“Adam’s mom bought him one for Christmas, and I played around with it until he decided he wanted to learn too.” Shawn’s smile brightens as he travels back in time. “I think he only wanted to learn for the girls, but after a while, he started writing lyrics and singing them. And I guess the rest is history.”

“What about you?” I ask, and he tilts his head to the side. “Adam wanted to learn for the girls, but what about you?”

He rakes a hand through his hair and says, “It’s going to sound stupid.”

“Tell me.”

“It just felt right,” he explains after a moment. “It came naturally . . . I never wanted to sleep or eat.”

“Or go to school or bathe,” I add, because I know exactly what he’s talking about.

“Or do anything but play that guitar,” he agrees. “I just wanted to keep getting better. I wanted to be the best.”

“You still do.”

He considers that for a moment, and a smile sneaks onto his face—one of his rare ones, the kind that makes his eyes shine a whole shade brighter, the kind that makes me wonder how my feet can be so cold when the rest of me is burning hot.

“So do you,” he says, and when I say nothing back—because my tongue is tied and my heart is in knots—he asks, “Are you nervous about performing at Mayhem this Saturday?”

Our first show. Hell yes I’m nervous, but I’m too excited to feel anything but anxious. The new songs we’ve been working on are amazing—ridiculously freaking amazing. Working with Shawn has been like . . . like working with a legend. Like creating the very piece of art I’ve been a fan of all my life.

“Are you kidding?” I ask. “I was born for this.”

With my pale knees poking through my shredded jeans and my wild black-and-blue hair jutting out of a clip, there’s no question that I look the part. My eyelashes are painted as black as my toenails, and my nose ring is glittering like a snowflake in the cold.

Shawn grins and asks, “What about going on tour?”

We leave in two months, and that daily countdown has kept me up at night ever since he told the guys and me about the tour last week—but not because I’m nervous about performing in big cities for four weeks, which I kind of am, but because I’m nervous about where I’m going to sleep once I’m on the bus. I lie under my warm covers at night wondering if Shawn will be in a bunk above me, below me, across from me . . . I wonder if he’s a night owl or an early riser. I wonder what he wears to bed—if he wears anything at all. I wonder if he’ll bring girls on the bus after shows, and then I imagine myself being the one who shares his covers. We haven’t even left yet, but I’m already fighting the imminent urge to crawl into his bunk, straddle his hips, and—

“Nah,” I say with a shake of my head to clear my thoughts. Shawn eyes me curiously, and I ask, “Are you?”

“A little,” he confesses, and my eyebrow lifts.

“Really? You still get nervous?”

“Not really about performing . . . more just about everything else. If the crowd is going to be good, if the equipment is going to work, if we’re going to be on time—”

“So basically everything you can’t control,” I say, and he smiles at my assessment.

“Pretty much.”

“It must be hell working with a bunch of rock stars.”

“You have no idea. But record execs would be worse.”

“Really?”

“You’ll see. The music industry is one giant cannibal, especially big labels. Like Mosh Records—they’ve been after us for years. But they want you to look a part and play a part and be this part, and the whole time, they’re just eating you alive.”

“Awesome,” I say, and Shawn shrugs.

“That’s why we’re not with them.”

“Even though we could be . . . ”

“Even though we could be.”

I wonder how many offers Shawn has gotten, and which labels they’ve been from, but instead of asking about any of that, I coil my hands around my ice-cold toes again, and say, “What do you think I should wear to Mayhem on Saturday?” Even though I know I don’t have to look a part or play a part or be a part like Shawn just said . . . I kind of want to, at least for our first show, and these shredded hand-me-down jeans I’m wearing just aren’t going to cut it.

“Something warm,” he teases, and I lift my eyes to find him smiling at the way I’m holding my feet.

I sneer at him, he grins at me, and I say, “Maybe I can get Dee to make me something.”

Dee is making a name for herself by designing shirts for the band’s website, but maybe she could do a cute dress or something . . . something Leti would approve of.

“You’ve talked to her?”

“A few days ago at Starbucks.” Whatever happened between her and Joel . . . it left the girl empty. She wasn’t the spirited, catty chick who swung open the door at Mayhem the day of my audition and basically told me to get lost. She’s as broken as Joel, only with better fashion sense.

Shawn sighs and pulls a knee up, balancing an elbow on it and scratching his hand through his hair. “How was she?”

“Hanging in there, just like Joel,” I say, obeying what I’m guessing is some kind of inner girl code by telling the truth without really telling it. The comparison alone says enough, because Joel is the same sort of shell. He goes through the motions—shows up at practices, hits his marks, forces a laugh when everyone else laughs—but even someone like me, who hadn’t really known him before, can tell his light his out. The one that lit for her.