Chapter 19
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
BODHI
The green room at Zurich’s Hallenstadion was nice but cramped.
Unlike some of the sprawling backstage setups we’d had on this tour, it felt more like a café that had been repurposed for people who refused to sit still.
High-top tables, narrow chairs that were only comfortable if you didn’t linger too long.
The walls were covered in some kind of fancy floral wallpaper, the sort you’d expect in a boutique hotel rather than at a rock venue.
A tall fridge hummed in the corner, stocked with beers and wine bottles ready to be cracked open.
Thump and Ghost were posted up at one of the tables, nursing cans of Swiss lager after asking me no less than four times if I was really okay with it.
Mick sat nearby, elbow propped, picking methodically through a bag of chewy, fruit-flavoured candy without ever lifting his eyes from his e-reader.
Everyone was ready. Tuned up, settled in, waiting for the clock to run down until showtime.
Riff was the only one missing, holed up in the dressing room down the hall, letting Iggy work his magic.
I’d barely seen Iggy all day.
He’d been dead asleep when I left for my radio interview with Frequency Z, and somehow still out cold by the time I got back three hours later.
I would’ve returned sooner, but Riff had strong-armed me into lunch at a local gourmet burger joint.
Apparently, it was beloved by the people of Zurich, and after demolishing two thick beef patties stacked with smoky bacon and cheddar, I couldn’t argue with them.
I brought one back for Iggy to try, already imagining the look on his face when he bit into it. Instead, I found him exactly where I’d left him. Asleep. Face smushed into my pillow like he was searching for me in his dreams, pink hair a wild halo around his head.
For a moment, worry flickered. He’d been sleeping a lot the last few days. But Milan was busy, and I knew the bus did a number on his hip, so when I watched his chest rise and fall, slow and even, the concern eased. He looked peaceful. Soft. A contrast to his usual chaos.
His honey-blond roots were really starting to show now. We hadn’t had time to hunt down hair dye, which gave me an idea. I cornered Trix, the lead singer of our support band and a fellow expert on brightly coloured hair, and asked for recommendations.
That turned out to be a mistake.
What kind of hair does he have? What’s his natural colour? Any allergies? Does he prefer vegan products? What shade of pink does he really like?
By question twelve, my brain was threatening to melt out of my ears.
Trix took pity on me and offered to take Iggy shopping herself when we got to Munich tomorrow.
The timing worked perfectly. A day off between shows.
A chance for Iggy to relax, indulge in all the pampering shit he pretended not to love as much as he actually did.
“Hey, man.”
I blinked, dragged back to the present. Ghost had taken a seat at my table without me noticing.
His eyelids were smudged with purple shadow, dark enough to look almost black until the light caught the violet shimmer. His bleached hair was artfully messy, darker roots grown out just enough to add another layer of grunge to his whole look.
Iggy had done a damn good job.
I felt a swell of pride thinking about how far he’d come. At the start of the tour, he’d been almost timid, second-guessing himself, unsure whether he was overstepping with his suggestions. Now? Now he took no shit from any of us.
Case in point: Thump.
After ignoring Clara’s repeated warnings and turning up late for makeup because he’d been too busy fucking, Iggy had followed through on her earlier threat and made him look like a knockoff Alice Cooper.
Thump had learned his lesson fast, and hair and makeup now came before extracurricular activities.
Growth, in every sense of the word.
And down the hall, with a brush in his hand and confidence in his bones, Iggy was doing what he did best. Making us look like a better version of ourselves.
“S’up, brother,” I said to Ghost. “You good?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” He scratched the back of his neck, a habit he only had when something was eating at him. “Have you, uh, talked to Iggy this afternoon?”
My brows drew together. “Sort of,” I said. “He was asleep when I got back. By the time he woke up and ate something, it was time to head here.”
Ghost nodded, but his jaw stayed tight, shoulders stiff like he was bracing for impact.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He leaned back in his chair and wiped his palms on his thighs. Took a breath. Then another.
“I just . . .” He sighed and tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling like the answer might be written there.
“Spit it out, dude,” I said, sharper than I meant to. The pause was making my skin crawl.
Had something happened while I was gone? Something Iggy hadn’t told me? Something they were keeping from me?
My knee bounced under the table. My hands curled into fists in my lap.
“A few days ago, in Milan,” Ghost started. “Iggy and I were talking about his injury. I gave him some painkillers.”
My chest went tight. “Was it Oxy?”
Ghost snapped his head forward and glared at me. “Fuck no,” he hissed. “I’m not a goddamn drug dealer.”
His reaction made sense, so I lifted my hands in surrender. Still, the intrusive thoughts had already taken hold. Oxy had been Iggy’s drug of choice. The one that had nearly killed him. The idea that he might’ve come anywhere near it again made bile creep up my throat.
“I—yeah,” I said, my voice rough. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Ghost exhaled and sat up straighter. “Nah. It was Ultram. Left over from when I broke my ankle.”
Ultram.
Not Oxy. But still an opioid.
My stomach dropped anyway.
“I told him to be careful,” Ghost went on. “That it could be addictive. There weren’t many left in the bottle, but when he asked me for more this morning . . .” He hesitated. “I was surprised they were already gone. And he was frantic. Like, really frantic.”
He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “The way he was acting reminded me of you. Before.”
Before.
Before rehab. Before sobriety. Before I learned how to lie without blinking and not snap when someone got too close to the truth.
I swallowed hard.
Did Iggy get like that when he was using? Was this pain, or something else wearing its face?
I reached across the table and set my hand on Ghost’s shoulder, squeezing once. “Thanks for telling me,” I said. “I’ll talk to Iggy.”
And I would.
I’d ask him to be honest. To tell me if he was struggling. We’d made a pact, after all. Promised to look out for each other. To stay on the right track, even when it got hard.
But more than that, I’d talk to him because I loved him.
And all I wanted was for him to be okay.
I spent the rest of the night before the show watching Iggy.
Not in the obvious way. Not hovering or hovering adjacent. Just . . . tracking him. Filing things away. Looking for signs I didn’t want to find. For cracks in the version of him that laughed too loud, gestured too big, took up space like he was daring the world to push back.
Anything that might tell me he was slipping. Anything that might say he wasn’t okay and hadn’t told me.
But I couldn’t find it.
Iggy was Iggy. Teasing the guys, fixing someone’s hair when they messed it up, talking with his whole body like words alone weren’t enough to express his feelings. Bright and sharp and unapologetically here. If something was wrong, it was hidden deep. Too deep for me to reach from the outside.
It made me wish, irrationally, for superpowers. For the ability to look inside his head and just know. To be sure. I told myself it would be for his own good. That it wouldn’t be invasive if the intention was love. I repeated that until it almost sounded true.
When we went onstage, he was still there.
Not physically, but in my head. A constant low hum under everything else.
It didn’t mess with my performance. I knew how to do this in my sleep.
Muscle memory, adrenaline, instinct. The fans never noticed.
The band didn’t notice. But for the first time I could remember, I found myself counting down the set.
Waiting for the lights to go out. Waiting to get offstage so I could find him, touch him, prove to myself he was solid. Still whole. Still here.
The show blurred. Sweat, noise, motion. We bowed, waved, and I smiled like I always did. I’d spent years perfecting the art of hiding my own mistakes, so it was easy to fall back into that habit and mask the anxiety creeping up on me.
I barely made it into the wings before Iggy hit me.
He wrapped himself around my torso like gravity had finally claimed him, chin tipped up, eyes bright under the low backstage lights.
Smiling. Always smiling. And I hated myself for the way my gaze immediately started scanning him anyway.
For fractures or something off. For proof of a fear I didn’t want confirmed.
“You were amazing,” he said, hands sliding down my back to cup my ass like we weren’t surrounded by people. “But how could I expect anything less?”
My arms came up without thinking. One around his back, the other to his face.
I cupped his cheek, thumb brushing carefully over his highlighted cheekbone so I wouldn’t smudge his makeup.
His hair was pulled back into a messy bun, his slender neck bare, exposed, and I leaned in before I could stop myself.
I pressed my face into the place where his neck met his shoulder and breathed him in.
Peaches and cream.