“We’re Desktopia. And this is for the lost, the searching, and the heartbroken,” the front man shouted before the drummer hit her sticks together for a four count and a wall of sound launched from the speakers.
In that moment, Raven was grateful that if nothing could solve her problems, she could at least temporarily forget them and dance.
* * *
Silas always loved attending Doc’s concerts. Mainly because he felt proud—like a big brother—watching Doc and his band rouse audiences to move and surrender to the music.
Everyone was enjoying themselves. Bodie wrapped his arms around Tess from behind, and the two danced in tandem. Halo, who was already somewhere between tipsy and drunk, swayed more or less to the beat. But it was Raven that had him wishing the club soda in his hand was something stronger.
He’d been going on and on to his brother about focusing, but here he was splitting his time between the artists on stage and Raven. In his defense, it was hard not to watch her. She moved her hips and arms to the driving percussion, completely absorbed, and it was, simply put, sexy.
“Where do we go from here?” sang the front man with all the angst the breakup song needed, and Silas challenged himself not to look Raven’s way until the end of the song. When he made it, he amended his goal and tried to remain engaged with the performance all the way through the second chorus of the new song. Unfortunately, he didn’t meet this target and was pummeled by the sight of Raven with a man.
Silas couldn’t make out much of the guy in the dark room, but Raven and his face were inches apart. The guy also had his arms around Raven’s waist, damn near cradling her ass.
A nasty twist in Silas’s stomach made him tear his gaze away, and it was just the thing to ensure he wouldn’t cast another look Raven’s way for the rest of the night.
Songs came and went, some original, others covers, and the band progressively got sweatier and unrestrained, and the audience danced and shouted to match their energy. When the group finally hit the last note in their set, they earned the cheers from the crowd. Silas felt some guilt whistling and hollering for Doc and his bandmates as they left the stage, knowing the music had been glorified background noise to his rolling thoughts.
The lights in the room turned on without warning, exposing the blinking and sweat-slick faces of the satisfied attendees. Everyone moved en masse toward the exit, and with a plan already in place for the team to meet at the door, Silas went with the flow of bodies until he was standing in the night air. He flagged down the others as he spotted them.
Raven was the last of their group to emerge from the building, and she was with the man she’d been dancing with inside. Again there was a twist in his stomach watching them hug and hearing an exuberant laugh tumble out of her. When she finally joined the Mountaintop crew, she said, “Sorry for making you wait.”
They trudged as a group to Silas’s truck, and once he’d set up Halo in the passenger seat with a plastic bag and made sure everyone was buckled in, he pulled out of the venue’s parking lot.
When he hit a stretch of uncongested road, he opened a few windows, letting a comfortable breeze filter in. Halo remained bent over the bag in her lap, Bodie and Tess dozed off against one another, and Raven appeared lost in thought as she looked out at the passing scenery.
If Silas were sure the others wouldn’t hear him, this moment would be the perfect time to broach a conversation with Raven about their unspoken attraction. But, alas, he’d have to postpone the talk for another day.
The quiet roads helped them arrive in Cedar faster, and Raven was the first person Silas dropped off. As she was closing the door, she said to him, “Thanks for the ride and for being DD.”
He watched her enter her room before driving ten minutes to Tess and Bodie’s place. Halo was the last one he drove home. She seemed to have sobered up a bit but said, “Not looking forward to the hangover tomorrow,” before barely closing the passenger door and shuffling to her front entrance.
Silas eventually arrived at his own house and was about to get out of his truck when a buzzing sound emanated from the back seat. He searched and quickly spotted the glowing screen of a forgotten smartphone.
“Hello?” he said, answering the call.
“Dammit,” Raven’s voice said on the other line. “I left my phone in your car, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, looks like it.”
There was a big sigh before she said, “All right, I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”
“It’s okay. I can drop it off now. I’ll be there soon.”
ChapterSeventeen
When Raven realizedshe didn’t have her phone, she assumed she’d left it at the concert venue—it wouldn’t have been the first time. But the reality was more inconvenient, Silas had it, and he was coming over to return it.
“Coming over” was a little dramatic because it would only be a quick transfer. Hell, she could probably get away with sticking her hand out the door to retrieve it.
Raven stopped pacing the room to look at her reflection in the mirror beside the television console.
“Thank you,” she said to herself, practicing for Silas’s arrival. “Thanks! Appreciate it! Appreciate you!”
Jesus. This was embarrassing.
She took a seat in one of the chairs in the room, and not even a minute later, a loud knock sounded at her door. She looked through the peephole and saw Silas’s face in fisheye distortion before opening the door wider than she’d promised herself she would.
