Chapter Fifteen #4
The edges of Roesia’s lips flicker up. “I was in a meeting with several members of the offensive line when they received your invitation. Is it all right that I tagged along?”
“Of course.” I clear my throat. “It’s great that you’re here.”
“Mm.” She sips her drink again, those shrewd eyes on me. “And how did things go today with the Urzoth service?”
My mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
Just say it was fine. That’s literally all I have to say. I’ve lied over stuff like this so many times before; it’s second nature.
But I can’t get the words out. Same as when I stood up at that podium and couldn’t make myself read that speech Treva’d written for me.
I don’t want to lie anymore.
Roesia looks at me over the rim of her glass, and the silence now feels as weighty as what Seb and Bel were lobbing at me a moment ago.
“It is important to me that my players are happy, Mr. Monroe,” she says as she lowers her glass. “Are you? Happy?”
My eyes flick across the room, sighting Bel where he’s with Seb, talking to Phei now.
“Yes,” I say easily, breathy and more than a little sentimental. “Yes, ma’am. I am.”
Roesia’s still studying me by the time I look back down at her. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. But if you decide you want to reevaluate your associations before next season, let me know.”
“My—associations?”
“This PR arrangement has thrown your relationship with your god into an even brighter spotlight, and if doing so has made you reexamine certain things, it would not be a big matter to sever those ties. I don’t want my support of this arrangement to be taken as an ultimatum.”
My brows launch sky-high and I adjust my grip on the rock so it digs into my stomach.
Shit, what is with this evening? Did I turn translucent?
I laugh. It comes out as a sputter, and I scrub at my eyes, shaking my head.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I croak. “But—gods, you’re incredibly perceptive.”
She smiles. Wide and true. “It’s why I’ve had such a successful career. Now, I’ll be taking my leave. I wanted to make sure you know where I stand.” She glances over her shoulder, to where Bel is laughing at something Phei said. “Give my best to Mr. Warden. Everything is still good with you two?”
“Yes, ma’am.” My grin is confirmation.
Roesia nods. She taps her wineglass against the rock in my hands.
“Emma,” she says.
“Pardon?”
“I heard Mr. Warden. Name it Emma. Emma Stone.”
Oh my gods. Did she make a joke?
I break out in another laugh. “I’ll let him know.”
Roesia takes a step away. Looks back at me. “I should probably show more tact than this, but—” She sets her wineglass on a table and cups her hands around her mouth before shouting, “Fuck the Chimeras!”
The whole bar reacts with hollers and laughter, and I crack up as Roesia slips away.
This is exactly what I wanted out of tonight. This is what I wanted out of that evening months ago, when I invited everyone here the first time.
To really feel at home.
Darian brings me a shot—he and Aaron are clearly already several deep—and as the evening progresses, I take myself right to the precipice of contentedly buzzed while Seb and Bel pop up sporadically with reports on my teammates.
Most were like Aaron, assuming that the invite was a team hang, nothing significant; Seb swats my head at the fact that I didn’t tell anyone why I was inviting them back then.
Phei, it turns out, did come, only they were a plant.
Apparently, they even tried to sing karaoke, but by that point in the evening I was too shitfaced to remember a potted fern on the stage.
Not this time—I cut myself off after the third shot, and I make sure to order a bunch of food to be spread around the tables for everyone. I want to stay coherent in case Bel needs me. And I want to remember this night.
Bel continues his rotation through the team with Seb, but the longer he does, the more my eyes drift to him.
I’m in conversation with Riprak and Aaron, but looking at Bel.
I’m talking with some of the offensive players, and looking at Bel.
He, also, is talking to people, but looking at me, and blushing prettily, flushed with the heat of so many people in a close space, and I can’t look away when he’s happy.
A microphone squeals, then Darian’s shouting “KARAOKE!” and everyone cheers.
He’s on the stage at the back of the room, the neck of his guitar in one hand, mic in the other where it snakes out of the karaoke machine.
“The bar manager has graciously”—he pauses to hiccup; okay, he’s drunk—“allowed me control of the stage this evening. So everyone—” He points around, still gripping his guitar.
“Get ready for me to heckle the shit out of you. Who’s up first? Not you, Monroe.”
I didn’t even have my hand raised. “I sing like an angel, Callabrass!” I shout with a grin.
“You couldn’t carry a tune if it was BabyBjorned to your chest.”
I flip him off and he cackles.
An arm shoots up near the side of the room, and I already know whose it is from where he was standing. I smile as Bel scurries onto the stage, and Darian grins.
“Here we go! Ladies and theydies and gentlemen of all kinds, let’s give it up for the Hellhound cheerleading department’s own Alexo the Magnificent!”
Applause rings out, and I wind my way closer to the stage, not willing to miss a moment of this.
Bel and Darian whisper with their heads together for a second, deciding on a song; Darian laughs and nods at whatever Bel suggests. He passes Bel the microphone before strapping on his guitar and selecting the song on the karaoke machine.
Darian strums a few idle chords, and the moment the song starts, he dives into it. The crowd erupts in catcalls as Charli XCX’s “Boom Clap” blares through the room. Bel’s grinning and already shimmying his body in a fantastically distracting way.
And then he sings.
Bel struts across the stage, bobbing to the lyrics while Darian backs him up.
The two are a harmonic convergence, and I can see Darian’s smile widening with each building note between them.
Bel isn’t as lost in the song as he was that first night, singing because he had no other outlet; he’s happy, dancing for the sake of it, gyrating and bouncing on his toes and playing off Darian like they’ve been performance partners for years.
The crowd is swept up in them, some singing along, most clapping and laughing. My throat thickens as the song rolls on, as Bel’s happiness nearly leaks out of him.
Seb jostles into me, beaming; Thio’s not far behind, a plate of appetizers in his hands.
“Damn, I forgot your boy can sing,” Seb shouts into my ear. “We finished grilling your teammates, by the way—did he tell you? They all pass. For now. I’m keeping an eye on them, though.”
I set Aaron’s rock on a table behind me. “Thanks. I didn’t ask you to, but thanks.”
“You didn’t have to.” Seb loops his arm through mine. “And it’s nice to know, isn’t it? That most of them not coming last time was a misunderstanding?”
“Yeah, it—” I squint. “It was a misunderstanding.”
I look at the room, at my teammates and coaches, all smiles, having a blast. This was what I wanted months ago, only—
Only I’d thought they hadn’t come because they’d decided I was wrong about the lawsuit. I’d built it up as another reason, and it didn’t matter that what I believed wasn’t true; it still felt real to me.
It felt real to me.
I gasp, eyes widening, and grab Seb by the arms. “Oh my gods. That’s it.”
“What’s what?”
I drop my voice, leaning in; the noise of the crowd and the song is enough to cover us. “The cultists. They need to think that Bel isn’t what they need. It doesn’t have to be true.”
The cultists aren’t playing by any rules, so I shouldn’t either, right? Gloves are off.
We’re going on the offensive.
“We make them think that Bel isn’t the thing they need for their ritual,” I tell Seb.
He frowns at me, not in concern, but in thought. Thio comes closer, ear cocked toward us.
“How?” Seb asks.
“We stage it,” I say. “A fake ritual as convoluted as the shit they pull. We’ll follow all the stupid requirements they have—the spring equinox, the hot sauce, the handcuffs—”
“Handcuffs?”
“—and we’ll use magic to make someone look demonic, and we’ll pretend to be cultists, and stage the whole thing. It won’t work, we’ll make sure it doesn’t work, and report widely that it failed. They’ll have proof that Galaxrien’s descendant isn’t what they’re looking for.”
Seb’s face is set in that way when he’s thinking through a complex problem. “There are a lot of variables we’d have to consider. What if the cultists think that they could do it better, and still go after him?”
My conviction wanes. “We won’t change anything about his security until we’re sure it worked. But—it’s something. Isn’t it?”
Thio touches my arm. “Yeah,” he says with a smile. “I think we can make it work.”
I grin at him. Seb, still scowling in thought, nods absently.
“Huh,” he says, then pulls out his phone. “We’ll need spells that—huh. What about—no. Wait. Huh.”
And he dips into the crowd, typing and walking away with his head down.
Thio sighs. “I better follow him to make sure he doesn’t bump into anyone. But Orok?” He squeezes my shoulder. “It’s a good idea.”
He ducks after his fiancé.
It might not work. Bel might still be in danger after it.
But it’s something active instead of being so maddeningly passive.
The song ends. Bel and Darian twirl toward the crowd with elaborate bows and everyone goes wild, screaming and cheering so loud my eardrums throb.
Bel meets my eyes, beams, and takes a running leap off the stage. I catch him, consumed by his apple scent and the feel of his sweat-slicked skin through the lacy back of his suit jacket.
“You were amazing, sweetheart,” I say, rubbing my nose against the shell of his ear. “I could watch you perform forever.”
He pulls back, still cradled in my arms, breathless; pink curls stick to his forehead.
Gods, and to think the adventure party wanted to shut him away in a cabin somewhere, lock up all this sunshine and talent and keep the world a darker place.
I get in one kiss, one taste of his glossy lips and the sweetness of a cherry drink he had, before Marlow’s begging to do a duet with him, signing while Bel sings.
After that, the evening folds into more songs and drinks and food, laughter and dancing. Bel’s at the focus of it all, both with the crowd and my attention.
Seb and Thio make their way back over, and we’re all cracking up about nothing, then a bit bemused when Phei does a song in their rock form. Just a pile of rocks on the stage while the instrumentals for “Sweet Caroline” play on.
Darian follows it up with a few Queen songs before Bel hops on stage and queues up Taylor Swift’s “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” and this time he does sing his soul out, pain bleeding into the words.
The song ends, fading in applause, and I climb up next to him.
Bel’s eyes are teary from his performance, and I swoop him into a hug, earning ripples of aww from the audience. I hold him long enough to feel his muscles relax, and when I pull back, he’s smiling again, but it’s soft and small and vulnerable.
I take the mic from him. “My turn.”
Behind us on the stage, Darian groans. I ignore him and scroll through the karaoke machine.
I want Bel to smile again. To get back to that place of thoughtless fun, of freedom.
An older song pops up and a grin lights my face.
Bel’s next to me, so he sees what I choose. A confused laugh huffs out of him. “What—”
But I hit play. Flute notes fill the bar, silencing everyone’s chatter for an equally confused beat. They all look up at me with expectant smiles.
I sway to the music, pulling on an overly serious expression and holding the mic to my chest. The music swells, and I flip my eyes up, going as over-the-top cheesy as I can, and sing “My Heart Will Go On.”
Bel claps his hands to his mouth to stifle his giddy shriek. Darian muffles a curse but laughs, and as I sweep my arm out wide, really hamming it up, the crowd devolves into snorts and cackles of laughter.
Sheer delight gleams in Bel’s eyes, all heavy emotions gone, and it’s fuel on this absurdity fire. I pivot to serenade him, pairing off-key words of maudlin love with completely inappropriate body rolls. Soon, he’s holding back tears, choking on laughter, and I break with a wide smirk.
The lyrics get a little heavier suddenly, a little more real. Love can last for a lifetime. And it doesn’t matter where he goes; near, far, I’m with him.
Bel catches my transition, the moment things go from joking to promise. His hands lower from his mouth and his laugh slants at the edges, eyes going liquid and adoring.
The music ripples into a lull between verses, and my chest warms.
I hadn’t meant to get emotional again. I wanted him to smile.
I clear my throat, the harsh grate of it echoing in the mic, and Bel breaks out of his trance with a nose-scrunching grin.
He snatches the mic from me. The final verse kicks up and he plummets to his knees.
I can’t help the winded grunt that comes from the very pit of my stomach at the sight.
He arches his torso back and belts out the words, giving Celine Dion a run for her money by perfectly hitting each note, heaving his entire self into the performance like he so expertly does.
The crowd loses it, whistling and screaming, and Bel feeds off their energy by holding the last note impossibly long until I’m sure the bar’s noise can be heard all up and down the street.
The music fades out and Bel collapses forward in a bow on his knees. The applause is a torrent and I see more than a few people recording us; this is a private event, but I know the odds are good that some of this will end up online.
I take the mic from him and say, over the noise, “Remember to keep dancing.”
If we stage a fake ritual and it tricks the cultists into thinking Bel isn’t what they need, he’ll be able to see his cousins again.
Bel’s head flies up. His big eyes fix on me, chest heaving from the song.
He scrambles to his feet, grabs my hand, and hauls me offstage.
I pass the mic to Darian and go, of course I go. He’s smiling again, I’m gone.
Everyone’s rippling apart, alcohol and the lateness of the night peeling away inhibitions. The room is sweaty, people holding each other on their feet in intoxicated clusters or coupling up; I spot Aaron and Marlow making out in a recessed alcove. Go them.
Bel pulls me down a side hall and pins me against the wall near the restroom.
“Take me home?” he moans into my ear, his fingers hooked in the collar of my shirt.
Home. Our home. After a night out with our friends, our family.
I lick into his mouth, eating up his whimpers, cupping his ass and pulling him against me.
This is it.
This is all I ever wanted.
And I’m going to fight like hell to keep it.