Chapter 24
Finn
The show was amazing. I could have watched from backstage, but I preferred the view from the audience with everyone else. Juliet wore a black shirtdress over tights and lace-up Doc Martens, like she’d escaped the nineties, and she’d put on her dark eyeliner. The only pop of color on her goth look was her bright red lipstick. She played like a badass and was as sexy as a dream under the lights.
The Road Kings were going to tour. It wasn’t surprising. If the Road Kings didn’t bring Juliet on tour, they would be much stupider than I thought they were. The vibe was different without Neal Watts onstage, but Juliet changed the energy, made it crackle and spark. She was in her element, playing with musicians who gave her every chance to do what she was capable of. They were already better than they were the last time I’d seen them in Portland. Of course they’d go on the road.
The Road Kings didn’t do long tours anymore, but any tour with Juliet would be a success. So they’d do another. And another. If I had to guess, they’d keep her even after Neal came back, switching off bass and rhythm guitar between the two of them. It’s what I would do if it were me. She was already going to play on the next album. Juliet had always been good enough to deserve the spotlight, and it was finally happening. She was getting it.
She’d get new opportunities. Money. Celebrity. She’d meet guys who weren’t me.
I looked at the woman onstage and I wanted every piece of her, the wild pieces and the difficult pieces and the soft, sexy, vulnerable pieces. I wanted her angry pieces and her bitingly funny pieces. But I’d had her for only a weekend, and I didn’t know if I would ever have her again. Was I supposed to try and tie her down, keep her close to me? Was I supposed to tell her not to go? I didn’t have it in me. Juliet had waited so long, worked so hard, and this was what she wanted.
After “Bad Night” ended and the show emptied out, I made my way through the crowd toward the security guard manning the backstage exit. I stopped when someone tapped my shoulder.
The guy was in his twenties, with light brown skin and curly hair tied back in a man bun. “Sorry,” he said politely. “This sounds crazy, but are you Finn Wiley?”
I smiled. I hadn’t been recognized here in the dark, wearing a black baseball cap. The No One Expects Finn Wiley effect. The fact that this guy had picked me out of a crowd was actually flattering.
“I am,” I said to him. “Nice to meet you.”
“Oh, my god. My god. I knew it was you. This is so exciting. You need to make another album!”
The request was surprising. My fan interactions were always about nostalgia, about how old they were and where they were when they listened to “Ice Cream Girlfriend.” No one ever talked about my other albums or assumed I had a future music career.
I signed an autograph for him and took a selfie. His name was Nathan, and I thanked him and moved on before the people around us could get curious about whether someone actually famous was in the crowd. Then I made my way to the security guy and showed him the pass I’d picked up at the will call.
Denver, not Juliet, had put me on the list. I had the feeling that Denver either suspected I was involved with Juliet, or he wanted me to record something at Road Kings Studios so he was buttering me up, but it didn’t matter. I hadn’t been backstage anywhere in years, and the smell of sweat and floor cleaner floating down the low, dark corridor brought back visceral memories in my head. I had been backstage in stadiums in Paris, Rio, Tokyo. I had been seventeen, excited, terrified. Sometimes Dad was with me. Other times, I was alone. I had played shows when I was sick, exhausted, recovering from a hangover, or sweating out last night’s coke high. My childhood and formative years had happened in dressing rooms, green rooms, buses, airplanes.
Denver met me in the hall. “Finn! You made it!” He hugged me like we were old friends, unselfconscious about the fact that despite changing into a dry shirt, he was otherwise soaked in sweat.
I hugged him back and felt something loosen in my chest, something that had begun to close off when I left music, that had sealed completely when Dad died. It didn’t matter that I’d only met Denver once before in person and talked to him on the phone a couple of times. There’s a feeling you get when you meet someone you instantly understand. “Incredible show, man,” I told him. “You killed it.”
“Thanks. This is a fucking honor.”
I rolled my eyes. “Shut up.”
He shook his head as he led me down the hall to the green room. “I played The Spin for my girlfriend last week and she fell in love with it. It’s on nonstop rotation in our house.”
The Spin was my third album, the one I had poured my heart into and that had barely sold. It was like Denver Gilchrist knew the immediate route to my heart. “That’s nice to hear,” I managed, hoping I sounded casual about it.
“Come meet the rest of the band.” He pulled me into the green room.
The first thing I saw in the green room was Juliet. She had a half empty bottle of water in her hand, and I felt like I was suddenly breathing different air. She went still when she saw me.
Denver introduced me to Stone Zeeland and Axel de Vries, and I shook their hands, congratulating them on a great show. Will Hale, the band’s manager, was also there, and he shook my hand, too. Will was tall and clean cut, and though he was dressed out of place for being backstage at a rock show, he looked comfortable here, as if he spent his working life in various green rooms. I caught him giving me a look that was quietly assessing, so I gave him one back.
Then I turned to Juliet. I didn’t touch her. I couldn’t. “Juliet,” I greeted her, trying for polite.
“Finn,” she greeted back, matching my tone.
She wasn’t going to give me anything. I hadn’t thought she would. She wasn’t surprised, because I had told her I was coming. But she had locked everything down. Maybe because she was nervous, or maybe because she didn’t give a shit that I was there. She wasn’t going to give a hint one way or another.
I turned back to the rest of the band. “So when’s the tour?”
Stone and Will exchanged a look. Despite how differently they dressed, they somehow had a resemblance between them. You only noticed it when they stood side by side. “In a few weeks,” Will answered me.
Axel grinned. “We’re not leaving until after the wedding, of course. That was already in the schedule. You two have to do your thing.”
“We want pictures.” Stone had a glint of amusement in his eyes. “Lots of pictures.”
“Anyway, show’s over,” Denver announced. He gestured to Will, Stone, and Axel. “We’re all going back to the hotel to behave, like the old, married men that we are. You two have fun.” They all grabbed their things and started to file out of the room. “Later,” Denver added with a jaunty wave.
In a moment, they were gone, and Juliet and I were alone.
“What was that?” I asked her.
Juliet had drained the last of her water, and she threw the bottle into the bin with an excess of force. “That was my band being shitheads. It’s what they do.”
I felt myself smiling. “What did you tell them about us?”
“Nothing.” She scowled, the classic Juliet scowl that was intimidating and somehow hot. “I told Denver we fooled around once. I think they gossiped like a bunch of old ladies, and now they’re setting us up.”
“That’s nice of them.” I stepped into her space, catching the scent of her sweaty skin, flushed from the exertion of playing a show. “Since I haven’t seen you in weeks.”
I traced my fingertips along the curve of her hip, a test. I watched her chest still as her breath caught.
Encouraged, I stepped even closer, so we were almost touching. I lowered my head and touched my lips to the side of her neck. “That was an incredible show,” I said. “You were amazing. You always are.”
She gasped, and then she whispered, “Finn.”
My hot, prickly woman. Was she tangled up in her own head again? I could fix that. “Do you know what I remember about performing?” I asked, my breath on her neck as I moved a hand to the small of her back. “Afterward, there’s all this adrenaline and pent-up energy. It’s pulsing through your veins. It takes hours to come down, and in the meantime, you feel like you might explode. The only relief is to have a release of energy.”
“Shut up.” She contradicted the insult by pressing her hands against my chest, resting them there, her fingers flexing. “Why did you come here, Finn?”
Was that a serious question? “I came to see you play.” I let my hand move down the curve of her ass, and then I began to lift the hem of her skirt. “I love watching you play.”
Her palms moved down to my stomach as her skirt moved up her thighs. We were in a gravitational field, unable to keep from touching each other. I kissed the corner of her lips.
“Is that the only reason?” she asked. “To see me play?”
I paused. I felt, suddenly, like we were on a razor’s edge, like I’d stumbled into a moment that could end us in a heartbeat. She needed to hear something from me that I couldn’t predict and had no script for. If I hesitated too long, she’d think that I only came here tonight to meet the Road Kings, or worse, that I only came to get an easy lay. It was how the men in her past had treated her. She was still testing me.
But if I told Juliet everything I felt about her, she’d take it as a plea to put me first, over everything else. She’d think I’d come here tonight to tell her—or beg her—not to go on tour. If I told her everything, I’d lose her.
I pressed a soft, sweet kiss to the side of her neck. My hands had stopped moving. “I missed you,” I said. “I want you any way I can get you. Whatever that means.”
Juliet drew back to look at me. Her hands left my stomach and she grabbed the front of my jacket, as if she wanted to shake sense into me. “You shouldn’t want that, Finn.” Her gaze was serious on my face, so easy to get lost in. Her hair was tousled and sweaty, her makeup imperfect, the red lipstick mostly worn off. She was a rock goddess and the woman I knew, both at the same time. “You should want more than that,” she told me. “You deserve more.”
I did want more, but I wasn’t getting it tonight. “I’m patient,” I told her.
“I’m going on tour,” she said.
“You’re worth waiting for,” I replied.
She blinked at that, flinching.
“You are,” I told her. “Stop overthinking, Juliet. Let me give you orgasms tonight. Go to Alistair and Vicki’s wedding with me. Go on tour. When you get home, come spend the weekend at my place again. Walk my dog with me. We can do a repeat of what happened in my studio. I liked it.”
Her gaze flared at that memory, pure lust crossing her expression. But she was thinking so hard, spinning everything white hot in her overactive mind. “And that’s it?”
Never. That would never be it, because I would never have enough of her. “If you want more, there’s more,” I said. “I told you, I’m patient.”
“And what about you?” she challenged me. “While I go on tour and make music, you’re going to stay home and wait for me?”
My gaze left her face, and I looked past her shoulder, thinking. She was still testing me, and I had no idea if I passed, except for the fact that she hadn’t pushed me away. “Let’s see,” I said. “If you mean sexually, then yes, there’s no one else. But if you mean musically, I’ll be doing some work while you’re gone.”
She was staring at me so intently, she could practically see the inside of my brain. “The songs,” she guessed. “You’re going to put out an album.”
“I’ll go to L.A. to talk to some people,” I admitted. “But it isn’t a done deal. Far from it. This album happens on my terms, or it doesn’t happen at all. I’m not a kid anymore, and I won’t be treated like one.”
“Shit,” she said softly.
I looked back down at her. I thought she looked stricken, but before I could say anything, she reached her arms around my neck and pulled me down to kiss her. Softly at first, but then her lips parted, and we were so fucking helpless.
She pulled away, scraping her teeth over my bottom lip in the process. “I don’t fuck backstage at shows,” she rasped. “It’s a rule of mine.”
“That’s a stupid rule.” I kissed her neck, then sucked gently, making her moan.
She let me do that for another minute, convincing her.
“My hotel room,” she finally said.
I lifted my mouth from her sweaty, delicious skin.
“Perfect,” I said. “Let’s go.”