Chapter 11
The crush of the crowd ebbs and flows around us as Krista and I make our way to the front-row seats left at will-call for us. It took longer than we planned to get ready for the concert and grab something to eat. With the way my stomach clenched and knotted, dinner was pointless for me, but I’d never turn down time with my friend.
I’m still not 100 percent sure I want to be here, but I don’t want Krista to miss out on her brother’s big night. Regardless of what she says, she’d regret it if she did, and I don’t want to be responsible for that. Even still, I can’t bring myself to watch the concert from backstage like we normally do. I’m not ready to run into Ryder. I’ll have to speak to him at some point—after all, I’m carrying his baby—but I’m allowing myself this small reprieve.
“Jesus,” Krista mutters, shoving her way through a throng of twentysomething women dressed in short skirts or skintight jeans and Downfall tees that they’ve altered to make their breasts attention-seeking beacons for the guys in the band.
I follow behind her, holding my bag in front of my stomach as a barrier until we reach our seats and I can finally breathe again.
“Is it me, or is it extra crazy here tonight?” I ask.
“It’s been a while since we caught a concert from this angle,” she reminds me.
“Sorry, I just?—”
She holds up a hand to stop my words. “No need to apologize. I get it, and I’m happy to sit down here. If I was in your shoes, I’d do the same thing. Actually, I don’t think I would have even come.” She gives me a sad smile, her eyes filled with concern. “Did I say thank you for that?”
“You did, and you’re welcome. Again. I know this night is important. You need to be here.”
“If you had said you wanted my brother to drop off a cliff and you didn’t want to come, I would have sided with you. He’s an asshat.”
“If you expect me to disagree with you…”
Not a chance in hell. Not after what he did.
“Nope.” She shakes her head decidedly. “I bet you could conjure up better names for him than I can.”
Liar. Fake. Rock star.
They may not be as creative as Krista’s, but every one of them that flits through my mind tightens my stomach. I drop into my seat and breathe through the rush of sadness that overtakes me.
Krista sits more slowly. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say.
Her eyes narrow as she studies me. This woman has known me for over twenty years. She knows when I’m lying. “You don’t?—”
“Ladies, would you come with me, please?”
I swivel my head to the left and see nothing but a muscular chest and shoulders covered in yellow fabric.
“Why?” Krista asks, grasping my wrist.
Head tipped back, I take in the rest of the man before me—he’s dressed in black pants, and SECURITY is emblazoned on the left side of his chest.
“Would you please come with me?” His voice is a deep monotone, but tension crackles around him, as if he’s annoyed that we questioned his first request.
Something I’m sure he’s not used to.
“Why?” Krista repeats, not moving from her chair.
I stand and tug her up with me. “Let’s just go with him.”
Are we being kicked out? Is Ryder that pissed off at me for slapping him? Or is it because I embarrassed him? Is he petty enough to kick his own sister out of the debut concert of his residency?
No, he wouldn’t kick Krista out.
Would he?
Krista’s expression telegraphs the same questions to me when I meet her gaze.
With a shrug, I turn and follow the security guard back through the crowd. This time, the people part like the Red Sea in front of him. We don’t say anything and neither does he as he leads us out to the main corridor and through a door that he has to hold his badge up to. The hallway widens as we take a second turn.
“Through here,” he says, holding his badge up to another reader. There’s an audible click and he pulls the door open.
We’ve gone from the noise of the crowd to a silence so intense it takes a minute for my ears to adjust to the reemergence of sound.
But this is one I’m familiar with.
Backstage.
“Couldn’t you have told us that you were bringing us back here instead of all the cloak and dagger bullshit?” Krista scoffs and steps through the door.
I’m frozen in place, torn between going forward and turning and retreating without stopping until I’m back in my apartment in Aspen Falls.
“Britt?”
Why is it so easy for me to imagine it’s Ryder calling my name instead of Krista? For a shiver of awareness to work its way through me at the memory?
“You coming?”
Krista and the security guard are both watching me where I stand half-in and half-out of the doorway.
I can’t stand here forever. And as much as I would rather move in the opposite direction, I take a step forward. Then another. Until the door clangs shut behind me. Ahead, roadies and employees scramble about, getting all the last-minute things set up. Given that Downfall is here for the next several months, there’s no opening act, so there are fewer people than normal. Even so, the chaos is familiar.
What isn’t familiar is the number of butterflies that swirl in my stomach.
“We’re here.” Krista laces her fingers with mine and squeezes.
I swallow thickly and scan the area. “Yep.”
“You’d rather be anywhere else at this point, wouldn’t you?” she asks.
Her question surprises a laugh from me.
“Oh, absolutely. But since we’re here, what do we do now?”
“Find Mom and Dad?” she suggests.
Those knots in my stomach tighten. “They’re probably with Ryder.”
The one person I’m hoping to avoid for the time being.
“Hmm,” she says, worrying her lip. “Good point. Want to find an out-of-the-way spot to watch the show?”
I blow out a relieved breath. “Yes, please.”
We weave our way through the people, finding a place that looks as though it’ll be out of the way.
“How you doin’ there, bestie?” Krista asks as we lean against equipment boxes and wait for the show to start.
How am I doing? I’m mostly functioning, and I’m breathing in and out. It’s more than I anticipated I’d be able to do. So long as I don’t think about it, the persistent itch in my legs to run is a dull throb.
“I’m here,” I tell her.
“Other than my brother being an idiot, are you glad you came?”
Though there’s a pinch in my chest, I can’t help but smile at her. “I am. I like taking trips with you. And once the baby comes, I doubt we’ll be able to do this as often.”
Her eyes widen, and her lips form an O. “Oh, jeez. I didn’t even think about that. You’re right. I’ll have to make a habit out of visiting you in Aspen Falls. We can do girls’ weekends in.”
“That sounds nice. I was worried I’d hardly ever see you now that I moved home.”
Krista still lives in Denver. While I have a few friends in my hometown, the people I spend most of my time with are my brother and his fiancée, Hayley, and her two kids, Declan and Maisie. I love them all, but none of them could replace Krista.
“Right? This way we can hang out. No more concerts.”
I smile. “Good plan.”
“What’s wrong with concerts?”
The gooseflesh that instantly ripples down my body isn’t from a memory this time. No, it’s caused by the actual rasp that tickles my eardrums.
In unison, Krista and I spin, and my heart lodges itself in my throat.
Ryder is standing several feet away, looking seven kinds of sexy in dark black jeans and a black fitted T-shirt stretched across his chest. His hair is damp, like he just got out of the shower. But the sexy, confident smirk that I’m so used to seeing quirk his lips is gone. For the first time since I can remember, he looks…uncertain.
The butterflies flutter their wings in my stomach, and I suck in a breath. I’m still pissed at him, but that doesn’t turn off that attraction.
“I want to talk to you,” he says.
My heart thuds loudly in my ears. “I think you said enough earlier.”
Each one of those words he spoke out on that stage sits like a rock in my stomach.
“Please,” he says, taking a single tentative step closer. “I-I want to apologize.”
“So apologize, then,” I tell him with more nonchalance than I feel.
As if it doesn’t matter.
It shouldn’t.
He takes two more big steps. Now he’s so close he brushes his fingers over the top of my hand, creating an electric current that zings through my body.
“Please,” he murmurs the word, fastening his emerald-green gaze on me like I’m the only thing that exists to him.
Like I matter.
It’s a look I’ve been on the receiving end of before, but never with such glittering intensity. Never in a way that made my heart speed up and my core throb simultaneously.
The butterflies are softening the anger, dissolving those rocks in my stomach like they never existed. My lips are suddenly dry, as though I’ve traveled a thousand miles through the desert when I haven’t moved an inch since being locked in his tractor beam-like gaze.
I lick my lips and nod. “Okay.”
“This ought to be good,” Krista says from next to me.
Ryder spares her a flick of his eyes before locking back on me.
“Alone,” he urges. The low growl sends a shiver rippling down my spine.