The best thing about small club gigs is the intimacy.

Maybe a thousand people would fill this place to capacity. The stage is so small if I swing my mic stand I’d knock the guitarists over like dominos. The lighting isn’t great and the acoustics are going to drive Noah nuts, but it’s dingy in the best way. The burger I had an hour ago was fantastic, the beer is ice cold, and the waitresses have just enough attitude.

I peek out from the heavy red drapes and scan the skinny balcony running above the bar on the right side of the room. There’s a few tables up there, and Terrel made sure they were reserved for whatever members of our crew wanted to check out the show. And get some free drinks.

This isn’t our favorite type of show to do these days, but it’s returning a long overdue favor for a promoter, so we’re making the best of it by having our crew take advantage of the VIP treatment.

Evie isn’t up there yet. Neither is Lass, but others are starting to filter in.

“Need to install a GPS tracker in the woman?” Terrel asks from just behind me. I straighten and bump my shoulder against him. He’s peeking through the curtains too.

“Pretty sure that would not be appreciated.”

“No, it wouldn’t. Lass texted about five minutes ago. They got stuck in some traffic but should be here in twenty. May miss the first song.”

“It’s not like they haven’t seen us play before.” I shrug.

One dark eyebrow wings up just enough to expand the white of Terrel’s left eye.

“Is this the part where I get the big brother speech?”

“Is there something going on that needs a big brother speech?”

Big brother advice, maybe. A big brother warning wouldn’t deter me. “That obvious, huh?”

He scans the entire place once more before closing the curtains and turning to me with a smile. “Your complete disregard for subtlety is my favorite thing about you.”

We’re in the third song before I finally catch sight of Evie and Lass picking their way up the stairs to the balcony and something in my chest does a weird flip. She’s still got her cutoffs on, along with the sturdy black work boots she wears all the time and a white tank top. Her hair is braided into low pigtails and one of our crew baseball caps hides her expression.

My dad is right about one thing. There’s just something about a woman who can rock a pair of cutoffs.

The unpredictable thing about invite-only club gigs is what kind of audience you get.

For the last five years, we’ve been spoiled. Sold out shows, rabid fans singing back every word, screaming for more.

Tonight, they’re making us work for it.

Unlike our first shows, when we were the often the first band on a six-band roster and the audience was two bartenders, a bored waitress, and a bouncer who couldn’t care less, we have our own cheering section.

A dozen of our crew are jumping up and down, standing on the chairs, and making more noise than the people on the floor. I catch James’s eye, and even he’s smiling at the display.

Well, then. We’ll just play for them.

I turn and signal Bax to switch the next song. Instead of our latest hit, we pull out a cover we rarely play anymore, a punk rock version of Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home.”

Lass screams when she recognizes it, then grabs Evie’s elbow and hauls her up onto a table to dance.

A few of the guys jump on another table and pull out the air guitar, but I have no idea who because I can’t pry my eyes off Evie, the way the swirling lights highlight her movements as she dances, the giddy smile on her face. She’s singing along too, now.

I make a mental note to take her to the next Sunset Strip Festival so she can dance like that all day.

Whether it’s the song, or the infectious fun our crew is having, it works. By the time we segue back into our own hits, the audience is coming around.

All their fists are up when we hit the stage for the encore.

For five misfit kids who were constantly told we were a one-trick gimmick, victory is, once again, fucking ours.

The bad thing about private club gigs is how long it takes to meet all the people on the host’s VIP list.

Noah stuck it out with me, but the rest of the guys hightailed it back to our private green room an hour ago. I clean up quick, throw on an old t-shirt and my DGAF jeans and hunt for Evie. Maybe she’s up for some late-night barhopping.

I turn the corner toward the green rooms and stop short.

“Evie?” Three fast strides take me to her side. She’s a bit pale and too still as she stares at the door with Bourbon Suicide scrawled in black marker on a piece of copier paper taped to it over a bunch of other signs. “What happened?”

“I was…” She gestures to the door with a shaky hand and clears her throat. “Looking for you. Thought you may be in there. Um, you’re not.”

“No, I talked the host into letting me use the private bathroom.”

Evie jumps at a thump from the door, like a shoe hitting it.

“Okay, we can go now,” she says brightly. Too brightly.

It’s a bad time to grin, but I can’t help it. Her embarrassment is too adorable.

“What’s going on in there, Evie?” I tease, twisting the doorknob.

“Don’t—” she starts, reaching for my arm, but it’s too late. I open the door and stick my head inside.

One of the waitresses, even with a drumstick bridled between her teeth and Bax playing her ass like bongos, is giving Dodge the same attitude she gave customers earlier. On a couch in the other corner, James is enjoying the show and a blow job. On another couch, two more ladies are enjoying each other.

“Always room for a few more,” Dodge calls to me as I tip my chin at Bax and close the door, flipping the lock on the knob as I do.

There’s a joke on the tip of my tongue about joining in, but I swallow it when I see the expression on Evie’s face. Her skin is red, and not with excitement.

Dancing on a table in a bar is probably a wild night for her.

“That cannot be a hygienic use of drumsticks.”

A burst of laughter lodges in my throat, making me cough.

“Do you… have you…”

That’s not even close to the wildest thing I’ve seen. Or done. Or have thought about doing with her. Only alone, behind a locked door. She raises a finger and points at this door, still staring at it with her lips parted just a bit.

Her fingers are warm when I wrap mine around them, trying to draw her closer. Her gaze snaps from me to the door and back again. It would be so easy to lie, but she’s going to find out eventually. Luckily, what I can say is the truth. “I’m not doing that so much lately. Seem to have other things on my mind these days.”

Like she doesn’t hear me, she just turns her head and blinks at the tatters of signs past. A few seconds later, a loud smack followed by two moans drifts through the door and her eyebrows fly up her forehead.

She takes a step back, about to run.

“Ahh, fountains.” This is the best I can pull out of my ass at the moment. “Let’s grab the driver and have him drop us off. I’ve never seen them, but they’re supposed to be cool, right? Maybe we’ll find something to do just walking around for a bit.”

She gives a jerky nod. “Yeah. Fountains.”

Thirty minutes later, Evie seems back to normal.

“I swear I’m not a prude,” she blurts as we stroll along a tree-lined sidewalk. The fountains were actually pretty cool, and the ice cream we found is delicious.

So is the way Evie licks at her cone, which doesn’t help the conversation any.

“I mean, I like sex. Private sex. One on one. Fuck, never mind. I do sound like a prude. Maybe I just need to get laid. No. Wait, forget I said that. I said none of that.”

I stop walking and wait for her to notice. Two steps later she does and turns to face me. “What?”

Her pique makes me want to tease her. “So you don’t want to handle the pyro for the Bourbon Suicide Fucks America DVD? We were going to start filming next week. That back there was just practice.”

The napkin hits me right on the nose. “Incorrigible bastard.” Her lips twitch as she tries to stop the smile.

I tilt my head. “Am I technically a bastard if my parents were married when I was born?”

“I take it they weren’t when you were conceived?”

“They were barely dating. And divorced by the time I was three. Think my dad is on wife number four or five now. I’d have to google it to find out for sure.”

She falls into step beside me as we start down an even emptier path. “How about your mom?”

“She dated a few guys when I was younger. Nothing really serious. I’m sure there were others I don’t even know about. Because come on. My mama is hot. Which is weird for me to say, but let’s be real, she turned it into a very lucrative career, so. Anyway, her husband came into the picture when I was fifteen? Sixteen? Something like that. They got married after I moved out. He’s cool. Treats her like queen, which she is. My stepsisters are cool too.”

“You don’t refer to him as your stepdad?”

I shove the base of the ice cream cone into my mouth and wipe my hands as I chew. “No. There was a lot of stuff going on with me and my dad at the time, and I was practically an adult, so we didn’t really gel like that. But we get along well.”

Taking my napkin, she folds it into hers and tosses them into a trashcan. “Things still weird with your dad? I don’t know much about your family or anything.”

This time, my laugh is rueful. “It’s pretty much public knowledge if you wanted to look it up.”

“I’d rather you tell me.”

That’s a nice change. Wheels clacking over seams in the concrete grows louder and I glance over my shoulder. Kids on skateboards, showing off. My nostalgia catnip. I take Evie’s hand to pull her a little closer to me so she doesn’t get bumped as they speed by.

I don’t let go of it when they’ve passed and she doesn’t pull away.

“No, it’s still weird,” I finally say. “But manageable most of the time.”

“I can arrange for him to be set on fire.” The smile is evident in her voice.

I side-eye her all the same. “Evil little thing, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Though I do my evil in the fire department, not the orgy one.”

“I think Bax and Dodge have that covered.”

“Last awkward question. For tonight anyway.”

It hasn’t been awkward since her shock at the orgy wore off. “Shoot.”

After a few moments of silence, I look over to see her scrunching up her face, like she’s figuring out how to ask. It takes a bump of my elbow to get her to look up at me. “Spit it out, fire woman. I’ve answered millions of questions at interviews, some of them truly terrible. Yours are not terrible.”

“If things were so weird with your dad, why’d you become a singer too?”

Ahh, my least favorite question. Only, from Evie, it doesn’t make me cringe. I tuck that away to think about later.

Before answering, I steer us over to a lookout, the thousands of lights highlighting her features as she looks up at me.

“When I was seven or eight, he was recording an album in LA and I was visiting him for the weekend. I think it was a joke, or to keep me occupied for a bit or whatever, but the producer and my dad decided to have me do some backup vocals on a song. Turns out, I can sing.”

She rolls with my joke, exaggerating her surprise with huge eyes. “No! Really?”

“Only a few notes in the middle.” I hop up to sit on the brick wall. Evie gives it two good tries, then huffs out a breath.

“Do not make a short joke,” she warns.

I hop down and step around her, grabbing her hips and lifting her up. She slides onto the wall, and the movement leaves her knees on either side of my chest. From here, I’m looking up at her, and the brim of her hat casts a shadow that makes it feel like we’re alone, even though the sounds of people still entering and leaving the casinos drifts across to us.

Safe. More than alone, it makes me feel safe, so I cross my arms over her thighs and lean closer. She shifts, curling her hands over the edge of the brick, but she doesn’t tense or push me away.

I lean my weight against the wall, and have to tilt my head back to see into her eyes. In the shadows, they’re dark, only a thin circle of color around the iris. She isn’t looking at my eyes, but my mouth.

This would be an excellent time to roll up onto my toes and kiss her. Except her question is still hanging over my head.

Talking about my dad is always a turn off.

“So anyway, not only did I find out I can sing, turns out I liked it. Which didn’t go over so well with him when he found out Mama let me start taking voice lessons as well as piano. Couldn’t be better than him, ya know.”

I have her full attention, and not on my mouth. “That’s awful to put on a kid.”

“Yeah, well. It was a good incentive to be as better than him as I could be.”

Now I can’t look away from her mouth. I brush my finger over her bottom lip and try not to ignore her quick intake of breath. My dick, however, makes no effort to ignore it.

“This smile tells me you’re also the fuck you kind of evil.”

“They said the fireworks company would never let a girl intern. Funny how leaving the last letter off Everette made them think I was a boy.” She waggles her eyebrows and I don’t think. I just roll up those last few inches and plant a fast kiss right on her smirking lips.

She freezes and I pull back just as fast, scrambling to pull yet another something out of my ass to cover the awkwardness. But she beats me to it.

“He must have shit himself when you became a bigger name than him.”

Yeah, that’ll cool off my libido right quick.

“Didn’t take that long.” Maybe sticking it to your old man isn’t the best story to hold as a favorite, but I was an angry teenage mama’s boy, and sometimes, you take the wins where you can. I can barely hold in the laughter as I tell Evie.

“My mom does this thing called the Sunset Strip Festival every year. It’s gotten big, but back then, it wasn’t. Just a few bands at each of the bars from that era, maybe a sold-out crowd on one or two nights. She still gets along with the guitar player from the band my dad hit it big with. You know, before they fired him.

“So anyway, they were scheduled to play the festival, only their singer got laryngitis. I was hanging around the club, helping my mom with stuff, and he stops in to tell her. I was paying no attention, just sorting papers or something and singing along with the radio. Well, he heard me and said, joking of course, that maybe I should just fill in. And Mama says that would really piss off my dad. The silence was so thick, I looked up and said ‘what?’ They both started laughing their asses off. Next thing I know, I’m on stage doing five songs that night.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen. Three months later, Dodge and Bax and I played our first show. People thought we were just a bar band gimmick, even though we never play my dad’s songs, but we knew. Something just felt so right being up there. We met James about nine months after that, and Noah a few years later when we decided we needed a second guitar.”

“And once you knew,” she says softly, knowing, “you couldn’t not do it.”

“You knew the first time you set off a firework, didn’t you?”

She nods, leaning closer, her fingers brushing against my elbow.

This. This is what I’ve only ever had with the guys in the band before. Someone who gets it. Right down in their fucking bone marrow.

Even though there’s a brick wall, I push closer, my heart hitting my rib cage like a bass drum in an empty arena, reverb pounding through my veins.

“People ask if we’re sick of playing certain songs yet. I hate that question. Critics hated our first album, but ‘Hands Up’ went to number one and stayed there for over a month. Fans love that song. We’ve had other hits, but nothing like that one. I used to worry we were gonna be a one-hit wonder, that the naysayers were right and I was like my dad. Obviously not, but if we never top that, I’m good with it. If that’s the biggest hit, and that’s the song people are singing on road trips in twenty years, I did my job. That’s what I want – to be the guy who sings the song they always know, because it’s a part of them.”

Evie’s nodding as I speak, her chest rising more rapidly with each breath. “Every work day, I’m creating an event in people’s lives. It’s just another day at the office for me, but for them, it could be the biggest thing of their whole year. Can you see their faces? Especially the teenagers, and you know it’s their first show? Every time I do, it’s like my first concert all over again. Nothing else ever feels like that.”

Nothing else was ever going to feel like this. Evie Pearson, fire women, was permanently imprinted on the most important part of me.

For a moment, we just stay like that, her breathing in as I breathe out, letting this unexpected connection lock into place.

Then my gaze drops to her lips, slightly shiny from where she licked them.

If ever there was a perfect time for a first kiss, a real kiss, this is it.

So of course my fucking phone rings. I fumble into my pocket to swipe the call to voicemail, even though it’s Terrel and he wouldn’t be calling if he could help it, but the spell breaks before I can.

“Guess they found us, huh?” she asks, leaning back, away from me.

I glance down at the phone. “Yeah, it’s Terrel. Let me see what’s up.”

Twenty minutes later, the driver drops us off at the hotel, the last stop before he’s done for the night. Can’t blame the guy for wanting to get home, but I would have gladly paid for another hour just to have had enough time to kiss Evie.

Something that is not going to happen now, with the band and Terrel and a few of the crew having their own poker tournament in our suite.

“Any good?” I ask Evie, shoving my hands in my pockets to stop myself from reaching for her.

She tilts her head back to smile at me over her shoulder. Her evil smile. “How much of their money do you want me to take?”