The world was hazy. Crow tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes, but he couldn’t move his arms for some reason. He blinked away the blurriness and looked down, trying to figure out why his hands weren’t coming up to his face. What he saw shocked him. Leather straps, tied tight around his bloody wrists, the material rubbing his skin raw as his seat jerked up and down with every bump in the road.

“What the…”

He looked up, out the bug smeared windshield. He was sitting in the passenger seat of his tour bus. It was dark out, and they were barreling down the highway, headlights beaming bright and wide ahead of them.

Why were they going so fast?

He looked to the side.

“Angela?” Crow couldn’t believe it even though there was no doubt. Angela was sitting in the driver’s seat, her hands on the wheel, her hair pulled up in a ponytail. She looked oddly comfortable for someone hijacking a bus, in a pair of black sweat pants and a loose white t-shirt.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” Angela gave him an unnerving smile, lit up by the streetlights whipping past them. Crow felt a wave of nausea hit him. What the fuck was going on? “I wasn’t sure I could do the rest of this drive by myself… I also wasn’t sure if I put too much Benadryl in your pancakes this morning.”

“What drive? Where are you taking me? Wh — Holy fuck… it was you. It’s been you this entire time.” The dawning hit Crow like a wrecking ball.

“I’ve had such a difficult time keeping it from you, Crow. Hiding my feelings. I’ve been trying to be professional, hell, I even tried stopping for a little while. I swear, I got so close to quitting you, Crow. But then you’d take the stage and sing your songs and god damnit, I wanted you all over again. All to myself. Crazy, huh? You guys almost had me, too. Had to make up some stuff on the spot. Couldn’t let you figure things out that way.”

“What other way did you want me finding out? Angela, what are you thinking?! We’re friends, you’re my tour manager, I’m gay.” Crow could think of a million other reasons why it would never work out between them, but his tongue got twisted as his throat tightened with fear. He was strapped to a seat inside a bus that was racing down a dark highway with increasingly sharper twists and turns as they drove through the mountains.

I’m fucked.

“I know all that, and I don’t care, Crow. I feel something deeper than all that bullshit. You know, when my husband cheated on me with my sister, I swore to myself I was through with men. After almost marrying a man jailed for attempted murder, and then marrying another actual monster, I decided I was finished. I was done with men. And sisters, too. Everyone. I was finished. I didn’t care. Then, I find out that my niece was his daughter this entire time. Can you imagine that? Married to the man for three years, meanwhile my sister gets pregnant at the same time, a week after our wedding day if I’m getting the dates right. A week. That was all it took for him to come inside my sister. So yeah. I hated men. Didn’t want anything to do with anyone.” She chuckled and shook her head, looking over at Crow while still keeping the bus at a heart-pounding eighty miles per hour. “Then, the same day I decided to kill myself, I get a job offer to be your tour manager. You saved me. We had been friends for years, but it was then that I really saw what we were meant to be. And then your music spoke to me. It changed me.”

Crow had his eyes pinned to the front of the bus, expecting a car to get in their way at any moment, causing them to crash and burn and end it all. Angela would slow around the curves but pick up speed on the straightaways. The curves were beginning to come more frequent as they climbed.

Ethan.

Crow’s heart swelled, cracked, and disintegrated. He couldn’t do this to Ethan. He couldn’t sit back and not fight. Ethan’s words came into his head like a loudspeaker clicking on from far, ‘our love is too strong for any other outcome’. And it was true. So fucking true. There was no way Crow would let this be the end of their story. Not when everything was clicking into place so damn well. Crow found someone who fulfilled him on every single level, while Ethan found someone who reminded him how good it was to love and be loved.

Another thought struck him like a brick across the face. “Where are they? Where’s Ethan?” Did she do something to them? If she had even touched a hair on Ethan’s head, Crow was sure he would have found the strength to rip right through the leather binds and tear her apart.

“They’re fine,” she said, shrugging it off. “I sent them away.”

A truck blared its horn at them as they blurred past, going much faster than a bus should be, especially since the roads were beginning to get more and more narrow, ready to wind through the mountains that bordered whatever town they were currently in.

Holy fuck, what the hell.

“All those letters…”

“Were from me, from the start. I didn’t even show the cops most of them. Sure, I said I did, but I had to keep some things secret. I didn’t want anyone getting in the way. And then… well, Ethan came along. Completely fucked things up. You know? I had laid it all out. I was going to have you loving me by the end of the tour. I was going to have everything go off without a hitch and make you see me as the one for you. But then Ethan walks onto the bus and your eyes go all starry and hazy. You look at him the way I wish you’d look at me. It hurt.”

“And the cancelled show? And that girl? Tricia?”

“The cancelled show was a little punishment. I was just getting so upset seeing you and Ethan together, I had to knock things down a notch. Then you go on a crazy cute date to the creepiest museum ever. I had such a difficult time tailing you that day. Thankfully, I hired the security off of Craigslist, those men were pretty useless as guards. They never suspected a thing. You almost saw me twice, though, but I’m pretty quick. And then Tricia? She was just someone I could point to if things ever turned sour and I wasn’t prepared for it. She was at every show and continued to go to your shows, even after I warned her to stop. I didn’t let security know so that they wouldn’t stop her from attending.”

“You wanted her present for everything that went wrong.”

“Ding, ding, ding.” The bus gave a rattle as Angela kicked it up another gear. “Not only that, but I managed to grab a few strands of her hair. All I needed was to write another note and drop those babies in there. She would have been screwed.”

“You didn’t.”

“Nope. I saw things turning too fast. I saw the tour finishing and you leaving with Ethan and my chances being completely over. I had to act. I had to do something. So I did. Fuck the consequences, Crow. It’s like your new song ‘Confidence’ where you say ‘Looking up at you and falling into blue, don’t think of the consequences. A kiss. A touch. Break all the rules, because, babe, it isn’t lust when it feels this much like love.’ I see what you mean now. Break the rules and fuck the consequences as long as it’s for someone you love.”

“Angela, please. Stop the bus. Please.”

It was all Crow could say as he dug his finger nails into his palms out of nerves, his knuckles paper white, his jaw clenched as the dark world whizzed by them outside. He had written that song for Ethan. The man of his dreams. And now he was going to die and he was going to devastate Ethan again. Crow felt a torrent of emotions pounding into him. He couldn’t let this happen. He had to find a way out of this alive.

The moon was full, shining bright rays through the tall trees that bordered the highway. Thankfully, no one seemed to be out on the road at this time of night. They were also driving away from the city, so less and less people. He had no idea where Angela learned the ability to drive a bus, but she was shifting gears and steering like she was a fucking NASCAR driver. That’s when he remembered her asking the bus driver for random lessons around the parking lot. He thought it was because she had gotten bored. She slowed down as they turned a corner, climbing higher into the mountains. The roads were noticeably thinner. The steel rail was low on the edge of the road, stopping no one from veering off and plunging to their deaths. Crow was suddenly taken back to watching Red drive his stunt cars across empty parking lots, practicing as wheels screeched and smoke billowed. Then he remembered Ethan taking him up to the Sky Tower in Chicago, a place where he had overcome one of his greatest fears with the greatest man at his side.

Jesus. Is this my life flashing before my eyes?

He felt it. Deep down, he felt like there was no getting out of this.

“Just pull over and we can talk,” Crow said, trying to get words past his dry lips. Maybe if he could get her to slow down and think things through, maybe then he could get out of this alive.

Maybe wasn’t good enough. She didn’t stop.

That’s when Crow looked over his shoulder, toward the back of the bus. What he saw made his blood freeze in his veins.

“You killed him.” Crow couldn’t believe it. It was Greg, the bus driver. He was lying face down in a pool of his own blood, his arms had been outstretched. “Holy shit.” Crow’s mouth was desert dry. He almost passed out, but held onto consciousness by a thread.

“Ugh, I know. I wasn’t happy about it, but he wouldn’t get off the bus and I didn’t have much time before the boys at the supermarket realized what was going on.”

Crow gagged. He kept his eyes straight ahead, his mind taking him back to the nights he and Ethan would spend talking. A brief escape from the horror that currently surrounded him. He cried. He felt like it was over so soon. Too fucking soon.

Blue. All he wanted to see again was the color blue.