Chapter Nine
Finally, after two hours of playing our weird game of back seat Twister meets Operation, Barrett pulls into the venue’s loading zone. I sag, muscles aching from the effort of appearing relaxed whilst taut like a rubber band, careful not to let any part of me brush up against any part of Dax.
A security guard wanders over to wave us along, and Cain rolls down his window.
They have a hushed conversation, and next thing I know, the chain-link fence is being rolled back.
Barrett pulls in and parks next to the nondescript tour vans and trailers of equipment.
A thrill of excitement shoots through me.
I should be used to this by now, but getting VIP treatment is always cool. I hope it never stops feeling this way.
“Do you think we’ll still be doing this when we’re eighty?” I whisper to Dax as the other guys begin piling out of the car.
I don’t know why I bother asking.
He’s been withdrawn the entire drive, barely participating in the car shenanigans except for flinging the occasional wry comment, but Dax can talk shit on autopilot.
I’ve given up any hope that I’ll get anything useful out of him today for the article, but I’m trying to be patient with him, like he asked.
Tomorrow. I can be patient with him until tomorrow. Then, this needs to get serious. Tonight, I’m going to enjoy seeing one of my teenage idols perform for the first time in years.
Dax glances at me sidelong as Jonah lowers the middle row for us to climb out. “I dunno. I didn’t think I’d live past twenty-seven, so…”
He gets out of the car, and I nearly double over as all the air comes whooshing out of me.
It’s the most real thing he’s said all day and it’s absolutely devastating.
I’m still scrambling to put myself back together as I follow him out of the car, feeling very much like I left my stomach in the back seat.
As my feet hit the gravel, Dax shifts to make room for me, maintaining our careful no-man’s-land.
I spent the entire two-hour drive trying not to touch him, and now I’m gripped by the visceral need to pull him back to me, to wrap myself around him, protect him, tether him to me.
I don’t know how he’s chatting nonchalantly with Marcus like he didn’t just casually say one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.
I follow behind the guys on unsteady legs to the alley entrance.
Dax knocks on the rusty metal door, and it swings open.
“Final Revelations,” he says to the man with the clipboard. The guy doesn’t even bother checking the list. A cursory look at Dax confirms who he is, and whether they were on the list or not, you don’t not let Final Revelations in when they show up at your door.
Dax’s offhand comment left me shaken, but now I’m positively flying outside of my body.
My best friends may be Post Humorous, and their songs may be on all the alt charts, but even they don’t have clout like this.
I need a pass, an ID check, and a name on a list to get in anywhere.
I sometimes forget who Dax is to this industry in favor of who he is to me, but then something like this happens, and it bowls me sideways.
The security guard shifts his attention to me, where I’m half-hidden by Barrett.
“She’s with m—” Dax clears his throat. “She’s with us,” he says definitively.
After checking my ID, the security guard hands us all neon-green wristbands, stepping aside to let us pass.
We slip inside and hug the wall as our eyes adjust to the dim lighting. To our right, flashlights swing back and forth, illuminating the pathway for the openers who are about to take the stage.
I fumble with the wristband, unable to get the backing off the taped end. When I try and fail for the third time, Dax takes pity on me and eases it from my grasp.
Bringing it to his mouth, his lips curl back to bite the stubborn paper, tugging it off—a move that should not feel as erotic as it does, my eyes following his every movement like a magnet.
Gently, he wraps the band around my arm.
My pulse flutters in response to his touch, and I pray he can’t feel it.
I’m sweating like a Victorian woman who just had a gentleman graze her exposed wrist for the first time.
He adjusts the tightness of the band and pauses, attention drifting up to mine. “That feel good?”
“Mmph,” I garble out, giving him a jerky nod because who knows what fucking word that was supposed to be.
An upward tick at the corner of his mouth is the only acknowledgment he gives that he knows his touch has rendered me completely incapable of coherent speech.
He smooths down the adhesive end of the wristband, his thumb grazing over my pulse point in a move that is definitely intentional.
He knows what he does to me, and he’s toying with me.
I cannot fucking stand him.
Marcus clears his throat and we both jump. Dax drops my wrist like it burned him, and we step away from each other. I’m looking at nothing, everything, anything but him.
Marcus jerks his head in the direction of the other guys, who are already making their way farther backstage. As Marcus follows after them, I hesitate.
Dax watches me, nodding, because he knows I won’t watch the show from back here. I never do. “Tell the pit I miss her,” he says longingly.
He looks wistfully at the crowd beyond the backstage barricade, and I can’t imagine only watching shows from back here, where the sound is shitty, barely glimpsing any of the bands’ onstage production.
“When was the last time you watched a show from front of house—like, for fun and not work?” I ask, already grieving the loss for him.
His face scrunches up in thought. “Ten—eleven?—years ago?”
I’m bowled sideways again—and not just because he answered a question for the first time all day.
I know how young Dax was when he started out, but eleven years feels too long.
I don’t feel old enough to have been doing anything for over a decade.
Our teenage experiences could not be more different.
I spent mine wondering if I’d ever get boobs, and Dax was signing other people’s, probably.
“Have you ever signed someone’s boobs?” I blurt.
A low, startled laugh escapes him. I love his laugh, the way the joy of it always seems to surprise him, the airiness alleviating the heaviness etched into the curve of his shoulders, the hard set of his mouth, a gasp of air after being trapped in the undertow of his own mind, which I know is not kind to him.
“Hard-hitting journalist Sloane Donavan, ladies and gentlemen.”
“Gotta be thorough,” I say reasonably, despite wanting to die inside. I don’t know that I actually want him to answer the question.
“I don’t know. Maybe? I don’t remember ever doing it, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t.” The left side of his mouth curves up, a flash of dimple winking at me.
I nod. More of Dax’s stark honesty. His dimple punctuates his sentence like a reminder—the dimple that’s not a dimple, but rather a relic of a day he doesn’t remember.
He told me that three years ago, in the same baldly factual way he always does when talking about the hazy years before he got sober.
It’s the same affectation he used in the car when casually admitting he thought he’d become a member of the 27 Club, dying too young like so many musicians before him.
I’ve never been more grateful for someone to be twenty-eight in my life. It’s my new favorite number.
The need for him to have twenty-seven more years, then twenty-seven more after that, and for them to be full of this—the feeling that lives in a crowd, the one I’ve dedicated my life to chasing—has my rib cage in a choke hold, a tightness gripping my lungs and other chest organs I won’t acknowledge by name.
An idea takes root, a plan falling into place, a feeling of rightness settling into my bones like this was always how tonight was supposed to go, interview be damned.
“Wait here,” I say, placing my hands on both of his arms as if to physically plant him there. Slipping out from backstage security, I weave through the crowd to the merch tables. I ask for the first hat I see and hand over nearly all my cash. May the band spend it well.
I flash my wristband to get backstage, making a beeline for where Dax is waiting for me, right where I left him. Stretching up on my tiptoes, I situate the hat onto his head.
His brows pinch together. “Thank you?”
I step back to assess him. He’s so fucking recognizable, even with a hat.
I grab the two sides of his jacket, laughing through my nose when I recognize it.
It’s the same one he let me borrow when he went three blocks out of his way to walk me to my car.
Notching the two sides of the zipper together, I make eye contact with him as I slowly, so very slowly, zip the jacket all the way up.
His breath hitches and holds. Apparently, I’m not the only one hyperconscious of our every touch.
Curling my fingers under the hood of his jacket, I bunch it forward to cover the sides of his neck, but it barely conceals the oni mask tattooed on his throat—a dead giveaway. But this is as good as it’s gonna get.
“Not that I don’t love being your Blasian Ken doll, but what’re you doing?”
At the sound of his voice, my gaze locks with his. I’m far too close to him again, his gravitational pull sucking me in without me even realizing it.
“Disguising you,” I say simply, taking a careful half step back so we’re not sharing the same air anymore. “I’ve never been in the pit. Take me?”
He blinks at me, then stares off to the side, his shoulders curling in like I gut punched him. “How have you never been in the pit?”
I shrug. “I mean, I’ve been at the edges of the pit while people were moshing, but I’ve never been in one. I didn’t want to get my nose broken—again. But like, a nice, respectable circle pit”—I mime the circular flow of bodies with one finger—“I’d try it.”