Let it carry to the heavens, to the airwaves, go on forever until there wasn’t anything left for him.
Rage bristled from Royce’s flesh, as if sharp barbs had spiked from his skin, the ghastly images he’d etched there roiling and shouting their hate. I had to wonder if it somehow went as deep as mine. If he felt that much for me that he couldn’t breathe.
He tightened his hold on my side, his glare enough to decimate the opulent theater.
Cory made it to the wings, and he was immediately surrounded by his entourage. But he stumbled a bit when he saw me, a grin splitting his face, depravity in his eye as his stare hit my body.
Vomit churned in my guts, threatened to rise.
Royce moved to stand in front of me. A living fortress protecting me from the repugnant and corrupt.
Cory’s expression shifted, his chin lifting in a challenge, and I was sure it was costing Royce everything to remain standing there while the violence lapped and surged and screamed.
Every muscle in Royce’s body was held taut.
Cory quirked a grin.
Malicious. Reeking of victorious greed.
The crush of bodies pushed him forward, and he disappeared in the midst, and I sucked in the first real breath I’d had since I’d heard him onstage. The air was thick, barely breaching my lungs, shallow as I fought to gain control.
To remember.
To remember why I was doing this.
My little-girl dreams. My brother’s ambitions. The work of this family.
I couldn’t let him take that, too.
Royce squeezed my hand, his voice gravel. “Show him who you are.”
A woman wearing a microphone on her head waved frantically at us as the lights in the theater went dim, our cue to take our spots during the two-minute commercial break.
Someone ushered me forward, breaking me from Royce’s hold. I looked back at him from over my shoulder as we were herded forward, a frenzy of lowered voices shouting their last instructions.
Onyx eyes met mine. A wild disorder. The perfect sin.
My life.
I ripped my gaze from him and rushed out onto the darkened stage. I fumbled to get hold of myself as a stagehand helped to situate my guitar over my head. He pointed at the black X where I was supposed to stand, a sea of faceless shadows sitting out in the audience beyond.
Anxiety blazed through my blood. Seeped all the way to my bones. I was unable to breathe. Unable to see. I could feel the pressure radiating from all around, the members of my band held on this moment.
Terrified by the thrill.
Enraptured by the charge of energy that zinged through the atmosphere.
My family’s future was in my hands, which were shaking so out of control I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make my fingers cooperate to play.
A countdown blinked on a hidden screen that only we could see, and my heart thundered in my chest, so hard I was sure the microphone had to be picking it up.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
A spotlight came on to light the smaller, elevated stage to the right. Angelica Leon stood on it, wearing a blue satin dress with a billowing train, delivering her choreographed welcome.
Introducing us to the world.
A superstar in her own right.
A country singer who’d gone pop and then had landed herself in five blockbuster movies.
“. . . playing their first live televised performance right here at the ACBs, it’s my pleasure to introduce you to Carolina George.” Her voice lifted on the last as she swept her arm in our direction.
A furor rippled through the theater, an energy unlike anything I had experienced anywhere else.
Brilliant and bold.
A shock to the senses.
I trembled, staring out into the silhouetted faces that took up the endless rows, the balconies filled, stretching all the way out to the televisions people were glued to across the nation.
The lights came up.
Blinding.
Disorienting.
Strobes of lights flashed, the stage consumed in a blue haze of smoke that lifted in vapors around us, as if we’d just appeared from out of nowhere.
Summoned by the magic of the music we made.
Leif lifted his drumsticks in the air, beat them together as he gave us our count.
Richard drove into the intricate introduction of the song we were set to play, his fingers fast and precise as they moved up and down the neck of the electric guitar.
Our most popular.
My favorite.
One that had always been closest to my heart.
Still, I felt frozen, my tongue thick, my heart beating somewhere out of time, out in a place where I didn’t know how to catch up to it.
Where it was lost in the thorns and the briar.
And I knew this was it.
I was going to ruin it all.
I was going to let him steal it.
I couldn’t bear the thought, and my attention slowly drifted to the wings.
Drawn.
Royce was there, hidden in the massive maroon drapes that hung from the rafters.