surprises me. “I don’t blame you. Not even angry about it. I think.” He says all of this to the hat. “I was fully prepared to leave you alone. That’s what you wanted, right?”
It was what I wanted, technically. But hearing it from him, in his own words, feels hurtful. “Of course that isn’t what I want.”
“What do you want, then?”
“I want you to look at me, for one.”
He looks up from the hat.
Right into my eyes.
And I’m looking back, lost in them at once, as captivated as I was during the show, seeing only him in the storm of loud faces.
“And … And I want …” Suddenly I’m not sure what I want.
For him to leave? For this to never have happened?
My words change as they fall from my lips.
“I want … to live in a world … where none of this shit matters. Where there’s no eyes on me all day and night long.
Where I can just follow my heart and … and do what I want. See who I want. Kiss who I want.”
“Is that what you found in Spruce?” he asks, a touch softer. “Is that what you found in me?”
These questions are torture.
Or maybe it’s the kind way in which he asks them.
This would be so much easier if he was just mad like a normal person and not all sensitive and thoughtful and intelligent, which only makes pushing him away that much more impossible a task.
“What I found …” I start out, sounding agitated, angry at every damned obstacle standing between us, myself most of all.
“… was a guy who …” I keep looking away from him.
Back at the door. At the annoying mirrors, none of which are covered up, showing me in every angle.
All I feel inside is fear. “… who I wish I’d not met yet. ”
“Yet?”