Dash scoops Tessa into his arms and throws her over his shoulder, laughing as he carries her up to the stage. The show won’t begin for another few hours, but the fans have already been outside for half the day. At the moment, it’s only the roadies and the band inside of Fitzgerald’s. On the outside, Fitzgerald’s looks like a bar from a cowboy movie with its white wooden walls and gray slat roof. It’s two stories, and Black Lilith will be playing in the largest event room on the top floor.

Houston is a lively city. Though, as Tommy had said as they’d gotten off the plane, “Don’t know what we expected from the city that spawned Beyonce?”

The moment they got to the venue, Dash had been flooded with his usual nervous energy. He started running around like a kid in a toy store, delighted with the smudged walls and large stage, and the squeaky bar stools pressed against the walls.

“Tess! Did you see the outdoor area? Let’s have dinner here one night.”

Tessa watched him run around until he finally seized her with delight and carried her up to the stage.

“Look!” he says, waving his hand out toward the room. “This place is going to be full of people in a few hours.”

“You’ll be in your element.”

Tessa is ushered off of the stage by the lighting and sound manager within moments because it’s time for the boys’ sound check. Logan is still talking to Mikayla and some of the roadies, but he waves Dash and the others ahead.

“Dash, can you stand in for me?” he calls from the other side of the room.

“What’s he talking about?” Tessa asks as she joins Harper and Sersha on some of the stools right in front of the stage. They hadn’t even gone to the hotel yet. They’d gone straight from the airport to the venue.

“Logan’s probably got some other stuff to do. That sometimes happens,” Harper says. “I don’t even know. Honestly, half the stuff that these guys have to do before a show makes my head spin.”

“But they’ve still got to do the sound check,” Sersha says.

Sure enough, Dash is strapping a guitar onto his shoulders. It hangs on him like a limb he’d been born with. Slate is sliding behind his drum kit, and Tommy is taking his place next to him, and together the three of them nod to the stage manager.

Quickly, almost without thinking, Tessa takes out her laptop. She’s typing before she can stop herself, though she’s got enough of her wits about her to notice that Sersha and Harper are giving each other knowing looks. Tessa still hasn’t gotten the chance to talk to the pair of them, or Mikayla, on their own. She makes a mental note to set a time with them together.

Slate is the first to start his sound check. Tessa makes notes as it happens, taking every detail in as they come to her, thinking that she might be able to use them, even though she’s not sure when or how yet.

The lighting and sound manager checks the levels on his soundboard while Slate beats his drums. Then Tommy plucks his bass strings, running through a series of melodies—or ‘riffs’ as Dash calls them—that has Sersha smiling fondly. Tessa doesn’t recognize the notes, but she makes a note of Sersha’s expression.

Then it’s Dash’s turn. He winks at Tessa before playing the opening bars of the Harry Potter theme song. It’s not as whimsical as the one in the movies because he’s giving it a dark rock feel. He’s playing it real sensual, practically eye-fucking Tess. It’s fucking hot.

Sweet baby Jesus…

By the time that the lighting and sound manager is nodding over his sound board, Dash is moving toward the mic stand and nodding along, tuning his guitar as he goes.

Tessa’s heart nearly skips a beat when he starts plucking out a tune that she vaguely recognizes. It’s the sort of melody that immediately sweeps through her, filled with melancholy and hope. Tessa thinks that she must have heard it on the radio once. It’s not one of Black Lilith’s songs. She knows that much.

And after a few repetitions of the introductory melody, Dash leans into the microphone and starts to sing.

 

I met you in the dark, you lit me up

You made me feel as though I was enough

 

Then Tessa knows her heart has stopped because she had no idea that the man could really sing. His voice is very similar to his brother’s, though maybe not as refined. But it’s smoky and sexy and full of the kind of youthful excitement that can’t quite be smothered by the lyrics that he’s singing. They may be melancholy, but Dash sure isn’t. He’s even smiling as he starts plucking a slightly different melody—a change in tone? Or key? Tessa’s not good at music, so she can’t tell what the change is. She only knows that something changed.

 

I knew I loved you then

But you’d never know

‘Cause I played it cool when I was scared of letting go

 

“I didn’t know that Dash could hit those notes?” Tessa hears Sersha mutter next to her.

She’s stopped taking notes. Her fingers are almost limp because she’s so enthralled with watching Dash run his fingers over the fretboard of the guitar and sing gently into the microphone. He’s not closing his eyes or swaying the way that Logan would if he were singing—he’s not losing himself in the music. He’s smiling and looking down at the girls in the front row, clearly enjoying himself. But if Tessa were to close her eyes, she would hear a smoky, slightly rough voice crooning soulfully into her ears.

Finally, the song ends and Dash finishes playing. Tessa blinks rapidly the moment his fingers stop moving.

Their eyes meet, and Tessa shakes her head to clear it, quickly resting her hands on the keyboard and tapping out a short note, though in a moment she’s already forgotten what she wrote. Because she’s still overwhelmed with the sights and sounds of Dash playing that song.

Well, fuck me! Now he can sing too.

The sound check finishes pretty quickly after that. Slate and Tommy take turns on the mic as well, singing Britney Spears songs at the tops of their lungs. But Tessa gets the impression that the sound check is long over by this time since the lighting and sound manager isn’t playing with his board anymore. Logan’s and Dash’s voices must be close enough for the guy to get the levels right without Logan. Tessa looks around, but both Logan and Mikayla have disappeared. She wonders where they went. What they’d needed to do that would take them away together.

Probably something important.

When the rest of the band is done with their sound check, and Slate and Tommy are finished goofing off, they jump off of the stage to join the girls. Slate pulls Harper to her feet with a wink, before dragging her off to a hallway that Tessa hadn’t noticed. She can only guess what he’s got in mind. Tommy and Sersha launch into a heated discussion about the nuances of slant rhymes in some of Black Lilith’s songs. A conversation which would ordinarily have fascinated Tessa if Dash didn’t immediately occupy her attention by pulling her out of the stool and maneuvering her around, so she’s sitting on his lap.

“What do you think of Houston?” he asks.

“No problem so far,” she says, and he chuckles in her ear at the joke. With her butt nestled against his groin, she can feel every inch of him even if he’s completely flaccid. She wonders whether wiggling around might wake him up. No, she shouldn’t. Especially not with Tommy and Sersha right next to them.

Tessa glances over her shoulder and realizes that Jared isn’t anywhere to be seen. Had he gone off with Mikayla? Or is he at the hotel sorting out their rooms. She never knows where half of the people in the entourage are. It seems that Black Lilith is a well-oiled machine.

“I didn’t know you could sing,” Tessa says, leaning back into Dash’s chest and enjoying the way his arms seem to naturally wrap around her. If she could just sit here with her eyes closed and his warm body pressed against her, she can almost imagine that they are a couple. “You’ve kept that quiet.”

“Logan’s the singer,” says Dash dismissively. “I’m just the stand-in when he needs to go off and fuck his wife.”

So that’s where they disappeared to.

“You were amazing.”

“Thank you,” Dash says, and she can feel the sincerity in the way his chest vibrates against her back. “But really, I’m more comfortable with a guitar.”

“What song were you singing?”

“Ah… ‘Say You Won’t Let Me Go’ by James Arthur.”

“I like it. I can’t remember hearing it before, but I must have.”

“You probably have. It’s pretty popular.”

They sit together in silence for a while. For once, Tessa has closed her laptop of her own volition. There’s nothing to take notes about right now, and after Dash’s performance, she really can’t think clearly about her job. No matter how desperately she wants to be a professional right now.

“Look at those two,” Dash says. Tessa turns her head slightly to see what he’s looking at—Sersha and Tommy with their heads bent over a notebook. “Lovey-dovey.”

“At least they’ve stayed where people can see them,” Tessa says. “Considering Slate and Logan disappeared pretty quickly with their significant others.”

Dash shakes his head slowly. “That’s what happens when band members get girlfriends. They start pairing off.”

Tessa is struck by his words, and not just because of the fact that she’s sitting in his lap. After all, to an observer, she and Dash would look far more intimate than Sersha and Tommy do right now. No, she’s struck by his words because his tone sounds… bitter? Dismissive? Not at all like he would consider joining the ranks of men with girlfriends. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“Didn’t you ever think of finding someone?” Tessa asks, because they’re friends after all, and friends talk about this sort of thing. “Just to even it up.”

Dash shrugs. “Why would I? It’s more fun just hanging out with my friends. The guys, the girls, you… having a girlfriend would just complicate stuff.”

Tessa has a sudden violent urge to pull away. To turn around and demand that he ask her to be his girlfriend, goddammit. They’ve seen each other naked. She’s got a whole album on her phone dedicated to that fact. And if they’re going to mess around and sit in each other’s laps then why not make it official?

But she doesn’t. She just asks, “Hasn’t anyone caught your eye recently?”

Dash shrugs. “I might have asked Mikayla out if it hadn’t been clear from the start that she was into my brother.”

“I would ask Mikayla out if she weren’t into your brother,” Tessa says, and she hopes her tone is enough to hide the sting she’d felt at his words. But, because apparently her mind has taken over her mouth, she asks, “Would you have asked me out?” She hopes that she got the teasing tone down. Tessa almost feels as though she’s back in high school, trying to fish through a conversation with her crush to see if he likes her back.

But Dash isn’t just a crush. He’s her best friend. If he could be something more, then that would be a bonus. But it’s not make or break.

She tells herself that over and over again.

Dash hums and taps the skin on her forearm. “Nah,” he says. Tessa hates how cold she feels at his words. “You’re too good a friend to fuck that up.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” she says.

And why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free, she thinks but doesn’t say out loud.

“Dash!” Logan’s voice breaks through their conversation. “Could you check in with Cordy and make sure that your gear is all set? It’s gonna be a quick switch over, and I want you confident that the acoustic is where you need it to be.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dash says.

Tessa stands up to find Logan standing behind her and Dash. When Dash stands and gives her shoulder a quick squeeze before disappearing backstage, Logan remains. He’s got a thoughtful look on his face.

“Everything all right?” he asks Tessa once Dash is out of earshot. Tommy and Sersha are still close at hand, but they’re oblivious to anything but the laptop in Sersha’s lap. Apparently, those slant rhymes had been too complicated for a mere notebook to handle.

“Of course,” Tessa says. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Logan gives her a look like he knows something that she doesn’t. Maybe he does. “You know how, with some people, they seem dumb and they’re really not?”

“Yeah?”

He rubs his arm, running his fingers absently along the length of his tattoos. “My brother is not one of those people,” he says simply. “You need to really spell it out for him.”

“I don’t… uh—”

“Jared asked for time off,” Logan says, and Tessa immediately feels her cheeks flush.

So he knows about that.

“I get it, I do. But like I said, Dash really needs things spelled out for him. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tessa agrees, though she’s really not entirely sure what she’s agreeing to.

Is Logan saying that Dash would have a problem with her seeing Jared?

Is Logan implying that Dash is feeling something more than friendship and lust for her?

But Dash had been pretty adamant about them being just friends.

Logan nods once, then wanders over to drag Tommy away from Sersha, leaving Tessa alone with her thoughts.