It was only a matter of time until Xander threw him under the bus.

Justin hadn’t been holding his breath about it, but the better the night went, the more inevitable he knew that moment would be. Until then, he kept his head down, felt the beat, and rode the performance high.

When he noticed Kara smiling at him at the end of the first set, he even caught himself smiling back. Her rendition of La Isla Bonita had been quite the crowd pleaser. Justin had laid down a sexy bass for her, Liam added some soft bongos, and Xander plucked out some fine Spanish chords on his acoustic guitar. It wasn’t polished by any means, but it was a fun jam, and Kara had brought the house down.

Justin continued to say nothing when the groupie and her pal offered to run a merch table for the band. In an effort to stay on safe ground, Justin followed Liam’s lead. He helped retrieve everything from the trailer without a word, helped sort through t-shirts for sizes and styles, even signed CDs for the kids. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t a true member of 10mm Conspiracy, or that his music wasn’t actually on any of the albums, or that he would never see a cut of these sales.

Tonight, and for however long this ridiculous tour lasted, it was all about keeping Xander happy. So Justin took a Sharpie from the box, scribbled an unintelligible word and a smiley face on each cover, and continued to say nothing. Xander continued to pretend Justin didn’t exist. And all was right with the world…for now.

“How about we get Donny Z up here to sing a few? What do you say?” The sun had gone down halfway into the second set, and Xander had every single person at this party eating out of his hands. It helped that most of the adults were tipsy from excessive toasting of the happy couple—as was Donny, who made his way onto the stage and led the company in a boisterous rendition of Will Ya, Will Ya. Donny sang two more before handing the microphone back to Xander and faking a stage dive into the giddy crowd.

“Thank you, Donny!” Xander called into the audience. “It’s tough for me to follow that act, you can bet! If you folks don’t mind, I’m going to take it down a notch.” As he spoke, he switched back to the acoustic guitar.

Kara caught Justin’s eye and motioned him over to her keyboard. “Xander likes to unplug when we end a smaller set like this. Liam will join him with the bongos, but you and I are off the hook now.” She patted the bench and Justin slid in to sit beside her.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You did really well,” Kara whispered. “I don’t know the history between you two, but I do know that you walked up here cold and gave a good performance, and I can appreciate that.”

“You’re very kind,” said Justin. “Xan has always enjoyed…throwing me in the deep end. I’ve had a bit of practice. You’re not so bad yourself.”

Kara thanked him with a stunning smile. “If the music is good, the rest will work itself out.” She patted him on the back. “I have faith.”

“Thank god one of us does,” Justin whispered back. He tried not to put too much stock into Kara’s friendship, but it was hard not to. Deep down, Justin wanted to be loved and feared failure, just like everyone else. Possibly more than most, which was why it had been so easy to lose himself in a California party scene rife with booze and pills. Given the choice between painful, gnawing anxiety and feeling nothing…well…Justin had made his choice.

It had been a bad one.

Given this last chance, this chance he didn’t deserve, he couldn’t make the same mistakes. But here on the stage, his heart pounding, his fingertips still burning from a set well-played and the champagne flowing freely all around him, it was insanely difficult. How easy it would be to take a left turn and go down that dark road all over again…

Gah.

He needed to concentrate on something else.

Justin scanned the partygoers dancing in the dusk. One of the servers turned on the twinkle lights that hung beneath the canopy, and the rest were systematically “igniting” a bunch of flameless tiki torches—a wise decision in a group filled with children and their tipsy parents. Whoever planned this wedding didn’t miss a trick.

She was dancing with the children again, that groupie with the flower in her hair. They were playing some sort of game, where one would do a crazy dance move that the others would mimic, assuming they didn’t break down into giggles first. The ersatz firelight danced over the bare shoulder that peeked out beneath the oversized shirt. She skipped and jumped and laughed like a fairy on vacation from the Wood. Unlike other groupies, this one didn’t seem to care how she looked to other people. But she did care about other things. Like Xander’s band. And those kids.

On the next jump, the fat red flower escaped from her braid. She didn’t notice. Justin thought about replacing it with another, about being close enough to touch that bare shoulder…

GAH.

No booze. No groupies. He really needed to concentrate on something else.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” Xander was saying to the applause. “And now, to close out the evening for you, our own Justin Zatarain is going to sing one last song for you.”

The crowd continued to clap and cheer.

Justin heard Kara gasp beside him. “What?”

“Xan, what are you doing?” Liam stage whispered.

Justin stood up, heart racing a mile a minute. Of course Xander wasn’t joking. The only humor in this situation was that Justin had spent the entire time waiting for this moment. He was almost relieved it had finally arrived.

“It’s fine,” Justin said with forced calm. He held his hand out for Xander’s acoustic guitar.

“Nuh-uh,” Xander said with an evil grin. “You will only use equipment that belongs to you. That’s the rule.”

“Please tell me you’re joking,” said Kara.

“Serious as a heart attack,” said Xander. The audience was still clapping, but their enthusiasm was stating to wane. “What are you gonna do now, Justin?”

Justin’s mind raced. There wasn’t much he could do with just his bass, but he had to make something work. Hell, he’d sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star a cappella just to stick it in Xander’s face. He refused to hand Xander this much satisfaction so early in the game.

Because it was a game. It always had been a game between them. Only back then, the rules had come from brotherly camaraderie, not cruelty.

And then, something else happened. Something that Justin had not expected.

Kara stood up.

“Justin, how well do you know the keyboard?” Kara directed the question to him, but her eyes didn’t leave Xander’s. They were full of fire.

“I can manage,” he said. Alicia Keys wasn’t about to invite him to play on a track anytime in the near future, but he could plink out enough to keep a tune.

When Kara finally did turn to Justin, her face was that of a benevolent angel. “Then she’s all yours.” She stepped out from behind the keyboard and let him take point. She removed the microphone from a stunned Xander’s grasp and affixed it to the stand.

Justin’s hands hovered over the keys. Beneath the stickers of various venues and the battle scars of excessive touring, Kara’s keyboard was a state of the art piece of equipment, with a ton of presets that his bumbling fingers would undoubtedly erase in an instant.

Kara leaned in. “Go crazy,” she whispered. “You can’t screw up anything I can’t fix.”

Justin smiled at that and touched the keys. Kara dragged Xander off the stage, and Liam dutifully followed.

“Hello,” Justin said into the mic, just in case Xander had managed to turn it off before Kara had taken the upper hand. It was still live. “This is a song I’m still working on, so it’s a little rough.” Justin paused to look at the bride and groom. In the time it had taken Xander to carry out his evil plan, the natives had become restless. Two or three muted conversations had already sprung up through the crowd.

“With that in mind, I’d like to dedicate this song to Trish and Andy.” At the mention of the bride and groom, the chatter died down. “Not, perhaps in content, but in the fact that every dream has to begin somewhere. Even diamonds don’t start out polished. And so I present to you this humble little ditty—may it grow to be a great song one day. As great as I’m sure your life together will be.”

That impromptu toast achieved many things. It put the audience back in a good mood, full of more clapping and cheering. It gave Justin more time to settle in and think, with his hindbrain, about what exactly it was he was going to do in the next five minutes. But the pièce de résistance was that the crowd’s enthusiastic reaction really, really pissed Xander off.

“This one’s called Run.” Justin pressed a key with his finger—the wrong key. He made up for it by turning it into Chopsticks, which made everyone laugh. Apologize, Ignore It, or Own It: those were the three tenets of stage performance screw-ups. When possible, Justin always aimed for the last.

He started again, this time in the correct key. That note turned into a chord, which evolved into a melody. It was simple, but the song was simple—he had little more than the chorus down pat. So he started with that.

“I've run here

From the dark that dwells inside

I've run here

Cause there's nowhere left to hide

I've drunk deep

From this empty glass of you

I'm worn thin

Nothing more for me to do

But run here…”

The song was an homage to his mother, and what he remembered of that move across the ocean. She barely had the ability to take care of herself, never mind a bored child with too many dreams and too little fear. Justin fell in with the wrong people, and his mind escaped into places his body couldn’t follow. And now he was here, trying again, ignoring that nagging feeling that told him he would fail…

Justin had been running his whole life. He just had no idea what he was running to.

Not that Xander cared about any of that. Or the bride and groom—after his brilliant toast, they seemed to fall into each other’s eyes and ignored the lyrics completely. The only person that seemed to be hanging on his every word was the pretty groupie. She stepped slowly toward the stage, closer and closer, as if she were a moth and his song was the flame. Justin knew that look. She heard the words, and it spoke to her on some deeper level. Somehow, she understood. So Justin sang to her. He poured his heart into the song and sang to her.

God help him.