Chapter seven
Carter
Drip. Drip.
My hand trembles as the drops hit my left eyeball. I blink rapidly, swipe the excess away with the side of my knuckle, then lift my chin and do the same to the right. The world goes blurry, the mirror smearing into color and light. I pull my lower eyelid down, and there it is again.
The yellow.
It’s faint, but it’s there, clinging to the white of my eyes like a nicotine stain.
“Fuck,” I mutter, scrunching my eyes shut and opening them a few times, trying to blink the fog away.
The bathroom door rattles in its frame as someone thumps it. “Carter, everyone’s ready,” Liam calls.
“Give me five.”
I shove the little bottle of drops into my bag and rake a hand through my hair, trying to tame it but failing. Wild works anyway, it’s what people expect.
It’s officially showtime. The start of ten months of airports and back-to-back concerts bleeding into each other, of sleeping on planes and waking up in time zones my body ignores, of being watched and wanted and never left alone.
On top of that, we have a documentary crew glued to our asses, because apparently, it wasn’t invasive enough being surrounded by fans and media in public, we had to let them into the quiet parts, too.
We agreed to it. Sat in a nice office in New York with Liam and our lawyers, thinking it was an awesome idea. It felt like a smart move at the time. Now that the cameras are actually here, it feels less smart and more like signing up to be dissected in HD.
I kill the bathroom light and step out. Liam falls into step on one side as we leave my dressing room, and Chris, our tour manager, slots in on the other.
We head down the concrete hallway toward backstage.
The vibration from the hyped-up crowd is already seeping through the walls, a low, restless rumble that crawls over my skin.
There’s a group of forty road crew waiting in the loading bay, huddled in clusters around flight cases and cables.
These people are the spine of the whole machine.
Without them, the lights don’t turn on, the microphones stay dead, and the world never hears a fucking note.
The band’s gathered with them, scrolling through their phones, wasting time before the stage call.
“Hey, man.” Kai peels away from the group, drumsticks already in hand, tapping a beat on his thigh. I tip my head at him in greeting.
I punch Theo lightly on the arm and shoulder-check Xander as I pass.
It’s habit now. These guys are my brothers-in-arms, the family I got to pick.
Between tours, we scatter to our corners of the world, pretend to be normal human beings for a minute, see our real families or hide from them, and fill up on quiet before we’re trapped together on buses and planes for the next year.
“We ready to do this?” I ask, taking them all in.
“Hell yeah.” Kai nods, bouncing on his heels.
People who don’t know him assume he’s always on something, what with the jittery energy and the constant movement, but that’s just Kai.
In all the years we’ve played together, I’ve never seen him snort a single line, which is more than I can say for myself or anyone else on this tour.
“Let’s fucking go.” Theo cracks his neck to one side, then the other.
He’s built like a WWE wrestler with a thick neck and wide shoulders.
A regular bass is essentially a toy in his hands.
Liam had to get a custom one made for him so it didn’t look like a ukulele.
He could crush my skull with one hand if he felt like it.
Instead, he rescues street dogs and sends his mom money every month.
We pull in close, arms slinging over shoulders, forming the same tight circle we do before every show. The noise backstage fades a little in the middle of it.
“You good, X?” I ask, glancing at him. He’s quieter than usual, his eyes glazed like he’s somewhere else.
“Yeah,” he starts, then lets out a heavy breath. “It’s just . . . being back here. You know?”
I squeeze the back of his neck, and he closes his eyes for a beat.
I know.
We grew up in different houses in different towns, me and Xander, but we come from the same kind of hell. Now that we’re living in New York, it makes the old shit feel like someone else’s bad movie you watched once and forgot. Being back in Sydney makes it too easy to remember every frame.
“Ten months. Fifteen cities. Hundreds of thousands of fans. Let’s fuck this bitch.
” I grin as excitement pulses through me, synced to the chanting crowd on the other side of the stage door.
I look around at their faces in the crappy backstage fluorescent light, and I’m hit by how stupidly grateful I am that these are the guys in my foxhole. Without them, I’m nothing.
We break apart, and Liam steps forward, cupping his hands around his mouth as he raises his voice. “Alright, everyone, listen up!”
I hop up onto one of the black equipment cases so I can see over the heads, the metal creaking under my boots. A wall of faces turns toward me: techs, riggers, soundies, stagehands, all of them paused mid-conversation.
“We want to thank you all for being here with us,” I call out. “We cannot do what we do without you. Let’s make this the best fucking tour the world has seen!”
The cheer that comes back at me is loud enough to shake the concrete. People clap, stamp, whistle. Best fucking feeling when we’re all on the same team, running at the same thing.
I jump down. Liam claps me on the back. “Let me introduce you to the PrimeTime+ crew.” He angles his head toward a smaller group waiting to the side.
“Hey,” I say, walking over. “Nice to have you on board.” I shake hands down the line.
“This is Dave and Mika”—Liam gestures to the two guys—“they’re the camera operators. And this is Megan, the producer.”
Megan steps in with a big smile and eye contact that lingers a fraction too long.
She looks a few years older than me, but the interest in her eyes is obvious, sliding over me in a way I’ve seen a thousand times.
I know exactly where this will go. I could have her on her knees in two minutes, my cock rammed down her throat, and her looking up at me like I hung the fucking moon.
The image flashes through my head, and my jeans get a little tighter.
I also know that hooking up with the woman in charge of the footage is a stupid idea, even by my standards. Shitting where you eat is one thing; when there are cameras involved, it’s asking for trouble.
“Nice to meet you, Megan.” I give her the lazy smirk that has a proven track record.
Her fingers curl tighter around mine. “Likewise,” she says, the eye contact still fierce.
Alright. Message received. Chill the fuck out.
“Sorry, I gotta take this,” Liam mumbles, pulling his buzzing phone from his pocket. At my nod, he moves toward Chris, already talking as he walks.
“And there’s one more,” Megan says, looking around. “Our photographer. She was here a second ago.” Her gaze skims past the gear, and then her face brightens. “Ah, there she is. Violet Henderson.”
The name strikes me like a chord played too hard.
A smile splits my face before I can get a handle on it, big and genuine, probably stupid-looking, too. This is better than any surprise Liam has ever managed.
She stalks toward us with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her ripped black denim shorts.
Her pale legs are toned, and the fabric is pulled ridiculously taut across the front—I’m surprised she managed to fit her hands in there.
I can only imagine how her ass looks from behind.
Her black crop top hangs off one shoulder, exposing smooth skin and a bra strap, and her hair is a thick, glossy curtain of ink that falls all the way down to her waist. My gaze drops to her boots, heavy and jet-black.
I smile again. She may have changed, but her style hasn’t.
She catches me staring and pulls her mouth into a huge, fake, over-the-top grin, eyes blown wide like a cartoon. “Sorry about that, was in the bathroom,” she says.
It yanks a laugh out of me.
Megan’s jaw goes slack, like she cannot believe someone would say something that human in front of me.
“What can you do when nature calls, am I right?” I shrug. “Theo had to take the biggest dump seconds before we were due to go onstage once, and we had to delay the show for fifteen minutes.”
She gives me a thready chuckle. And fuck me, I’ve missed that sound.
“I’m Carter,” I say, because I don’t know what version of reality we’re playing, whether we’re doing the strangers thing or not. I won’t risk blindsiding her in front of her new boss. “Welcome on board.”
I stick my hand out. No way I’m passing up the excuse to touch her, not when she’s right here in front of me, after years of existing only in the back of my skull.
Her hand gets stuck in her pocket when she tries to pull it out too fast. She tugs, shakes it, curses under her breath, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek not to bark out a laugh.
“Good to meet you as well,” she says finally, when her fingers pop free and land in my palm. Her skin is warm and a little damp. Our eyes connect, and there’s that trace of familiarity, that old magnetic pull between us.
Megan clears her throat. “So, team, we’ll have unlimited access to Carter and the band onstage and backstage while we’re on the road,” she tells the crew. “But their private dressing room and VIP area is off limits for filming and photography.”
I drag my gaze away from Violet’s and force myself to look at Megan.
“We’ll also set up interviews at regular points throughout the tour,” she adds.
“Sounds good,” I lie. It sounds like a fucking nightmare. Being “on” for ten months straight, every high and low caught on camera, every slip magnified, is my idea of hell. God only knows what we were thinking when we agreed to this.
“Looking forward to it,” I throw in with a smile for good measure.