I hand my guitar off to the waiting roadie. Our last show is done.

This leg of the tour is finally finished. It felt like it would never end.

I suck in a huge cleansing breath and thread my fingers through my hair, pushing it back from my face. This has become my ritual at the end of every show—every single show since that last one in Destin. I close my eyes and offer up a silent prayer that, when I turn and look out across the crowd, she’ll be there.

The venue is big, one of the largest we’ve played on this leg, with almost ten thousand people, and deep down, I know I’ll never be able to find her, even on the outside chance that she is here. The roar of the crowd is deafening as it reaches a fevered pitch, the fans waiting for what they’ve come to expect from me.

I turn and stalk to the front of the stage and start my search.

Every entertainment site has pitched this as my sublime attempt at an existential connection to the fans, fostering a personal relationship on a higher level. Bullshit. It’s all bullshit.

I stand at the edge, my toes hanging off the stage, my hand up, shielding my eyes from the glare of the lights. I search every face that I can see. Every face that is turned hopefully to mine.

I’m not going to lie; I have some gorgeous fans. Fucking gorgeous. And I appreciate the shit out of them, but none of them is her.

Exhausted, deflated, I turn to leave the stage with a final wave, followed by screams and cheers. Offers to bear my children—or at least practice making them—chase at my back. And, without fail, a lacy purple bra lands at my feet. Thanks to Kane’s bullshit comment to a reporter about our logo, it’s always fucking purple, and that shit just adds insult to injury. I scoop the scrap of lace up off the floor and give one last cursory glance over my shoulder.

She’s not here.

She’s not going to be.

“Great fucking show, man. That was unreal.” Rand hands me a bottle of water and a towel, taking the bra from my hand and tucking it into the back pocket of his baggy jeans.

“Thanks. Anything we need to do tonight?” I hope like hell that my manager says the magic words to dismiss me, so I can just go back to my hotel room and crash.

“Gavin, I gave you the schedule before the show. Y’all have the VIP room now and then the label’s after-party. I swear, I told you this.”

He did. He totally did. I just want to find my way out of it and be done for a while. This concert is one of the few we’ve had close to where she told me she lived.

I thought maybe we played at her college last summer on our practice tour after we were discovered. Shortly after that, our name changed, and we got the full dose of rebranding including that fucking logo. The bar band Dreams of the Unbroken became The UnBroken, somehow playing on a US tour. I searched for her in the audience, on the street. Everywhere in the eighteen hours we spent at Beekman College. Since then, I’ve been looking for Gracyn at every show, every venue, every appearance.

And she’s never fucking there.

A slap on my back is followed up by sweaty, tatted arms wrapping around me from behind. “You trying to run off tonight, Gav? More pussy for me, amIright?” Kane drawls as he grinds his dick against my ass to get his point across or some shit.

Feeling him stacked up against me like this is nothing new. He’s been pulling this shit on me since he discovered his dick and started exploring all the ways to make it perform. I’ve been blowing him off for years though, and not in the way he likes to hint at.

“Dude, get off me.” I try to shrug him off, but Kane makes an exaggerated display of nuzzling his nose into the tangled, sweaty mess of my hair.

“You know you love it when I wrap your luscious curls around my fist, and—”

My elbow connects solidly with his ribs, and the bastard finally lets go with an oomph.

“Not my type, man,” I tell him as I turn to face Rand, ready to beg for my freedom.

“Don’t start, Gavin. It’s in your contract. You do these two events tonight, and then you get almost two weeks to yourself. Do what you want then. Hide out all day in your hotel room. I don’t give a shit, but tonight? Tonight, you’ve gotta show up and act like a fucking rock god.” Rand is just shy of sticking his finger in my chest to make his point. To his credit, he figures out his mistake and fixes that shit before I have to. I’m so done with these dudes getting all touchy-feely with me tonight.

Resigned, I push past him and make my way to my dressing room. I’ll perform like the fucking monkey he wants me to, and then I’m out.

The door closes behind me, shutting out the backstage chaos and granting me a few precious moments of muffled silence. I strip off my sweat-drenched tee and pop the button on my jeans. I take a hard pull off the bottle of whiskey sitting next to a bucket of ice before pouring a couple of shots into a tumbler.

The denim settles low on my hips as I grab a towel and start the shower. Steam curls into the corners of the room as I shuck the rest of my clothes. Hot water washes over me, its pounding pressure working out the tension in my neck and shoulders. That, and the shower-whiskey I’ve got going on finally have me starting to relax.

I dip my head under the spray, drenching my hair, letting it fall in a curtain around my face. This is my escape. It’s evidently all I’m gonna get tonight, so I take my time in soaking in the heat, letting my thoughts drift off.

Still, after all this time, Gracyn’s the one my mind goes to. The one who occupies my thoughts, who makes me smile like an idiot. And kick myself in the ass.

It was one week—not even. Technically, five days.

Five fucking days, more than a year and a half ago, and I can’t let her go.

The door to my dressing room closes softly as music floods the room. I want nothing more than to be left alone, but the techno lead-in of “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer fills the small space, bouncing off the tiled walls. Not everyone appreciates this song, but I let myself get lost in the repetition of the synthesizer. The lyrics. My after-show playlist is ridiculous. Doesn’t remotely tie in with my music, but whoever is in here clicked the right tunes.

The steam, the whiskey, and the music work like magic to relax me until I feel a hand glide up the slick, wet skin of my back. Fingers slide into my hair. I turn my head, and while the blonde standing behind me is stunning, she sure as shit is not the one I was thinking of.

“Who are you?” I’m astonished at what some women—girls—are willing to do. They will fuck anything and suck the rest just to say they were with a member of the band.

“Grace. Kane said you wouldn’t mind some company.” She rakes her eyes down my body, licking her overfilled lips.

I drop my head back and stare at the ceiling. Of course he did. There is so much wrong with this, all of this.

Did Kane go out of his way to find a chick named Grace just to torment me?

More likely, he told her that was what would get me off.

She brazenly reaches past me to grab the shower gel, her fake tits pressing against my back, and she starts slicking the suds across my torso, her hands slipping lower and lower with each pass. There’s no hiding the fact that my cock is far more interested in what’s going on than my brain is.

I wrap my hand around her wrist, the battle between my brain and my cock in full swing. This girl has no shame. None. And, when she drops to her knees in front of me and wraps her bright red lips around my cock, all thoughts fly out of my brain. My palm slaps loudly against the tiled wall, and I close my eyes and throw my head back, lost in the moment.

But only for the moment.