Chaos

I drape my arm over her shoulders. “Is he waiting in the greenroom?”

When the guys confirm that Jonathan Hess is, in fact, waiting for me in the greenroom, I walk back there with Kit still held captive under my arm. I shake hands with Jonathan. I try not to laugh at the sour look Victoria has on her face. I don’t negotiate.

Ever since we performed with Cutting the Line at their show in Nashville last August, our popularity and sales have skyrocketed. Even Mayhem has had to close its doors to people standing in line, and now, Mosh Records is finally prepared to do the ass-kissing they’ve been wanting us to do for years. The lawyer I staffed checked out the paperwork this morning, and everything was in order. Jonathan’s label is merely a name we’re attaching to ourselves for mutual benefit—his people will help us, and we’ll help his image. For a percentage of our sales, every resource of Mosh Records will be made available to us, and the label will have no say—none at all—over the music we produce or when we produce it. They’ll help with marketing, producing, booking, networking—and all we need to do is keep doing what we’re doing.

Every ounce of hard work I’ve put in over the past ten years gets poured into every letter I sign. I watch Adam sign, Joel sign, Mike sign, Kit sign. And then we all shake hands and leave. It isn’t until we’re backstage again that I pick Kit up and spin her around.

She laughs and squeezes my neck tight while everyone celebrates. “You did it,” she says in my ear when I finally put her down, and when I pull away and see her smile, it’s all the reward I need. Without her, I would’ve celebrated with the guys tonight—I would’ve gotten drunk and hooked up with a groupie after the show—but I would’ve gone to sleep alone.

Tonight, I’ll be next to Kit. I’ll be on her and inside her and it will be so, so much fucking better than it would have been if she wouldn’t have stormed back into my life with her combat boots and her take-no-prisoners smile.

I kiss her one last time—two, three last times—and then we take the stage. Me, Kit, Adam, Joel, Mike. We’re as high as the crowd, adrenaline-fueled by the time Adam finally pulls his mic from its stand and riles up the crowd.

“We just signed with Mosh Records!” he shouts, and cheers rise up from the crowd—along with a few boos. Adam laughs. “And they totally kissed our asses! I’m pretty sure I could say they suck a giant cock right now, and they wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it!”

“But we’re not going to do that,” I chime in while the entire room screams, and Adam grins at me.

“What, do you think I’m an idiot? Of course we’re not going to do that!”

I chuckle into my mic, and Adam spins back toward the crowd.

“Shawn has been working this out for us for years. And you guys helped make it happen. So I just want you to give yourselves and Shawn a huge fucking round of applause before we start this show!” The crowd screams, and Adam turns toward Mike. “I don’t think that was loud enough, do you?”

Mike takes Adam’s cue and shakes his head.

“When you think they’re loud enough, go ahead and start.”

Mike grins, and Joel, Kit, and I motion for the crowd to get louder. Louder. Louder. When every single person in the venue—including the bartenders, the security, our roadies—are screaming at the tops of their lungs, Mike taps his sticks together and hits his first drum. The venue lights cut, the stage lights flare, and with the air glowing blue, I play my first chord. The music hums through my fingers and up my arms, swallowing my thoughts as I work my fingers to the bone. I shout backup into the mic, twining my voice with Adam’s in a way that’s as familiar to me as the weight of my guitar, and he plays to the crowd, the girls, the fans.

The groupies are ravenous tonight, screaming and reaching and threatening to bring down the barricade. We play song after song, watching everyone in the pit sing back to us with their hands in the air and their bodies bouncing to the beat. Two, three, four songs. I stare through the spotlights, skimming over the frantic first row, until—

Until my heart lodges into my throat and I nearly pluck the wrong damn string. If my Fender wasn’t strapped to my neck, I probably would have dropped it.

“You see her, right?” Adam asks me as soon as the song is over. His mic is switched off, and I step away from mine and just nod my head.

Danica fucking Carlisle. Mike’s fucking ex. Cheering from the front row. Desperate for Adam’s attention, my attention, anyone’s attention.

“What do you think she’s here for?” Adam asks, and my fingers strangle the neck of my guitar.

To make Mike miserable. To mess with his head. To summon her hellhounds and ruin the show. “I have no fucking clue.”

Six years ago, she tore Mike’s heart right out of his chest, and now she’s acting like his biggest fan, like she didn’t completely destroy him when she tried to make him choose between us and her.

“Do we tell Mike?” Adam asks, and when I give him a look and shake my head, he nods in agreement. He gulps down his water and walks back to his spot front and center, ignoring Danica like she’s invisible.

For everyone else, she’s impossible to miss. When we start playing again, she jumps up and down, screaming her head off while the poor chick next to her barely avoids flying hair and elbows. While everyone else in the front row is reaching for Adam and losing their minds, that poor girl’s arms are crossed over the railing she’s hugging to avoid getting knocked backward into the pit. She’s a tiny thing who keeps glaring at the bitch next to her, and when Danica yells something down to her and tries to lift her arm into the air, I realize they’re here together.