Chapter 17
“Hey,” I said as I walked around the stairs to find West sitting on the couch, forearms against his knees and eyes locked on my guitar. “You okay?”
He stood, and his hand went the back of his neck. “I’m torn.”
“I’ll be fine, I promise,” I replied as I stepped forward and put my hand on his cheek. “He won’t even know I’m there.”
West’s eyes snapped open, locking on mine. “He’ll know.”
“It won’t matter,” I replied as my stomach twisted.
His chest rose up, and when he spoke his words were a pained whisper. “That’s what I keep telling myself…but there are things you haven’t said.”
I love you.
My blood rushed in my ears as I stared at his green eyes, flashing back and forth over mine. The color deepened as the moments ran into one another.
Words. They were just words, but while West said them, I hadn’t returned them. West looked down to my forearm, where the tattoo that brought us together was and then brought it up to his lips. My chest ached as I felt the trembling of them against my skin.
“You know, don’t you?” he said as his mouth lifted.
That he loved me? I felt it with every fiber of my being.
If I loved him or not? I swallowed hard. I did know. A knock on the door pulled us apart, and his hand raked through his hair.
“It has to happen sometime,” he said to himself more than to me. He nodded over my shoulder. “Go have fun.”
I leaned up on my toes and kissed him, my lips lingering over his as I pulled away.
Words. They were just words, but they stuck in my throat.
“I’ll be home soon,” I said, and he nodded.
I froze with my hand on the doorknob, staring at the wreath on the door.
“Are you coming, or what?” Charlie called as I was about to open it back up. Instead, my feet propelled me towards the car while my heart tried to drag me back.
I tried to have a good time, but all I could think about was the desperation in West’s eyes. He should know how I felt. The words stuck on repeat in my head, making me sick to my stomach. I closed my eyes, and Bobby’s face found its way there. I could feel the heat of his lips against mine, hungry in a dream that was all too real. Adam wasn’t the problem, was he? My palms went slick against one another as the Palladium came into view. I’d know as soon as I saw him.
“I can’t believe we’re here!” Charlie said, bumping shoulders with me and giving me a soft smile. She cocked her head as I forced my lips to tilt upward. “You okay? You look a little green.”
“Yeah, sushi isn’t sitting well,” I replied as the limo stopped.
“I can’t wait to see Adam Beckerson. I wonder if he sounds as good live?” she asked, and my body tensed because I knew he did.
“I’m sure he’s great,” I replied as the door opened. Charlie squealed, and I stepped out into the cold December air. The rest of the team poured out after me with broad smiles on their faces. I shook my head as I trailed behind them. They were so excited for something so simple. It wasn’t like the tickets were impossible to get, or wicked expensive. I wished I could be as enthusiastic as them, but all I wanted to do was call West and have him pick me up; to talk to him about the things going through my head.
But I couldn’t.
I needed to face this on my own. I needed to see Adam. I needed to straighten out the mess of feelings rioting inside my brain and messing with my heart. We pushed into the room, already buzzing with activity, and I kept my eyes on the pointy tips of my red pumps. Sweat dripped down my back as I fought back waves of nausea.
I didn’t want to do this.
I didn’t want to know.
Charlie grabbed my arm. “Ah! There he is.”
Of course, Fade Burn was opening. I turned slowly, and my body flushed cold.
Adam.
There he was on the stage, only twenty feet away, but as the crowd crushed against me, the tightness in my chest loosened. He wouldn’t be able to see me amongst all these people. My jaw dropped as I fought the barrage of emotions coming over me.
He looks amazing.
His right arm was filled with tattoos now. They were ones my boyfriend put there. The lyrics spiraled from his wrist all the way up until they disappeared underneath the sleeve of his t-shirt. I didn’t know what song it was, but my head pounded to remind me I knew someone who did.
Charlie leaned over, fanning her face. “He’s not West, but he’s hot, right?”
He’s not West.
The thought rammed into me, and I found my body shifting backward as if someone physically hit me. Neither was Bobby.
No one was West.
“Just different,” I managed to say as Charlie squeezed my arm and looked at me with dilated pupils.
“I know you love, West, but I mean, come on! You still have eyes, right?”
My breath caught in my throat as I looked over at her.
Love.
Just a word.
Adam’s voice boomed through the room, and my eyes darted back to the stage as my body began to tremble. “Good Evening, Boston!”
The pieces of me I lost found one another, colliding with my heart before disintegrating as I stared up at him. The sound of the drum crashed into my skull, and at that moment, I knew why I needed this. The guitar began to play, and the room spun. Adam’s voice joined, echoing through the speakers, and I gripped my arms to my chest.
“So I break you…Until you shatter.”
His voice cracked as his eyes locked on me, somehow singling me out in a room filled with hundreds of screaming fans. I wondered if he was reacting to me being in the venue, or if it was purposeful, to show the emotion of the song. It didn’t matter what the reason was. Tingles shot across my arms, coursing through my body with a chill despite the sweat dripping down my back. I never even bothered to listen to the album. I had no idea what to expect.
“Don’t you see my fate?
The shards of you
The shards of me…draw blood with each step I take
I should’ve known…but I was powerless
If only I could stop the tide as it drags me to my fate.”
My chest heaved against my arms as I fought the spinning of the room. Adam was talking about me. The beat darkened, and I watched him, my eyes unable to pull away even though I knew I needed to get out of there. I was going to pass out if I kept watching, but God, I needed to. I needed the reality of what his voice was telling me. It was like the air I needed to breathe, and the pause in the music made my eyes pop with stars from lack of oxygen. When he opened his mouth, a scream came out.
“Don’t you see!”
His voice drifted back to singing. “You’ll forsake me with each breath you take.”
He leaned forward, grabbing the microphone as the muscles in his neck tensed with another scream. “Can’t you see!”
The scream faded into singing. “I’ll only shatter.”
Then returned and shook into me. “Don’t you see!”
“I’ll break you.”
The crowd tilted forward, and the world seemed to move with them shifting me until my feet seemed to be heading in the same direction. My stomach rolled as the heat in the room slapped into me, sweat now dripping down my chest. The song continued.
“Emptiness in silence,
Nothing will bring me back to you.
Beneath the waves of pain, I drown.
Let me succumb to my fate.
It’s my lack of faith!”
His voice broke at the end of the scream, and the crowd roared. I grabbed onto Charlie’s jumping body, and she looked over at me, her smile quickly disappearing as she looked down at me and stopped moving.
Adam’s voice softened as he whispered-sang. “That anything will be able to take me back to you.”
I couldn’t hear Charlie over the crowd as my eyes moved from her back to the stage. Adam’s hand reached forward as the other gripped the microphone and his forearm rippled beneath the ink. He growled out the next lyrics.
“Beneath…there’s no heart,
No soul.
I’ll set you free.
Every part of me, and the emptiness in silence,
Will bring me back to you.”
Emptiness in silence? Silence could say so much. It had said so much.
Adam grabbed the microphone off the stand and put his foot on the blockade, jeans tightening in all the right places. The mic went into the crowd as they screamed the lyrics. “I’ll shatter…I’ll break.”
The microphone went back to his lips as he growled the rest. “My soul!”
I blinked hard. How could I make it through an hour of this? Lyrics so pointed at me, and Adam so utterly in control of everything?
The music softened as Adam sang.
“Somehow I’ll find my way,
Even in the darkest fate…
To my heart…”
Me. He wanted to find his way back to me, or when he wrote the song he did. The room spun as the cacophony of the screaming crowd burst. My stomach lurched as I turned, rushing to the violent red EXIT sign. I slammed my body into the swinging doors as Adam’s voice whispered across the room.
“My soul…the missing parts of you…back to shore.”
I looked to the left and the right, my hand covering my mouth as I looked for the sign for the restroom. My eyes landed on it, and I stumbled into it, pushing the door open and grabbing for the trash bin just as my stomach lurched again. I put the trash down, moving to the sink and turning the water on to splash it over my face. I braced my hands against the sink.
Missing parts of me?
He didn’t even know me anymore, and I didn’t know him. Hell, I wondered if we ever really knew one another. If he had known me, he’d have figured out the Bobby thing and left me be.
Wouldn’t he have? Did it matter?
I looked up to the mirror just as the bathroom door swung open, and as I stared into West’s green eyes in the reflection, I knew what I came here to figure out.
I was utterly in love with West.
That was it.
It didn’t matter if things were all reversed about Adam and Bobby. The only thing that mattered was the man standing in front of me with a look in his eyes like I’d shattered him. I turned slowly to look at West, and he looked over his shoulder before entering the room. I rushed into his arms, and his body trembled against me as his hands tangled in my hair.
“Are you okay?” His voice was thick with emotion.
I nodded into his chest, breathing in his scent until it calmed my senses. I looked up, and he took my face into his hands.
“I arranged for you to get backstage,” he said, and my chin pulled back into my neck. He pushed a piece of hair out of my eyes, his gaze following his hands instead of looking at me. “You need to talk to him.”
“Yeah,” I replied, and his chest hitched. “But not because of the reason you think.”
He licked his lips. “You can’t know what I’m thinking.”