Chapter Four
I see Dax again sooner than I thought.
I’ve been in and out of the studio with Hollow Graves the past few days, interviewing them for their article.
Despite my wariness that I’d run into Dax, the closest I’ve come to any member of Final Revelations is the near-reverent way each member of Hollow Graves speaks about them.
The lack of run-in has lulled me into a sense of security.
Maybe Dax and I can orbit the same scene without actually colliding as often as I’d feared.
When the studio’s receptionist kicks Hudson and I out at closing time and asks us to leave through the side door, I wish she’d mentioned who else she’d just sent that way.
As I push open the alley door, October night air rushes in and steals my warmth and I regret leaving my jacket in my car.
In the alleyway, the haze of cigarette smoke greets us, hanging like a cloud over—of fucking course—the entirety of Final Revelations.
My gaze skips over Dax, and I drink in the sight of Marcus, Jonah, Cain, and Barrett—an absolute bear of a man who I have to actively resist the urge to hug.
Barrett’s face lights up as he exhales a stream of smoke. “Boston, is that you?”
I can’t help but return the smile, my feet dragging me over to him automatically.
He squishes me into his side in a one-armed hug, his ’80s rocker curls tickling my cheek.
“It’s me.” I hope the thickness in my voice is disguised by its natural raspiness and my face being half-smothered in Barrett’s massive barrel of a chest. God, when was the last time someone hugged me?
“Thought you were in LA,” Jonah asks in his nonasking way. In his knit sweater, he looks more like he just clocked out of a day at the office than a guy in a metal band. “At Beatoff.”
“Offbeat?” I correct.
“That’s what I said.”
I purse my lips to keep from laughing. The band’s beef with Offbeat predates my internship by a few years. “I was in San Fran, but not anymore. I’m freelancing for AP.” I moved to California a year after Dax and I broke up, so I have no idea how Jonah knows that.
“You live here now,” Jonah clarifies, shaking his shaggy black hair out of his face as he exhales a cloud of cigarette smoke.
I nod, and I’m acutely aware that while Dax and I were ignoring each other last time, he’s definitely paying attention now.
I can’t bring myself to look at him, but his gaze bores into the side of my face.
I’m not entirely sure why. Robb told him all this at Battle of the Bands last month when he asked, though why he asked, I don’t know.
“Anyway,” I say slowly. I peel myself out from where Barrett still has his arm around my shoulders, hitching my backpack higher.
“Good to see—” The words get stuck in my throat, my eyes bouncing between all of them and then back to the studio door.
The reason they’re all here hits me over the head like a brick.
“You’re recording.” The words come out of me on a breathy exhale, and I’m unable to stop the grin spreading across my face.
None of them confirm or deny anything. Of course they don’t.
Final Revelations recording a new album is massive news. Five albums and over a decade in, it’s been years since they last toured, even longer since they released anything new.
“I’m not asking for an interview—I know that’s a nonstarter.
Just… whenever you’re ready to announce”—I begin backing out of their little circle so they can’t immediately shoot me down—“let me have the exclusive that there’s gonna be a new album.
That would be huge for me.” I’m not really sure what weird movements I’m making with my hands, but I’m trying to convey how no pressure I’m being despite how intensely I want this. “Please.”
I aim the last word at Dax in a Hail Mary. If there’s even a shred of affection for me left in him—
Our gazes meet for the first time in three years.
The alley’s atmosphere shifts, every particle separating me from him crackling with electricity.
Overhead, the sky thunders out a promise and a warning.
Even in the low lighting, I can see on his stupidly beautiful face that he feels it, too.
He glances away, a muscle at the corner of his jaw twitching, like he’s forcing himself not to speak—or smile.
Tearing my gaze off of him is like prying two magnets apart.
To the group at large, I say, “Think about it?” I back up until I’m out of the halo of light over the alley door, safely wrapped in darkness.
Once my back is turned, a dopey grin spreads across my face.
If I can snag that exclusive, it might not be enough to make AP hire me full-time, but it would be a huge step toward getting that offer.
“Sloane!”
I turn, disappointed to find that it’s Hudson and not Final Revelations chasing after me. I really need to hedge my expectations when it comes to them. They don’t need the press—need me—and they know it. I need to know it, too.
I rub the scar on my ring finger subconsciously. It was a long shot, but at least I tried.
“Walk you to your car?” Hudson offers. Before I can tell him that’s not necessary—it’s dark out, but it’s only seven o’clock and there are plenty of people milling around—he continues. “I can talk to them for you.”
I shrug. “We both know they won’t do anything they don’t want.”
Hudson laughs under his breath. “True.” He glances at me sidelong, and I don’t know how I know it’s coming, but I do.
I want the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
Our interview went really well, and it wouldn’t be the first time a subject confused Actual Conversation with flirting.
And now… He’s going to ask me out. But I know how this goes.
We go on one date—maybe two if they’re feeling chivalrous—before they try to sleep with me.
They’re going for a home run, and I haven’t even decided if I want to step up to the plate.
Before Dax, I was half-convinced I was asexual, that I simply didn’t have those feelings like other people.
Now I know that I do—it just takes time, trust, and attraction, three things that rarely collide for me.
Normally, I’m grateful my demisexuality weeds out the ones who only wanted one thing from me.
Other times, I resent it, wishing my body’s wants could be fulfilled without my heart and brain needing to be so involved.
I want to be wanted, but this isn’t some video game I can speed run my way through.
It’s as frustrating for me as it is for them.
They call me a tease. Say I’m too much effort.
They leave. I let them. It’s never worth the headache.
Well… once. It was worth it once.
“Hey,” he says softly, a hand at my elbow to stop my quick gait, as if I can run away from the question.
“Maybe this is weird, considering your history with Dax and all, but would you… would you wanna grab a drink sometime? Off the record,” he adds with a cheeky smile.
When I don’t immediately answer, he continues.
“It’s just, I’ve enjoyed talking to you this week.
You’re not like other girls I know, and I just—” He shrugs, and I know he genuinely thinks he’s flattering me when he says not like other girls.
I force myself not to cringe, not to tell him that I’ve got mommy issues up to my eyeballs, and as such, I’m literally the amalgamation of every woman I’ve ever thought was cool.
“Hudson…” I have no idea how to gently let him down, how to explain that he enjoyed our conversation because that’s my job, that asking out someone who’s writing an article about you puts that person in an impossible position, that we’ve spent the past few days talking about him, that that is what he likes.
He doesn’t actually know anything about me.
My attention snags on approaching footsteps behind us, and instinctively, I take a step back so we’re not blocking the walkway.
Hudson grumbles under his breath as Dax slows to a stop in between where Hudson and I now stand on opposite sides of the sidewalk. In the low light of the streetlamp, Dax’s gaze bounces from Hudson to… not to me, more like everything but me, the negative space of me. “What?” Dax grunts.
Hudson shakes his head, glancing over at me. I have no idea what expression I’m making, but it must convey a lot, because he presses his lips together and nods. “Have a good night, Sloane.”
I nod back. “Thanks, uh, I’ll be in touch about the article.” Mentally, I pat myself on the back for salvaging this awkwardness into something remotely professional.
Hudson is still nodding, each of us reduced to bobbleheads with how uncomfortable this has become. He turns and waves over his shoulder as he walks back in the direction of the studio.
Dax raises his eyebrows at Hudson’s retreating form, saying nothing—looking at nothing—when he turns and gestures for me to lead the way.
Right—I was going to my car. “Are you just trying to get me alone to murder me?”
“Only one way to find out,” he says dryly.
I press my lips together to keep from smiling. He’s not supposed to still be funny after we’ve broken up. And what? We haven’t spoken in three years, but we’re supposed to banter like old friends?
Are we friends? I have no idea. I can feel his gravity drawing me in, but it’s not the same quiet tether that bonded us three years ago.
This magnetic pull is Stage Dax, the version of him that crowds can’t look away from.
The real Dax, the one most people never meet, hopes you never look too close.
I don’t know how to act around this version of him, to be on the other side of his walls when there was once a time I felt at home inside them.
I resume the trek to my car, but my legs refuse to take up their normally quick gait. Dax falls into step, matching my leisurely pace with no complaints, despite having an even longer stride than mine.