CHAPTER 1
Bethany
Nine Years Old
Krista is coming over again with her momma, and I am already dreading it. The last time she came over, she took my momma’s new makeup and used it on me.
I didn’t even know it was my momma’s. She just had it somehow and asked me if I wanted to play with it. I said yes because it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and my momma is beautiful. Everyone says Krista is beautiful too.
It turned out she had snuck it out of my momma’s purse, but when we were caught with it, Krista started crying little tears, and her doll face was so pitiful.
I look like I’m having an allergic reaction when I cry—that’s what Momma says. She didn’t say that about Krista’s tears. Instead, she asked me why I would be such a bad influence, and I was sent to my room without dinner. Krista said it might help me out a bit with my weight.
Momma heard.
She didn’t argue.
Present
The people surrounding me are going absolutely wild, out of their seats, standing, jumping, screaming, waving their arms, their signs, their phones.
The pulsing, rhythmic beat echoes around the stadium, loud and deep enough for me to feel it rattling in my chest. The full crowd knows what is about to play out on the stage in front of them, and they are feral for it.
This beat, familiar and hypnotic, means one thing at a Savage Sixty8 concert, and every man and woman here knows it.
A jolt of energy zips through my veins, making me hyperaware and completely on edge.
The stage manager—an old friend who happens to owe me a favor—pulls me by the hand toward the stage steps, dodging flailing limbs and fluttering signs. His startling size and familiarity with the security allow us access to the steps without any issue.
“You know what you’re supposed to do, right? You just go up there and sit down when he says—”
“Hands. He says ‘hands’ in the lyrics, so I hold my hands out to the sides of him, where he can see them, and bla bla—”
Breathe. It’s fine. It’s great.
I have seen this man perform this song hundreds of times …
Or rather, the same performance hundreds of times.
I know what I’m supposed to do. I know what comes next.
I shiver in excitement. My skin feels too full to hold it all in.
This time, though, I have a different view.
One that’s up close and oh, so personal.
“Don’t just move like a damn robo—”
“Jesus. I know. Move like I want his body.” Easy enough.
“Yes. And keep that look in your eyes and on your face.” I look at Jerry’s expression, my mind still on the last thing I said about wanting Nick’s body. “That’s the look. Perfection.”
I shake myself out of my temporary daze.
“Wait, what look?” But we’re moving again, up the steps to the back of the stage.
It’s either boiling hot out here … or I’m just extremely nervous.
A drip of sweat moves between my shoulder blades as the stage lights go dark.
The crowd and instruments go silent for a moment, anticipation building and palpable across the entire outdoor arena.
Thousands are waiting, holding their breaths for what’s next.
The lights drop down to a pulsing blue glow, and that’s my cue.
I step out onto the stage, the silence in the moment eerie and electric.
And then he sings. “Thunder and lightning, sure they can be nice.” It’s low, raspy, and intimate, like the tone of voice of someone speaking late into the night while everyone else is sleeping. He’s telling us secrets, whispering across the pillow.
Despite the crowd surrounding where I stand, my gaze is inexorably drawn to him. Nick Pylot. The love of my life, who has barely ever even glanced my way. He stands directly in front of a stool placed there for this very song. For me.
Well, here we go.
The beat picks back up, a rhythmic, suggestive pulse.
“But it’s the feel of your body against mine that makes me feel electric.
” His hair falls over his face, hiding part of his features as he croons into the mic.
I hit my mark right on schedule and sit on the stool.
My hands twitch on my lap. I think they might know what’s coming and are creating a mind of their own.
I’m sorry, Jerry, my hands gained consciousness and helped themselves.
Nope. No. I got this. Oh my God. I wasn’t paying attention.
I listen closely to the song and do this amazing relax and tense up thing all at once.
“... I just need your hands …”
Oh my God.
I hold my hands up to either side of Nick’s body, shocked they aren’t shaking with the adrenaline of what I’m about to do. The unfamiliar, calloused touch of his hands cover mine and pull them to his chest.
I close my eyes the moment we make contact.
Everything else around me goes quiet as I begin to memorize the feel of him.
His shirt is plastered to his skin, soaked in sweat from his ever-energetic performance.
My hands are lifted with each inhalation and slowly fall again with each word he sings.
I can’t believe I’m touching him. My fingers trace over his collarbone, bare from his unbuttoned shirt.
I want to dig in my nails, but instead, I let them drift down and across his nipples.
I curb the unexpected impulse to pause and pinch, and instead continue to drag my nails down to his delicious abs.
Countless times, I’ve dreamed of touching him here.
For nearly a decade–or longer. And when the ridges tense with a longer-held note, I about melt to the ground from my seat.
For the next few minutes, my fingertips, nails, and palms investigate every crevice before I reach the patch of skin bared just above his low-slung jeans.
I swipe across the length of him, barely skimming the edge where his pants meet his hot skin.
I’ve seen many other women take this role.
Sit in this place. Put their hands exactly where mine currently sit.
The desire to dip lower is another impulse I’ve never experienced before.
My heart is thrumming in my chest. I’m practically panting in my seat while my hands feel every available inch of Nick Pylot’s body.
I’m jolted out of my trance and find myself face to face with the man of every one of my fantasies.
His eyes widen in recognition, followed quickly by some other emotion I can’t name before it leaves his face too.
My worship is interrupted as sound comes blasting in from all sides, enveloping me into its chaos.
The crowd is losing their minds now that the song is over, and it’s my time to disappear amongst them.
I smile at Nick while he takes deep, uneven breaths.
A drip of perspiration falls from his chin and drips down onto one of my hands—which, horrifyingly, are somehow back on his heaving, sweat-covered chest. Mortified, I start to remove both when he jerks his free hand to stop me, covering them once again with his own.
My breaths match his when he leans in and whispers in my ear, “Wait for me. Backstage.”
I nod dumbly at him, but he’s already facing the audience again, riling them up for last summer’s most popular song, Cakeeater.
I scramble out of my stool and exit in a hurry.
The song is incredible, but hits a little too close to home for me.
The drummer, AJ, gives me a knowing smirk as I pass by him into the curtains.
I just breeze past, intent on getting out of sight.
I don’t need all of these people to watch me potentially react with my loud facial expressions and misinterpret it as something it most definitely is not.
I step into the backstage area, where I’m not quite alone, when the first line begins. It’s only Nick’s voice, doing that fine-as-hell crooning into the quiet. Everyone is eating it up. Ha, punny.
“Lying here, in my post-orgasmic bliss.
I wonder what could be better than this.”
A prickle of heat builds behind my eyes, and this sucks. I don’t miss Bobby. I don’t feel broken by what he did to me, but this song manages to put me back into the early days, when everything started to fall apart.
I thought I loved him, and I thought he loved me. Now, though, I’m pretty sure he was just the first person to show me anything that resembled that kind of attention. He would flirt and flatter, then take his pleasure in my body, and I thought it was love.
“Then a pretty little thing came strutting my way,
All long legs, sly looks, and what can I say?”
Krista comes into the room, freshly back from college, and I watch her eyes latch onto my boyfriend. My heart lurches when I see him look right back at her, eyes dilating right in front of my face.
I stumble across the busy space, looking for a room to sit in to hide from my memories. God, I hate this song.
“It wasn’t long before things started to heat up.
So easy to do, just needed to meet up.”
He’s late again. I check the time and see a message from him.
“Sorry, babe. Something came up. Let’s reschedule.
” Krista’s home late that night too. I can see her house through the front window in this stupid, sterile living room.
Someone drops her off, but it’s too dark for me to recognize the car.
Bobby’s car smells like Krista. Bobby smells like Krista.
I stumble into someone, but I don’t look back when a room comes into view. A bathroom. Perfect.
“Lying here in my post-orgasmic haze.”
Trevor’s anguished face as he tells me he saw them.
“Yet all I’m thinking about is those better days.”
I climb in and slam the door shut behind me. It does nothing to quiet the song. Duh, Bethany. It’s a fucking concert.
I arrive at Bobby’s house a week after our conversation. He told me he was going to be out of town after dinner. His car is outside of the building.
“I shoulda known, nothing good comes from being a cake eater.”
I enter his rooms with the key he gave me, but I’ve never used them before. He doesn’t like having me over. Clothes litter the floor leading to the room. I follow them like some kind of fucked-up Hansel and Gretal breadcrumbs to his betrayal.
I lean against the wall and slink down, so I’m sitting on the ground, placing my head against my raised knees. I play out the rest of my memory as the song completes.
“Just a delicious way to say I’m a fucking cheater.”
Moans echo into the hallway, punctuated by the harsh, slapping sound of skin meeting skin.
I could turn around, but I force myself to continue on to the open door, to look.
She’s bent over the bed—ass high, legs spread wide, hair tangled in his hand.
His other hand is cupping her pert breast as he thrusts into her.
She’s a perfect, slender curve for his big body to overpower, to slam into.
They’re in the exact right angle for me to watch his bare cock slide fully in and out of her writhing body.
In case the rest of the imagery left any doubt.
I thought what I already knew and suspected would protect me, but that doesn’t stop my heart from splintering.
The song outside the bathroom changes, but I remain where I’m seated on the floor for just a second. I need to gather myself, and then I can go back out there and still enjoy the concert.
I should have been shocked when I found out my boyfriend was cheating on me, but I wasn’t.
I should have been floored when I learned that he was cheating on me with my best friend.
I should have been, but I wasn’t. Not even a little bit.
I think, while breaking me, it also finally woke me the fuck up.