Chapter 42
Forty-Two
Griffin
The band is called Loose Gravel.
I know this because the guitar player—his name is Cal, by the way—told me when we arrived at The Anchor, and also because it’s on a hand-painted sign above the small stage at the back of the bar.
Loose Gravel has been playing together for four years and tour the festival circuit. They have a following. They are, by any reasonable measure, a real band with real fans, and their fans are all in this bar tonight, along with everyone else who came from the festival and heard there was music.
Piper has been silently hyperventilating for fifteen minutes. When we arrived backstage, the noise of the crowd reached us from the other side of the wall, and she went very still.
Backstage at The Anchor is a storage corridor with two kegs, a box of napkins, and a fire door that doesn’t fully close.
Piper is standing with the borrowed violin in both hands, bow gripped in her right, staring at the stage with the expression of someone doing complicated sums in her head.
Every time the crowd noise spikes through the wall, she breathes faster.
I’ve been watching it build since we arrived.
Cal gives me a look from across the corridor. The look says: Is she okay?
I give him back a look that says: Give her a minute.
He nods and disappears toward the stage.
The crowd beyond the wall swells again.
I look back at Piper. Her breathing is shallow enough that one strong breeze might tip her over.
She turns toward me, and before I can ask if she’s okay, she blurts, “Griffin, I’m going to shit myself.”
“Real classy, Pipes.”
“I’m serious!” she hisses, eyes wide. “I can’t do this.”
“Of course you can.”
“No, I can’t.” She gestures wildly toward the curtain. “There are so many people out there.” She comes toward me with the violin and bow held against her chest. “I can’t do this. I said yes without thinking, and I thought it was a good idea, but it was not a good idea.”
I peek around the backstage curtain again.
Yeah, it’s fucking full.
Bodies are packed together. People are shouting for drinks. The lights are low, and the energy is high. It’s the kind of crowd that devours live music.
“You’ve played to thousands of people,” I remind her.
“That was before.” She grips the violin tighter.
“Before what?”
“Just… before.” Her voice cracks on the last word.
For the first time all week, she looks genuinely afraid.
She’s been wild and loud and alive here. Dancing, laughing, throwing herself into everything. But right now, she’s vulnerable in a way she doesn’t let many people see.
“Hey,” I say, stepping close. “Breathe.”
She tries, but it comes out uneven.
“Talk to me,” I say.
She swallows hard. “I feel…” She tries again. “It’s different now. It feels… exposed.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
She opens her mouth, then closes it before she looks in the direction of the crowd.
Before tonight, she was playing in a field with strangers and laughing. Before that, she was in a music shop in Mira Cove because an old man with a sign told her to play. Before all of that, she was a woman who hadn’t touched her instrument in months.
She looks up at me, eyes glassy. “Maybe,” she whispers.
“It’s not a bad thing.” I take her chin gently and make her meet my eyes. “Go out there and smash it, baby. This is what you were born to do.”
Her breath stutters. She searches my face like she’s trying to find something steady to hold onto.
Then she shoves the violin at my chest. “Can’t you do it?”
“I can barely clap on beat.”
I swear she stomps a foot. “Just go out there and… do something!”
“What?” I ask. “Stand there and look tall?”
“Yes!” she says, almost shouting. “Do that!”
I laugh under my breath. “No one wants a six-foot-three decorative lamp post on stage.”
“I do,” she mutters.
She looks so damn scared, but underneath it all, there’s a longing she won’t put into words. She wants to be out there. She’s just terrified of wanting it.
“You could just stand there and look structural,” she says. “Nobody has to know.”
“I haven’t played an instrument since I was nine. Even then, it was three chords on a guitar because my grandmother made me,” I say, which isn’t the point right now. “I can’t play violin.”
From beyond the wall, Cal’s voice comes through the mic. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special guest joining us tonight—”
Piper freezes.
“Oh God,” she whispers. “Why would they say that? Why would they use those words? Special guest? I’m going to vomit, or faint, or die.”
“Hopefully not all three.”
She shoves me in the chest. “You’re not helping!”
“I’m trying to keep your expectations realistic.”
She grabs my shirt. “Griffin, if I shit myself on stage, I will never forgive you.”
I rub a hand down her back. “Noted.”
Another cheer rises from the crowd when the band calls her name, and Piper looks at me like I’m sending her into battle.
“I can’t,” she whispers.
“You can,” I counter.
“I’ll trip.”
“Then fall gracefully.”
“I’ll mess up.”
“They won’t know.”
“I’ll—”
I stop her by putting my hands on her cheeks with just enough pressure to pull her back into herself. “Piper, you are going out there.”
She swallows hard.
“And you’re going to take the roof off this place.”
Her lower lip trembles, so I do the only thing left.
I smack her ass hard.
She gasps. “Griffin!”
I point toward the stage. “Go.”
The band calls her name again.
The crowd starts chanting.
She looks over her shoulder at me one last time.
I nod.
She steps forward, and right when she hesitates, I put a hand on her lower back and push her gently onto the stage.
At the sight of her, the crowd erupts.
Her shoulders go stiff for one second before she shakes it off and moves toward the mic.
The light hits her. The room quiets. The energy shifts.
She looks over at me from the stage wings, and those green eyes find mine.
Then her chin comes up, her shoulders drop, and she raises the violin.
I know she’s going to tear the place apart.
I put my back against the wall, cross my arms, and listen.
From the other side of the fire door, the psychic appears with two drinks. She hands me one. “Told you.”
I look at her.
“Scorpio rising,” she says, nodding toward the stage. “Fixed sign. You’re not going anywhere.”
The fuck?
From the bar, Piper’s fiddle opens up, and the crowd loses their collective mind.
I think about a girl in a sundress pressing a keychain into my hand five years ago so I wouldn’t forget where home was. I think about how little the man she almost married actually saw her. How small she had become to fit into his life.
And I listen to her now because Piper says so much through her music.
“Yeah,” I say under my breath.
I’m not going anywhere.