Chapter 10
Rafe live onstage, a crowd far more vocal than I’ve ever experienced before, is a sight to behold.
I’ve played in arenas with thousands of cheering fans.
I’ve heard my name chanted, seen posters held up in the stands, felt the collective inhale of a crowd right before a buzzer-beater. I know what noise is.
This is different. This is worship.
The venue throbs with it—sound and heat and bodies pressed close together, every inch of air vibrating with anticipation. The lights are so bright, they bleach the stage into something mythic, and still he stands out. Still Rafe manages to make the space feel like it was built around him.
He’s magic as he works the audience. I swear this damn husband of mine seduces them into submission, making each person who stares up at him like he’s some kind of rock god feel privileged to see him like this.
And I get it. I seriously do.
Steel Saints are tearing the stage apart.
Eli’s drums hit like a heartbeat with teeth.
Drew’s rhythm guitar is relentless, driving the songs forward with brutal precision.
Miles moves like he’s part of the instrument, coaxing sound out of his strings that feels like it’s crawling up my spine.
And Rafe—Rafe is the storm they’ve all learned how to ride.
I stand in the side-stage shadows where no one in the audience can see me, tucked behind equipment cases and crew. My pass hangs against my chest, lanyard tight at the back of my neck. I’m trying to look casual, like I belong here as a friend of the band.
Like I’m not the man he belongs to.
The music slams through the building and into my bones.
Every bass note rattles my ribs. Sweat and alcohol and perfume mix into something thick and sweet in the air, a scent that clings to skin and clothes and makes the whole venue feel alive.
It isn’t just fans either—this whole place smells like a party no one ever lets end.
Like everybody needs something in their hand to make the noise feel manageable.
Rafe leans into the mic, voice rough and beautiful. The crowd screams like they’ve been waiting their whole lives for him to speak.
And maybe they have.
Six months ago, Steel Saints were popular. Rising. Buzzing. Now, they’re something else. They’re a phenomenon people talk about the way you talk about weather. Like you can’t stop it. Like you just have to brace for it and hope you survive.
The lights shift. A new song starts up, and the audience roars again, the sound so big it becomes physical.
I’m smiling before I can stop myself.
Pride blooms hot and immediate in my chest. It’s so intense it almost hurts. I want to reach out and grab him, like a stupid instinct, like possession would quiet the ache of watching him be adored by strangers.
But I don’t. I stay where I am. Quiet. Unseen. The way I have to.
Except my body still remembers the last time I saw him tonight.
The dressing room.
The narrow hallway behind the stage that smelled like old paint and electricity. His bandmates shouting and laughing when he spotted me, the way their faces lit up because they know that I’m part of this orbit even if no one can understand why.
Rafe’s eyes had locked on mine the second I walked in. All the noise around us had disappeared as he’d crossed the room so fast I barely had time to breathe, palms framing my face like he needed to confirm I wasn’t another hallucination born out of exhaustion.
“Fuck,” he’d whispered, and then his mouth was on mine, tasting like mint gum and tequila—like he’d taken a shot to steady himself, preparing for me.
I’d kissed him back like I was starving.
Eli had wolf-whistled. Drew had laughed. Miles had muttered something about getting a room.
Rafe didn’t even look at them. He just tugged me toward the adjoining bathroom like the rest of the world didn’t exist, like the door closing behind us was an immediate promise.
He’d pressed me back against the sink, mouth at my throat, hands urgent. “You came,” he’d breathed against my skin.
“I said I would.”
“I didn’t believe you until I saw you.”
The rawness of that had hit me harder than any physical touch. Like even after all this time, even after vows and rings and promises, my presence still feels like something he’s afraid he might lose.
“You look so good,” I’d managed, hands in his curls, dragging him closer.
“Not now,” he’d muttered. “If I start thinking, I’m done.”
Then he’d dropped to his knees like it was inevitable, like we’d both known exactly where this was going the second he saw me.
Two minutes was all it took for him to suck me dry and rock my world.
Less, maybe.
The memory of it makes my stomach tighten now. Makes heat curl through me like my body’s trying to relive it by force. He’d made me come apart fast—no mercy, no time to overthink, like he wanted to take the edge off me before I had to stand out here and watch him belong to everyone else.
After, he’d stood, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes blown wide and satisfied. “Happy anniversary,” he’d murmured against my lips.
My hands had trembled when I held his face. “You’re insane.”
“You love me.”
“I do,” I’d admitted, breathless. “God, I do.”
He’d kissed me again, deeper. He’d tasted like me. He’d licked into my mouth like he wanted me to remember the claim, the proof.
My refractory period had shattered every record known to man. I’d been hard again before we even left the bathroom.
Rafe had laughed softly into my neck, holding me tight. “Later,” he’d promised. “All of this belongs to you later.”
Now, watching him onstage, I can feel the weight of that promise in my body like a physical thing.
His jeans are torn and painted on, clinging to his hips. His muscle vest is ripped at the shoulder, exposing the line of his collarbone and the edge of one nipple that I love to lick when he’s sprawled beneath me and breathless.
He moves like he knows it. Like he knows exactly what he’s doing to people.
Eyeliner frames his eyes, smudged just enough to look lived-in. He didn’t wear it much when I first met him, but over the past six months, he’s been leaning into it, into the look, into the kind of beauty that makes people stare and forget how to blink.
And fuck if he doesn’t look pretty.
He looks like sin.
The song ends. The crowd screams, voices merging into a wall of sound. Rafe steps back from the mic, chest heaving, sweat glistening on his skin. He takes a sip of water and then leans forward again, resting his forearms on his knees like he’s letting the crowd in on a secret.
“All right,” he says, voice low, playful. “I gotta ask something.”
The audience quiets, instantly obedient. I swallow.
Rafe’s gaze sweeps across them, slow and deliberate. “You ever love someone so much it hurts?”
The scream that follows is deafening.
He laughs softly. “Yeah. Thought so.”
My breath catches.
He shouldn’t be able to do that. He shouldn’t be able to say words into a microphone and make my heart stumble like he’s speaking directly to me.
But he does.
“Sometimes,” Rafe continues, “you’re standing in a room full of people who want pieces of you, and all you can think about is the one person who already owns you.”
My heart stutters, constricting painfully, and I go completely still in the shadows.
The crowd loses their minds, of course. They have no idea. They think it’s poetry. They think it’s romance for sale, packaged beautifully and handed to them in exchange for ticket money and devotion.
They don’t know he’s speaking from bone-deep truth.
Rafe straightens. “This next one… isn’t on the album.”
The audience erupts again.
“But,” he says, grin crooked, eyes bright, “we’ve been playing with it. Seeing how it feels.”
Miles hits the first notes, and something in the air changes. It’s slower than their usual stuff. Less aggressive. Still sharp, but in a way that feels intimate, like a confession hidden inside music.
Rafe grips the mic with both hands and sings.
The first lyric lands like a punch.
“I kissed you in borrowed rooms,
left my fingerprints on your skin,
but the morning always stole you back,
like you’d never been mine to begin.”
I inhale sharply and have to swallow against the pressure there.
The crowd sways, captivated, not quite understanding why it feels like something sacred is happening.
Rafe’s voice turns rougher as he sings the next lines, and I swear I feel them in my bloodstream.
“I count the miles like rosary beads,
pray the road will bend,
but every city takes a piece of you,
and calls it love again.”
Heat floods my body. Not sexual this time, but something deeper, aching and raw. He’s singing about us. About hotel rooms. About stolen nights. About goodbyes that feel like ripping.
I stand frozen while his words unravel me.
When he hits the chorus, the crowd joins in even though they’ve never heard it before, instinctively catching the rhythm of longing.
“So touch me slow, before you go,
make forever fit inside one night,
promise me you’ll come back whole,
promise me I’m still your right.”
Emotion presses hard against my ribs. I have to brace a hand against the equipment case beside me.
Then Rafe turns slightly, just enough to look toward the side of the stage.
Toward me. And he winks. It’s quick, barely anything.
A flicker of acknowledgment no one in the crowd will catch. But every person backstage could.
I should look away.
I don’t.
I can’t.
The song is too full of feeling. The lyrics hit me too hard. My body reacts like I’m being claimed in public without anyone realizing, like his wink is a hand around the back of my neck.
I think about our wedding night—about the way he’d held my face in his hands, eyes shining, voice steady.
“This is how it’s always going to be between us,” he’d said.
And I’d believed him with everything I was.
I still do.