Keep (Seaside Pictures 2)

I whispered above the noise directly into the mic. “I’ll show you bad.”

The music blared as I turned around, shoved in my stupid ass vampire teeth and started to lip sync.

“Show me dirty, I’ll make you clean.” I ran down center stage and slid across my knees leaning backwards as girls grabbed at my abs and ripped jeans. “I’m your saint, I’m your dream.”

Lincoln and Pris, Jay’s wife, who was playing the part of Nat, started dancing with the rest of the extras, while my hips bucked against hands slamming into me and tongues licking my arms.

I shivered and stood. “Confess, confess, confess.” The crowd started shouting with me. “Reckless, dirty girl, confess, I’ll make you wish you weren’t stuck in a prison of your own making, just give me the chance, I’ll be yours for the taking.”

I put the mic on a stand and lifted my hands as the lights lit up behind me, Alec and Demetri’s harmony crooned in on the chorus.

It was hard to hear above the screaming and the music.

And that was saying a lot, since I sold out nearly every concert I performed.

The music cut, but we had to still pretend to be dancing on stage and getting the crowd riled up, but Lincoln and Pris had to deliver lines.

We waited for our cue then started up again.

And before I knew it, the scene was over.

“Again,” Jay called out to everyone. “One more time.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Fallon

I WATCHED IN WIDE-EYED amazement as girls ran their hands over his rock hard body, I had to remind myself over and over again that this was his job.

But now that he’d had sex, would it translate to something else?

His hips pressed into the air and then against a girl’s hand.

My jaw nearly came unhinged when one girl started licking his wrist and then took a bite.

His eyes fluttered closed as he moved fluidly with the crowd, like they were his drug, his next hit, his voice, or the recording rose above the music as lights flashed across his perfectly sculpted face.

The entire set buzzed with electricity.

Zane, in his element, was completely and utterly unstoppable. The type of talent you see once in a lifetime and wonder how the heck he does it every day without having a nervous breakdown.

And suddenly everything he said, clicked into place.

The anxiety.

The way he’d grown up.

And the constant pressure from the very crowd that adored him, a crowd that in one instant could turn on him.

It wasn’t just a lot of pressure, it seemed impossible.

And yet, he danced with ease, he sang like he was the male version of Beyonce and owned the world.

He made me believe that if I could just touch him one time, my life would be changed.

He made me believe it.

Whatever it was.

The character he was playing? Saint? It would be easy to fall in love with him rather than Zane, the man behind it.

Because Zane was normal, Zane had normal fears, normal reactions, but Saint? He was completely untouchable.

And yet at the same time, to every woman in that room? Obtainable.

Dani’s eyes went wide when Alec and Demetri joined him in this crazy chorus dance sequence thing. “I’m pretty sure I’d kill Linc if I saw him on stage like that.”

I tried not to be offended. “Why?”

She stared at the guys then back at me then back at the guys. “Actors sell a different person. Singers sell an enhanced version of themselves. He may be Zane to you, but he will still always be Saint. Alec and Demetri are great guys, but they are still extremely…rough around the edges, in all the best ways. I adore them, I’m just saying. Singers always claim acting and performing are the same. She shook her head. “But I beg to differ, because when Linc acts he doesn’t own the crowds, not like this, this is magic, and I can’t imagine the toll it must take mentally, to do something like this every single day.”

I didn’t trust myself to speak, at least not right away. When I did, I could barely squeeze the words out. “A lot.”

“What?” She asked.

“The toll. It’s a lot. It strips them, makes them inhuman, objects.”

She lowered her head then wrapped an arm around me. “Sorry, that was rude of me, I’m not trying to compare evils or anything here, both play pretend, but both come home. That’s the important part.”

“Home,” I repeated as memories of Zane’s words hit me in the head like a slap in the face.

I don’t have one of those.

But he did now, right? With me?

The breath backed up in my lungs. What, with me and my parents?

Seriously?

If my father saw us in bed together, Zane would end up on our wall. And my mom? Right, I can just imagine her leaving marshmallows under his pillow and buying him Lucky Charms because according to her it was the same thing.

Zane would scream blasphemy.

A fight would break out.

Nope, definitely no home there.

Was home with me?

And if it was, what did that mean?

The song ended, scaring the crap out of me as I jolted back to the present and watched in smug satisfaction as Zane hopped off stage, and strode toward me. The crowd of needy extras parted.

His muscled body swayed through the bodies of women.

And then he was pulling me into his arms, twirling me around and biting my neck with his fake teeth. “How’s that for your vampire fantasies?”

“Wow, it’s everything I ever thought it would be.”