Beat (Life on Stage 2)

“There you go, beautiful girl. Let whatever is bothering you go,” Lydia says, but I more or less have to read her lips. She closes her eyes and joins me in getting lost in the music. A few guys try to dance with us, but we shoo them away and keep to ourselves. I lift my arms over my head, letting my hips sway from side to side, and my eyes drift closed.

I’m at the fringe of awareness, lost somewhere in my own semiconsciousness, when I feel it. Goose bumps break out all over my skin before I even understand what it is that’s happening. I open my eyes and, like metal to a magnet, I see him. Flynn. He’s two floors up, standing against the glass wall, and his blue eyes are burning into mine. Even with all the space between us, the anger is clear in his eyes. I watch as he tosses his drink back and hands the scantily clad waitress his empty glass without so much as a glance in her direction.

“You okay?” Lydia asks, noticing I’m frozen on the dance floor.

“Yeah. I. Uh. I was just looking at the VIP rooms upstairs, trying to figure out which one we’re in.”

“Oh. We’re right up there.” She points to the second floor. To the room directly below where Flynn is standing. Still zeroing in on us, Flynn follows our gaze, and I watch as he looks down and sees all the guys from Easy Ryder beneath him. He can see down, they can’t see up. It makes me wonder how long he’s been standing there. Was he watching me the last hour in the room directly below him?

Not knowing what to do under the scrutiny of his stare, eventually I attempt to dance again. But I’ve lost the vibe—the atmosphere changed from being lost in the moment to being lost in the man. Another drink is definitely in order. Lydia pouts but leaves with me, again hooking her arm into mine as we make our way into the elevator to return to the second-floor VIP room.

Security pushes a button and the doors slide open. Inside, the guard presses number two…but then I realize there is no button for the floor above us. “There’re only two floors on the panel. How do people get up to the third floor?” I ask.

“You need a security card.” He motions to the top of the panel. “Slips into the slot and takes you upstairs. Boss man, his friends and employees only.”

I know I’ve had way too much to drink when I start singing in public. It’s only a whisper of the words, but the beat thumps along in unison with my heart and I feel the words as I sing the song “Someone New” along with Hozier. The last few lines of the chorus croons about falling in love a little bit more every day with someone new. I sing the words looking up, wondering if Flynn’s singing them looking down at me too.

Eventually, the song comes to an end. Still staring up at the opaque glass ceiling, I blow out a shaky breath. Feeling bereft, I decide I need a few minutes of privacy to clear my head. Dylan’s busy arguing with the tour manager when I excuse myself telling, him I need to find a ladies’ room, but really I head to the elevator to search for some desperately needed fresh air.

The security guard is on the phone, but he opens the door to the elevator when I arrive. A few seconds later, the doors slide open—I hadn’t even noticed we weren’t going down. “Boss man wants to see you.” The hulk of a man extends his arm, gesturing for me to exit the elevator.

I don’t have to ask which way to go. I walk toward the same room I was just in, only one floor up. My insides churn at the sight of a woman vying for Flynn’s attention as he stands in the corner, arms folded tightly over his chest. I may notice the tall, svelte blonde, but Flynn…his eyes are trained on me.

We stand at opposite ends of the room, our gazes locked, until he pushes off the wall and, with a few long strides, stalks to me. I can see the flex of his jaw and the darkness in his normally light-blue eyes.

His friend from today approaches us, his face going through a mental Rolodex before recognition dawns. “You’re Dylan Ryder’s girlfriend, right?”

Flynn looks at his friend, then back to me. His response is spoken into my eyes, even though his words aren’t for me. “Can you clear this room, Blake?”

Through my peripheral vision, I see his friend’s brows draw down, then understanding hits him. “Shit. You’re asking for trouble.” Blake shakes his head, but a minute later the room is cleared of everyone except Flynn and me.

Flynn looks down, then closes his eyes and takes a breath before speaking.

“My mother raised me and my sister, Bec, alone. She struggled every day to make ends meet and never had time for herself. Our dad left when I was eight. Had his secretary actually waiting in the car the day he moved out.”

He drags a hand through his hair. I reach out to touch him, but he puts his hand up. “Don’t.” The disdain in his voice makes me want to vomit.

“Bec married Professor Douchebag. My niece, Laney, has a half-sister three weeks younger than her. Compliments of her father’s TA.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. And I truly am. Although I’m not sure my words bring any comfort, since I’m the cause of his turmoil.

“I’m not the other guy.”

The irony is, he was never the other guy. From the first time we crossed that line, Dylan became the other guy. But I nod anyway, respecting what he’s saying a hell of a lot more than I respect myself at this moment.

Flynn looks down, my eyes following his to peer through the glass floor. We’re standing almost exactly over where Dylan is sitting.

“Friends?” he asks. “Can we go back to being friends?”

It feels like a heavy weight is sitting on my chest as I walk to the elevator alone. He’s right to put a stop to what shouldn’t have started to begin with. But now, I wonder, can we really go back to being friends after we’ve been through the blur and crossed the line?

Chapter Twenty-Two

Flynn

Alana Evans doesn’t shut the fuck up. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. She’s been my sister’s best friend since third grade, and basically it’s been twenty years of one long run-on sentence. I kid Becca that Laney is really Alana’s daughter, with the lack of breaths when she gets on an excited rant, but the truth is, Laney is a lot like Alana because Alana and Becca basically grew up as sisters and they’re a lot alike. Nurture trumps nature with those three.

We park in the short-term lot at Bergstrom and make our way to the terminal. I’m used to people staring now. For the past year, a lot of people have recognized me, although they weren’t sure where from right away. These days, the recognition dawns faster, sometimes instantaneously. More heads than usual turn as we pass, but it takes my conceited ass a minute to catch on why. Alana is drop-dead gorgeous. It’s not new—she didn’t grow from an ugly duckling to a beautiful swan or anything, she’s pretty much been insanely hot since third grade. Around the age of seventeen, I thought about it for a few minutes one night when we were swimming in the neighbor’s pool and she was wearing that white bikini that became translucent when she went in the water.

It was a hot July night, the stars were twinkling, my sister had fallen asleep, and the air was thick and humid around us. I’d had a few beers and my judgment was impaired, leading me to think with my teenage dick. Luckily, one thing didn’t lead to the other, and the next morning I woke to the sound of Alana’s voice rambling on from the kitchen table. I love the woman. But there’s not enough duct tape in the world.