Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“Woot woot,” Liam said. He brushed by Jillian and scooped up one of the controllers as he sat next to Ollie.
“We’ll need you to do a social media push to get our fans to show up,” Remi said to Jillian, but his eyes were on the TV as he walked to the couch.
Liam was choosing his character, so only Skye saw the annoyed face Jillian made. She opened her mouth with, no doubt, another protest, but Liam interrupted her.
“Make it something really cool!” he said. “Like make us sound hardcore.”
“Yeah,” Remi agreed.
Jillian snapped her mouth shut and sighed heavily. She glared at Skye, who just shrugged with her palms up. What can you do?
“Fine,” Jillian said. “Guess I’ll start posting.”
“Cool,” Remi said and leaned forward, grabbing the last controller off the coffee table. “You wanna play with us?”
Both Skye and Jillian looked up, but Remi was holding out the controller to Skye.
She tried to smother her smug grin. “Yeah.” Spinning around in the booth, she leaned over the back edge and grabbed the controller to choose her character.
She didn’t know what Jillian was thinking, but she felt her harsh glare on the side of her face. A potent mix of pride and possession circulated through her. She had a lot to do to make sure everything arrived in Daytona without a hitch, but she could play some video games with her band.
The game’s loading screen popped up, and Skye glanced at Remi, who was already looking at her.
The corner of his mouth was quirked, but it was his blue eyes that held her captive.
A fizzing sensation spread from her stomach through her entire body.
She didn’t need to acknowledge the lightheaded joy that made her feel like she was falling into the sky.
It was already mirrored in Remi’s gaze, and she knew better than to name the word for the feeling aloud, even just in her head.
Skye walked across the flattened grass from the sign-in booth to the gate with everyone’s Metalfest VIP lanyards wrapped around her hand.
The band, their soundman, and a few stagehands all arrived in one piece and a day early. While the guys checked in to the hotel, Skye met with the equipment manager at the festival and gave her stagehands a breakdown of what she’d need from them tomorrow.
After she was done, the boys were waiting for her at the gate, Liam bouncing on his toes, Ollie scanning the foldout pamphlet of the festival map, West leaning up against the gate, and Remi, hands in his pockets, watching as she made her way over to them.
“Alright,” she said, holding the lanyards high. “I’m giving you these, but you all promise not to party too hard, right? Our show is tomorrow afternoon.”
“Yes, Mum,” Liam and Ollie said in unison and then started elbowing each other.
West took one of the lanyards and walked off by himself into the festival.
“Dude, wait up!” Liam hollered as he and Ollie took theirs and ran after West.
Skye’s brows pulled inward. West was still acting weird.
“Don’t worry about him,” Remi said, putting his pass around his neck. “We talked last night. He hasn’t been sleeping well. He doesn’t have a problem with you if I don’t.”
Skye bit her lip in a poor attempt to hide her smile. “Well, you better go catch up to your bandmates. Who knows how quick it’ll take Liam to get into something.”
Remi shrugged. “I was kind of thinking I’d hang back with you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” Remi said, voice low. He wore a faded Metallica t-shirt, the sleeves cut off, showing off the tone of his biceps and the black swirling ink clustered down his arms. His long black hair was perfectly messed up in a sexy tousle, and his ice-blue eyes were outlined in smudged black eyeliner.
Skye had to avert her gaze when he sucked on his lip ring. She wanted to be the one who did that.
They walked through the gate and took in the sights. Groups of people stood in line at food booths, and the stages were packed with people headbanging to the music.
The back of Skye’s hand bumped Remi’s, and Remi interlaced their fingers, holding her hand as they walked through the festival. Skye’s heart raced. She’d never held someone’s hand as they walked around before. It was really nice.
They caught up to Liam, Ollie, and West as the guys worked their way through the crowd to get closer to the stage. Skye recognized the music from one of the bands that they listened to on the tour bus all the time.
“You sure you don’t wanna join them?” Skye asked.
Remi stared with his head tilted, and then shook his head. “No. Definitely not. I’ve been to plenty of metal shows, but maybe because this is a festival or something…” He looked around. “I don’t know. Everyone seems a little…”
Skye turned to face him. “What?”
“Aggressive, maybe?”
“What else would you expect?”
“I mean, yeah, I expect mosh pits and black eyes from getting elbowed in the face, but—”
They watched as the crowd moved as one organism, a wave cascading through them. People on the outer edges crashed to the ground.
He pointed to the group scrambling to stand up before they were stomped on.
“Like that. The metal shows I’ve gone to would never have let that happen.
If you get knocked down in the crowd, in the mosh pit, the guy next to you helped you up.
If one of the hardcore metal chicks was ready to get out of the pit, there was always a hand to pull her out.
It’s aggressive in the sense that the energy is heavy and alive and vibrating from the music and the guitars and the drums, but metal shows are about solidarity.
The harder the music, the more of an outcast you are, the more that everyone at the concert is a collective. ”