I’m back in the front of the crowd and Jack Kingston’s center stage. It’s the same spot I was in just over a year ago, when I saw him live for the first time. Only this time, I’m a different person, and I’ve seen a hell of a lot more than Jack’s rocker side. Coco is at my side, and we’re not at the Happy Hollow but in L.A. She’s never seen of Kings of Sound at a live show, and she’s whipping her head around, shaking her booty. Coco looks wild and carefree, and I have a strange rush of nostalgia watching her. I haven’t felt free like that in a long time. There’s been a heaviness coating me, and I don’t even remember when it started. It makes my chest tight, and sometimes I feel like I might be suffocating. Is it this relationship with Jack? It’s a lot. Long distance with a rock star. The intensity of it, his declaration of love and commitment, it’s a hell of a lot.

But no, this tightness in my chest started before StageFest. It started with Nolan Hobart. And now he’s up there on stage, standing feet away from my boyfriend, jamming away like he’s part of the team, like he belongs at Jack’s side.

“You okay, sweetie?” Coco has to shout the question in my ear.

I nod, but she doesn’t buy it. She takes my arms and tries to pull me through the crowd, but I shake my head. It’s jam-packed up here, and it will be next to impossible to get out. The energy from the bodies mashed together should make me feel alive, but instead it heightens the pressure weighing me down, making it hard to breathe.

We’re at a venue I’ve been to before, even stood in the front like this at a concert with just as many people around. I’m cool with crowds. It gets my heart racing, makes me feel alive. Right now? My heart is racing all right, but it’s going to pound right out of my chest. I’m dizzy, and the lights around me are flashing and blurring together, the sound of Jack’s voice growing mushy and distant.

My legs wobble and I start to go down, but I’m stopped by a body behind me, arms going around me.

“Easy there,” a gravelly voice pierces through the fuzziness.

“Kick!” I hear Coco exclaim.

“I think she’s had a little too much to drink,” gravelly-voice says.

“She hasn’t been drinking,” Coco says, or rather shouts, over the music.

My body remains slumped against the stranger’s chest, his arms holding me up. I mean, I’m fine, I can stand now. I must have had a fainting spell. I’m not really sure, since I’ve never fainted in my life. But I feel like I do need the support for just a few seconds longer as I gather my bearings. I’m shaky. A little scared, really, to have lost control of my body like that, even if just for a few seconds. Maybe I’m dehydrated.

Coco and the stranger must have communicated to one another because the next thing I know, I’m being half-carried, half-dragged through the mash-up of bodies, my disorientation growing by the second. Somehow, a security guard lets us out a side door onto a fire escape, and I’m able to breathe the not-so-fresh Los Angeles air.

“The guard recognized you,” Coco says to the burly dude with us, a little suspicion clouding her voice.

“Yeah. I’m on the team. Jack asked me to keep an eye on you girls tonight.”

Cue the heart rate picking up again. The fuck?!

I turn from the fire escape rail to look at the guy. He does have the look of a security guard. Over six feet tall with a barrel chest and black clothing. “You look a little familiar. Do you travel with the band?” I ask, trying to hide my alarm.

“Yeah,” he replies, giving nothing else. “I’m Matt.”

I glance at Coco, who’s scrutinizing the guy. Or maybe she’s checking him out, since her eyes keep trailing up and down his body.

“Why would Jack put security on us?” I ask.

“People know who you are now,” he says simply.

“What?”

“People know who you are now,” he repeats.

“Yeah, I heard you, but what do you mean?”

“The photos. They came out earlier before the show. A whole bunch of you with Jack.”

I reach into my back jeans pocket and slide out my phone, going straight to my Instagram app. My account is blowing up. Direct messages fill my inbox, and I’ve been tagged in dozens of photos by accounts I’m not familiar with, but that appear to be music fans or entertainment and celebrity sighting type accounts. There are all kinds of images of Jack and me, mostly from StageFest, though there are a few random ones of us together over the past few months. Nothing scandalous, but we’re holding hands or smiling at each other, obviously together. And my account is tagged by the photos. A few comments identify me as Lydia Spark instead of Kick.

“This is weird,” I mumble. “Why all these pictures all of a sudden?”

“Happens all the time,” Matt says. “We think a single person took all of them and was waiting for the right moment to sell them. Guess they decided it was today.”

“They’re probably worth more now than they were a couple months ago,” I muse. The person probably wanted to wait until speculation was building, until Jack became famous enough that people paid attention. It had only just gotten to that point, I guess.

With this new information, I almost forget about the fainting spell I had back there.

“Can you give us a minute?” Coco asks Matt.

“’Fraid not, ma’am. I can’t leave you out on this fire escape alone.”

“Really?” she asks dryly, giving him an annoyed glare.

“Really. Sorry, it’s my job.”

“No one’s going to accost Kick up here on the fire escape, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she says.

“If you’d like some privacy, I can take you backstage,” he offers.

“Fine,” she huffs.

I don’t want to go backstage. I’d hoped to avoid it somehow. It means I’ll see Nolan after the show. Does this guy really have to shadow us? Don’t I have a choice in the matter?

“If we leave the venue, do you have to come with us?” I ask as Matt turns to knock on the door to be let in.

He stops, and when he hesitates in his response, I know we’ve got him. Leaving the venue with us wasn’t technically part of his job description.

A few minutes later, Coco and I find a high-top table at a bar a block away from the venue. It’s not too busy, but I imagine in about an hour when the show ends this place will be jam-packed.

I order water and let Coco order us two cocktails, even though I don’t plan on drinking mine.

“What happened in there?” Coco asks, the maternal tone coming out that she only uses when she’s legitimately concerned.

“Nothing. I think I’m dehydrated. We had a hard workout this morning.” I chug the glass of water to emphasize my point. Coco continues eyeing me. It’s not like me to hide anything. I’m typically very forthcoming, but right now, I don’t even know what the hell is going on, I’m just a jumbled mess. I really want to escape, but I don’t know what I’m trying to escape from.

“Maybe I’m getting too old for crowds,” I say with a shrug before turning to the cocktail. I do want a drink, I decide, which means I can’t push the dehydration theory too hard.

“What’s stressing you, girl?” Coco keeps pushing. “You know you can tell me anything.”

“I know. But I don’t know what’s stressing me, okay?” I don’t hide my frustration. “And I’m not in the mood to try to dissect my life and figure it out.”

She purses her lips, taking a thoughtful sip from her cocktail, and then relents. “All right. What are you in the mood for?”

I don’t have the answer to that either. What the hell am I doing with my life? I have a chance to be a pro swimmer with my sister, a brand of my own that’s growing so fast I can hardly keep up, and yet here I am at a bar, escaping a concert because my relationship with Jack is too much. Nolan Hobart beside him is too much. I don’t want to be inundated and judged by people now it’s out I’m Jack’s girlfriend. I don’t want to deal with the pressure of knowing the band’s keys player could blow this all up in my face if he wanted to. I don’t need it, don’t want it. I want the old Kick back. Where I didn’t bother dealing with making big decisions. The girl who wasn’t scared of shit.

Except I know that’s a lie. The old Kick was scared of a lot of shit, she just hid it better. Or she never faced the shit that scared her. And now I’m being forced to confront all of it head-on, and I just can’t take it.

Two guys stop at our high-top, introduce themselves. They’re in their late twenties, probably a little old for me and a little young for Coco, but a good compromise. They’re both cute. I’m not interested, but I wish I was. I wish I could escape this pressure building up like bricks on my chest, crushing me in, by flirting with these guys, making them crazy. I don’t care about them, but I do know what they could do for me for a night. Maybe I’m not cut out for relationships. Maybe I need to end things with Jack before it’s too late, and I really fuck it up.

Coco looks to me to take the lead, and I sip the rest of my cocktail dry quickly. One of the guys offers to buy us another round. “Sure,” I say easily, knowing exactly what I’ve just done.

For maybe the first time ever, Coco gives me a disapproving little frown, and it hits me like a punch in the gut. But she quickly smooths it over, smiling at the guys. “We’re drinking lemon drops,” she says, back to her light and girly voice and ditching the maternal tone she used with me a moment earlier.

I don’t know how long we’ve been there when the place starts to fill up, our little table now surrounded. The guys have closed in around us to block out the rest of the crowd, and I’m trying to push everything away as I finish my third drink, my laughter getting louder. Coco is laughing too, but she leans across the table to tell me, “We should probably get out of here, head back.”

The guys think the words are meant for them, and take the cue to usher us out of the bar, holding our elbows as they walk us down the sidewalk. They’re asking us if we want to go to one of their apartments for another drink when Matt from earlier charges toward us. He looks pissed.

“Oh, shit,” I mumble, and I hear Coco say the same thing a second later.

We glance at each other with wide eyes, and the notion that we’ve done something naughty and we’re about to be scolded by a stranger wearing all black is suddenly hysterical.

“You think we’ll get grounded?” I ask her.

She slaps my arm. “You might.”

We’re both giggling when Matt reaches us. “Come on,” he says tightly. “Jack’s cool. But that doesn’t mean he won’t fire me if something happens to you.”

Matt pulls me away from the guys from the bar. I’d be annoyed by his insistence, except I start to realize the sidewalk is lined with people hanging out after the show, standing around smoking or deciding where to go next. And a lot of them are looking at us. Not because we’re causing a scene, although Matt isn’t helping matters, but because they recognize me. I can see it, sense it, even three drinks in and definitely well on my way to drunk. These people are Kings of Sound fans. They would be the first to see the photos if they follow the band’s social media presence.

So I let Matt pull us along, waving goodbye to the poor confused dudes from the bar.