Frankie looks up at me, her eyes heavy and slow, and she leans the side of her head against the rough cinderblock wall, a smile tugging at her lips. Even now I want to drink her, cover every inch of her with myself, have her warm and safe and somewhere all to myself.

“How are you an asshole even when you’re being sweet?” she murmurs, a smile tugging at her lips.

“It’s just part of my charm,” I say.

“Is that what you think?”

“You seem pretty fucking charmed.”

I kiss her on the temple. I can’t help myself. Normally right now she’d roll her eyes, laugh, but she just sighs and melts into me a little more.

I don’t want her to say it back right now because I’ve heard it a thousand times before. I’ve never said it, but it’s not exactly uncommon — the girls in the front row, screaming it in your face. The girls backstage, that helpless star-struck look in their eyes, who walk up to you and tell you breathlessly.

The girls who moan it when you fuck them, the girls who look you dead in the eye afterward, when you’re cleaning up and hoping they’ll leave without you having to tell them, and say I love you in some sort of desperate bid for attention.

As if, in that moment, anyone could believe them. As if it could be anything but utterly transparent, kind of pathetic, the sort of thing that can only hasten your desire to be alone.

Frankie’s got a crumb of cinderblock on her forehead, her skin pebbled and dimpled where she pressed it against the wall, and I brush it off.

“Don’t tell me I’ve got cinderblock burn on my forehead,” she says.

“You’re a bit worse for the wear,” I tease. “It’ll go away.”

Frankie wrinkles her nose at me, and I take her hands, brush them off gently. They’re both marked and dimpled and cool where she was against the wall, but I take them in mine and simply kiss her again.

I don’t tell Frankie that I don’t want to hear her say I love you back because I’ve heard it dozens of times already after fucking someone, though it’s never been like that. I don’t tell her that she’s the first one I want to hear it from, and there’s a part of me afraid of tainting this perfect moment with a flash of my past.

I might be an arsehole sometimes, but I’m not stupid.

And I know. I already know, so what does it matter?

“We should go before we’re found,” she says.

“I don’t think there’s much doubt about where we are or what we’re doing,” I point out.

Frankie glances at the curtain separating us from backstage, like she’s just now realizing this.

“Shit,” she mutters.

“I doubt it’s the first time someone’s come off stage and fucked behind this curtain if it’s any consolation,” I laugh. “Rock stars are notoriously attractive, dangerous, and sexy, and you’re hardly the first girl to get swept away.”

She raises one eyebrow, puts a hand on my shoulder, and stands, pulling up her jeans. I follow, and Frankie leans against the wall, looking up at me.

“No?” she teases.

I take her by the chin, our faces close in the dark. Already I’ve got the urge to fuck her again, feel her tangled around me, intertwined.

“You’re the only girl to sweep me away,” I tell her. “I didn’t make it five feet off stage, Frankie. That’s not very far.”

I kiss her. I know I’ve got to leave, sign autographs, help pack the drum kit away, do a thousand things that happen after a show that I’m currently leaving to the rest of the band, but I want ten more seconds here.

“I’m just teasing,” she says softly. “The past is past.”

Despite myself, my mind flicks to Alistair. I’m completely fucking certain that he didn’t love her like I do, that he’d not have spent weeks walking the streets of New York looking for her, but he’s got wealth and comfort and a fucking title. Despite tonight and a general upward trend in my fortunes, I haven’t got that.

I haven’t even got a fucking work visa for the U.S. Technically, I’m supposed to leave in a few months. If Trent hadn’t offered up a place to stay I’d be back in Shelton already, working some shit job and surrounded by sheep while staring up at that Alistair’s festering boil of a mansion.

“Fucking right it is,” I say, and kiss her on the forehead. “Now get the fuck out of here, I’ve got important rock star stuff to do, tits to sign and whatnot.”

Frankie just laughs, her nose crinkling slightly, and ducks under my arm. Even in the dark I watch the way she walks two feet to the curtain, back straight and hips swaying, before she pushes the curtain open.

And stops.

“Hullo,” says Nigel’s voice.

I come up besides Frankie.

“Hi there,” she says, her voice perfectly calm and collected. “That was a great show, wasn’t it?”

Nigel just sighs and looks at me.

“Ladies’ W.C. is that way and to the right in case you’re wanting to clean up,” he tells her.

Frankie’s face flares bright red, but she smiles at him.

“Thanks,” she says, gives me a glance, and walks off.

Nigel turns his head to watch her, his brow furrowed, then gives me a look, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. His windbreaker rustles as he does.

“There’s some girl I hear you keep going on about,” he starts.

“Right, that was her,” I say.

Nigel glances Frankie’s way one more time, though she’s disappeared around the corner.

Then he sighs, adjusts his too-large glasses, adjusts his windbreaker, and picks up a clipboard.

“Well now that you’re done with that, we’ve got to double check that all the equipment is...”

I try to listen to him, I swear, but I have a terrible time of it.

* * *

For the record, I don’t sign any tits that night. The crowd at a ‘secret’ show at a small venue in Los Angeles isn’t exactly the sign-my-tits crowd. They think they’re a bit too cool for that.

They’re nice, though. The few who hang around long after the show, once we’re back on stage helping to tie up cables and whatnot are strangely nice. One bloke with a positively massive beard and stretched earlobes comes up just to congratulate me on getting clean, and another simply claps me on the back and says, “Cheers, mate.”

And I’m fucking floored, because somehow this part of it never occurred to me.

I spent weeks in rehab. Months probably. I got out and used again, almost immediately, spent all my time with people who were ghosts the moment I said anything about getting better.

I torched every friendship I had, not least with the band. I went back to England broken and alone, living in my mum’s basement, wading upstairs through her collection of empty gin bottles only when I had to.

And there was no one. It never occurred to me that somewhere out there, people cared that I got clean and stayed that way. It never occurred to me that total fucking strangers had heard my music and hoped for the best for me.

It didn’t feel that way. It felt like clawing my way out of a canyon with my fingernails, no one even watching if I fell, but it’s not. If I were the crying sort, I’d probably be fucking sobbing about it right now.

After a few hours, I find Frankie and Marisol in the green room, both sprawled on worn couches, drinking beers and laughing.

“Oh my God, My Cousin Vinny,” Frankie’s saying. “You can’t do anything else if that movie’s on TV, at least with my parents. It doesn’t matter if they had plans, they’re canceled, because clearly you can’t do anything while Marisa Tomei’s shouting about her biological clock.”

Marisol giggles, and I lean against the door. I’m out of Frankie’s line of sight, but I’m kind of enjoying listening to her and Marisol get along.

Marisol’s been the toughest nut to crack. It’s perfectly fucking justified — I told her that Gavin was cheating on her when he wasn’t, bit of an arsehole move there — but I’d certainly like to get on her better side.

“I’ve never even seen that movie,” Marisol says.

“I think it’s a Jersey thing. I swear I could quote you the whole thing.”

“My house was mostly telenovelas though my dad loves the Terminator movies,” Marisol says. “Maybe because they came out around the same time he moved to the U.S., so that version of Los Angeles seems really accurate, to them at least?”

“The one with the robot wars and... is that the movie with the lava factory or something at the end?”

“That’s the second one,” I finally volunteer. “The hand coming out of the molten metal? Choked me up. Saddest thing I’d ever seen.”

“Explains a lot about you,” Frankie says, leaning her head back on the couch. She’s got a beer bottle in one hand, as does Marisol.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, coming over to sit next to her on the ratty couch.

Frankie just laughs.

“Are you done wrapping all your cables and checking off your lists and sweeping the floors or whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing after a show?” she asks.

“I believe you mean accepting the praise of our adoring fans. And signing tits,” I tease.

“He didn’t sign any tits!” a voice hollers from outside the room, and a moment later, Darcy’s head pops in.

“Neither did you,” I point out.

“Frankie’s much too nice for your bullshit,” Darcy says, still leaning against the doorframe. “Don’t go lying to her about what you’re signing.”

“She’s not that nice,” I say, grinning.

Frankie just smiles, shrugs, and polishes off her beer.

“We’re heading out,” Darcy says. “Good show, see you soon?”

“Right,” I say, waving.

On the other couch, Marisol finishes her beer as well, then sits up straight. Frowns.

Then burps, right out loud. My jaw drops, because Marisol doesn’t seem at all like the belch aloud sort.

“How many have the two of you had in here?” I ask.

Marisol just laughs, standing, bottle dangling between her fingers.

“Two, but I’m a lightweight,” she says, walking for the door. “I’m funner than you think, Liam.”

“Because you can shake the rafters with a belch?”

She tosses the bottle into a trash can near the door.

“I’m gonna go find Gavin. See you two around,” she says, and disappears through the door.

Frankie nuzzles into my shoulder.

“C’mon, pour me into my car and drive me to Trent’s house.”