I have a voice. It’s not my dad or my label. Taylan Ash, she was formulated to be a pop star from birth. I had a diamond-plated microphone in my hand before I could walk.
“Are you scared to see him?” Bella asks, sitting next to me in the front row.
“A little,” I admit, checking my clutch to make sure the vomit bag is still there.
Bella rolls her eyes. “Liar.”
“Okay, a lot. What if he doesn’t want to see me?”
That one earns me a laugh. “Are you kidding me? The album, being here, it’s all for you.”
I think about the one song on the album, the one he refuses to discuss—“It’s Over”—and the line everyone loves to talk about.“No one can replace the crown she wore.”Had he been talking about me?
“Girl,” Bella continues. “Revel doesn’t come to these events. He came for you. To sing “Roses of Revenge” withyou.”
“He hasn’t shown yet,” I remind her.
“Yet.”
The next hour goes by excruciatingly slowly, but then the time comes for me to perform and I’m ushered backstage during an intermission. I’ve been performing my entire life and the only times I’ve ever been truly nervous on stage is when I’m sharing the stage with Revel. I don’t know what it is about him that draws it out of me, but he does, and I don’t even know if he’s here.
This is crazy. Why did I agree to this? What was I thinking? Where’s the closest garbage can? My stomach rolls and if I had to guess, I probably look something like a ghost with fire-red hair.
I run my sweaty palms over my dress and then shake them out, drawing in deep, calming breaths. It doesn’t work.
“It’s time,” the stage manager tells me, a smoky lit path behind the stage in front of me.
“You got this, babe. It’s going to be great,” Bella tells me, rubbing my back.
“What if he doesn’t show?”
“He’s here. I assure you. Cruz told me.”
“You told me not to believe anything he says.”
Bella snorts. “That’s when he’s telling you he’s going to be somewhere at ten and it’s more like three in the afternoon when the bastard shows up.”
Cruz, Hardin, Deacon. . . they’re out there already in place, and I’ve spoken with all of them tonight but Revel, I haven’t seen him. Truth is though, I know he’s here, in the building, his presence turning my heart into a fevered beat.
I take a breath, then another.
The band is hidden as smoke machines hiss out layers of what looks like fog rising from the stage. When the opening riff begins, I step forward and close my eyes, taking a deep breath and when I open them, I can vaguely make out a figure on the other side of the stage in the shadows.
Oh my God, it’shim. My heart leaps into my throat, my stomach knotting anxiously. He steps onto the stage into the shadows, and my breathing accelerates. I don’t have to make out his face to know that walk. At first, it’s like he’s not real and I have to blink a few times to make sure I’m not imagining it.
Nope. Totally real.
Darkness surrounds us, the only lights the glow from the catwalk to keep me from falling on my face, but the smoke makes it impossible to see where you’re going. Each step is excruciatingly longer than the next when his voice fills the space between us. “If I’m being honest.”
The sound of his voice, the distinct baritone, it hits my heart like a spear. I gasp out loud at the way his voice carries through my entire body. I feel it everywhere, a reminder that everything I ever felt for him is still very much there.
Everything from his shoes to his tie is black, like his heart. His hair is the same, long and shaved clean on the sides, swept to the side but falling into his eyes. His features seem softer, less sharp than the icy chill I saw in the hotel room the day he left. So many times I wanted to reach out to him over the last year but seeing him now, like this, means so much more.
Bringing the cool, bumpy metal of the microphone to my lips, I slowly walk toward him. “I saw it for what it was,” I sing. At first sight, when his face finally comes into view for me, tears roll down my cheeks.
With one hand tucked in the pocket of his black suit, he steps out of the shadows.“Lie to me if you want.” He notices my tears first, his chest rising and falling just as quickly. His hand holding the microphone shakes and he looks as nervous as I feel. The usual cold, calm façade is no longer there and I want so badly to reach for him, but I wait to see what his reaction will be. I search his eyes and see only blue, no black, no bloodshot eyes, just clear blue shadowed by thick dark lashes.“The truth comes out eventually.”
His wild hair is in his eyes, his lips pushed against the microphone, but I see it. He winks at me. And it’s like the entire world stops and everything that happens next, happens in slow motion. Underneath that rugged handsome face I still adore, he looks. . . sorry. Like he missed me and wants to say so many things to me but doesn’t know where to start. And we’re performing together so it’s not like we can say anything. I hate that this is the first time we’re seeing each other. Damn it, why had I waited so long? Why didn’t I call him?
