I flashed her a smile and turned back to the crowd. Whether her initial reaction was good or bad didn't matter as much as how she reacted to what I was about to do next.
“I’m going to do something different tonight. I’d like to sing a new song for you, one you’ve never heard before.” I turned my gaze to Hazel as I said it. “This one is for the girl that tamed a rock star's heart.”
Behind me, Jasmine's band began to play. I'd stayed up all night writing this song, and Vixen Vendetta and I practiced it for hours before the show. I poured my heart into it in a way I'd never done before. I just hoped it would be enough.
I was a starry-eyed kid who refused to look back
Dreams weighing my pockets like stones
Each day a new chance and each night a new dance
Yet each second I was alone
The first time I saw you, your face was like sunset
A beauty that vanished too soon
You got in my head but not in my bed
To my act, you were always immune
Hazel hadn't moved, was still staring at me with wide, uncomprehending eyes. I smiled at her as I sang. It was only her. The rest of the crowd disappeared into the background. She was the only girl in the room, and I was serenading her.
I’ve always had the worst of intentions
‘Cause living in darkness is life without pain
In a prison of my own invention
Lost in the shadows, ‘til you called my name
I pointed to Hazel, grinning now. The crowd was going crazy, falling over themselves to get a look at who I was pointing at. Somebody grabbed Hazel's hand and guided her over the gate, and the crowd seemed to hand her up until she was at the front of the stage, a wide circle of space around her.
I needed your sweetness to show me the bitter
Your kindness to show me the light
I know that I hurt you, and I don’t deserve you
But baby, let me make this right
God, she looked beautiful. Her cherry lips were parted in wonder, cheeks pink. Her camera hung loose around her neck, completely forgotten. The music swelled one final time, and I gave my all for the last chorus.
I’ve always had the worst of intentions
‘Cause living in darkness is life without pain
In a prison of my own invention
Lost in the shadows, ‘til you called my name
The music ended. The crowd roared. As far as they were concerned, the song was a remarkable success. They were chanting my name, which should have been enough to make any performer satisfied. But the song wasn't the hard part.
I turned, and Jasmine was waiting behind me, hands outstretched. “Go get her, tiger.”
I smiled and handed her my guitar, then made my way to the front of the stage. I half expected Hazel to have disappeared in the interim, but now, I was wondering if I'd shocked her into oblivion. She hadn't moved an inch.
The crowd was going absolutely nuts. I just wished Hazel would be half as excited as any one of them. I hadn't seen her so much as crack a smile.
I hopped off the stage.
Time to make things right.
Fifty-Five
Hazel
The screams of the people around me seemed to hold me in some sort of stasis. It was a dream. It had to be a dream, right? There was no way Sean Morris would pop up from the middle of nowhere on stage at a Vixen Vendetta concert just to serenade me. That was crazy. I was crazy. This whole thing was crazy!
But that song...God, that song. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard. Sure, there were parts that lacked a certain finesse, but it was raw and emotional and truly, one hundred percent Sean. No Rock Star. No gimmicks. Just the man I'd fallen in love with.
He started walking to the edge of the stage while I watched, dumbfounded. The spotlight followed him, lighting him up from behind like a god. The tips of his hair glowed gold in the light, dust swirling in the air around him. He looked so beautiful. It had to be a dream. It had to be!
Sean jumped down, landing on his heels with a hand steadying him against the ground. Only then did I notice there was a significant space around me. I felt like an animal in a zoo, and the rough semicircle of people peering at me and cheering was almost too much to take.
Sean rose, walking toward me. There wasn't much distance left between us now. I could see the hint of stubble on his chin, the sweat on his brow, the tight fit of his t-shirt across his broad chest. He approached with a faint smile ticking at the edges of his lips, exuding swagger and charm. It was the same swagger he always had, but there was something different about him.
I couldn't put my finger on what about him made me realize this, but Sean had...changed. I was sure of it before he even reached me.
I felt all the air leave my lungs as Sean stopped in front of me, snaking an arm around my waist and pulling me close. He held me so tight I thought he might bust my camera.
Even with everything that had happened, my body responded to him like it was the first time. The hair on my arms stood on end, my heart fluttered wildly in my chest, and a sudden heat flared in my core, burning steadily hotter the closer his face got to mine. I put my hands against his chest to steady myself, feeling his heart beating a steady tattoo on the back of his ribs.
Sean's eyes held my gaze as he lowered his lips to mine.
All this happened in only a few seconds, him strutting up, grabbing me, and kissing me in front of a screaming crowd. To me, however, it felt like years. I was living heartbeat to heartbeat, cognizant of every second that passed like a feather across my skin.
His kiss awakened in me a whole host of feelings that I'd put to sleep and hoped to hide under a growing accumulation of dust. His lips were smooth and warm, and they glided over mine with the perfect rhythm, the perfect pressure. I opened my mouth to let him in before I even knew what I was doing.
This was Sean. The same Sean who'd hurt me in ways that no person ever had before, who'd left me picking up the broken pieces of my heart in some trailer thousands of miles away from home. But he was also the Sean who made me burn. Who made electric pulses of pleasure dance over my skin, and whose body was just as much a home to me as any place I'd ever lived.
Sean pulled back a little, lips hovering just over mine, and held my face in his hands. “I missed you,” he whispered. I barely heard it over the crowd.
My eyelids fluttered open, and I stared into the depths of his baby blues, unsure of how to respond. What could I say? I'd missed him too. The past month had been torture because of it. But he was the one who put me through that torture.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, stepping back.
His hands fell to his sides, then one dipped into the back pocket of his jeans. The fans surrounding us went absolutely bonkers when he pulled his hand back out, and it took me a moment to realize why.
Sean went down on one knee in front of me, opening the little velvet ring box he'd plucked from his back pocket. I gasped, covering my mouth with one hand.
The stage lights made the diamond glitter brilliantly. The ring was gorgeous, a delicate gold band topped by a square cut diamond, with a halo of smaller diamonds surrounding it.
The perfect song, the perfect ring... This was all too perfect. Too clean. Sean and I weren't perfect and clean.
“Hazel Hunter,” Sean said, speaking loud over the loud applause. “Will you marry me?”
Expecting to hear those words and actually hearing him utter them were two different things. My heart dropped into my stomach, and my face broke out into a cold sweat. Oh god.
I was afraid that when I opened my mouth, no sound would come out. Luckily it did. Luckily for me, anyway.
“No.”
The crowd hushed almost immediately. There were whispers throughout, but otherwise, the arena had gone dead quiet.
My face flamed with embarrassment. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't know who's proposing. I never know who you are, Sean, and I can't ke
ep going back and forth like this.”
Sean stood slowly, eyes never leaving mine. I wanted to turn and run, to get out of here and never look back. Because even though I'd told him no, my heart screamed at me to say yes. But then again, my heart was the one who'd gotten me into this mess in the first place. I was done listening to it.
“I understand,” Sean said. He turned back to the stage and climbed up onto it.
My gaze flicked to Jasmine, who was looking down at me with a sad expression. As surprising as this proposal was, I was almost equally surprised to find out she had some part in it. Jasmine was the last person I'd expect to help Sean get me back.
Okay, now to make my escape...
I began looking for the best way to exit the crowd and was horrified to find them all staring at me still, this time with mixed expressions. Some of them looked angry, others sad, most were just confused.
As I was distracted trying to find the best way out of the world’s most awkward situation, Sean had taken the microphone again.
What was he doing now?
Fifty-Six
Sean
There's no guidebook for what to do when the girl you love rejects your proposal in front of thousands of people. If there was, I wouldn't read it anyway. I wasn't making decisions based on the advice of others anymore. I was following my goddamn heart, and that meant getting Hazel to accept me no matter how long it took, no matter what I needed to do. If there was one thing I was sure about in this life, it was her.
I grabbed the microphone. Jasmine raised her eyebrows skeptically, but I ignored her. It was time to go off book.
“I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce myself to you all today,” I said, addressing the whole crowd.
There were a couple cheers, but everyone was still relatively quiet after the debacle of a proposal a couple moments before.
“My name is Sean Morris.”
From the crowd, someone screamed, “We love you, Sean!”
I laughed. “Thank you, but you’re getting me confused. I’m not that Sean Morris – the former lead singer of Flagship Inferno, Sean Morris.”
Confused mumbling from the crowd. We hadn’t publicly acknowledged our split yet, mostly because nobody knew where I’d been, but it felt damn good to say it. I knew Brad would be shitting a brick over that announcement though.
“You see, I’ve been living a double life for years,” I continued. “For the sake of entertainment, I’ve donned a mask everyday that looks like me but isn’t. In many ways, I’ve become two people. It’s a common thing for entertainers. You’re one person for the fans, and another for yourself. But people aren’t meant to split in two, and if you’re not careful, one of those people will disappear. And the one who disappears won’t be the one everyone else wants, it’ll be the one who’s been there quietly this whole time. They’ll just fade away into the background, so slowly at first that you won’t even notice. Then one day you realize you haven’t felt like yourself in a long time, and it’s strange contending with the notion that there’s a stranger in your body, walking like you and talking like you but never connecting to anyone as you.”
The crowd was unsettled now. They didn’t know where to look, what to do, or where to go. They just kind of milled about the place, talking to each other in hushed tones, though never letting their gazes drop. Many of them were recording me as I spoke. Good. I wanted the world to know what I came here to say, and maybe once my words rang out across the country, Hazel would know I was serious. I was committed.
“I’ve been a rock star so long that I forgot who I was. It took one woman, peeling back my layers from behind a camera lens, for me to remember. But here I am.” I grinned and gave a sweeping bow. “It’s nice to meet you, everyone. I’m Sean Morris. I have a brother who means the world to me, and who I’ll fight tooth and nail to save, even from himself. I like sitting outside with a cigarette and watching the sunrise because it reminds me that the world resets every day and a year is 365 opportunities to start over. And I love that woman...” I pointed to Hazel, who no longer registered the sea of faces around her. Her lips were pressed tightly together, almost like she was afraid to cry or laugh, and she wasn’t sure which. “I love her because she saw the man behind the fame monster and never let me push her away. Though Lord knows I tried.”
People were getting excited now. My speech was reaching its crescendo, and the energy in the air was electric.
“For every reason, my shy photographer has to take me back, she’s got a dozen more not to. And the only way I can even begin to deserve her is if I let the rock star die and take my place in the sun. So let me ask you, my fans, my friends, how many of you would rather me be the rock star instead of taking off the mask for good to win the girl. Raise your hands!”
The crowd fell silent, but it was a good silent. A good silent because not one person, not a single goddamn one, raised their hand. I grinned, catching Hazel’s eyes and shrugging playfully. She smiled.
“Say yes!” someone yelled from the back of the crowd.
Soon others took up the cry, and the whole arena began chanting. “Say yes! Say yes! Say yes!”
I was about to jump off the stage to claim my prize when I noticed the gap around Hazel had closed and they were now urging her toward the stage. She laughed, turning her head to look at people as they said things to her on her way. I crouched low at the end of the stage and offered her my hand.
“You know, a phone call would have sufficed,” she whispered jokingly, taking my hand. I curled my fingers around her delicate palm and lifted her into the air, as people from below helped push her up.
“But then I wouldn’t get to see you all cute and embarrassed like this.” I brushed the back of my hand over her cheek. I’d missed her baby soft skin. “Besides, I figured if I made an ass out of myself in front of enough people, you’d have to give in eventually.”
She smiled mischievously. “I wouldn’t get too ahead of yourself there, Rock Star.”
I laughed, because even when she flat-out rejected me here in front of all these people, I would never regret today. I felt light as air, no longer bound and constricted by my role in the band and in life. The path ahead was free from the cluttered expectations of my fans and the band and my own stupid need to fit them. Hazel or no, tomorrow was the start of something new for me. A new day, a new opportunity.
But that didn’t stop me from throwing up a prayer to every deity I could think of begging, pleading, for her to say yes, because there was a real possibility that I might die without her.
Fifty-Seven
Hazel
I didn’t particularly enjoy being on the other end of the camera for once. I could feel thousands of eyes on me, burning holes in my skin and making my hair stand on end.
I tried to focus on Sean, on the way his eyes seemed to swallow me whole, but camera flashes and hoots from the crowd kept drawing my attention away. I noticed Jasmine walking up to me and stared at her in confusion. What was going to happen now? And how could it possibly involve Jasmine?
Sean looked over at Jasmine too, and I saw his brow furrow. Apparently, he also didn't know what she was doing, which was equal parts comforting and distressing.
“Relax,” Jasmine said when she reached me. “I'm not here to ruin your moment.” She grinned and pointed at the camera still slung around my neck. “I just thought this would all go a little easier if you weren't still lugging around that thing.”
I looked down at the camera, then back to Jasmine. Then I tilted my head back and laughed. Jasmine helped lift the strap from around my neck, then wiggled her eyebrows playfully and retreated to the back of the stage.
There was nothing between Sean and me now. No camera. No stage. No secondary personalities. When he looked down at me, I made sure to trace and memorize every line of his face, exactly as it was in this moment. He looked so different than he did when we first met. His eyes were bright and full of life. They reminded me of the bioluminescent algae
that bloomed in the ocean and turned each wave into a glowing swirl of color. I was close enough to see the little flecks of gold, the striations of different shades of blue, and the slow dilation of his pupils as he stared at me.
Those eyes used to seem cold and distant. I used to wonder if he could even see me through them at all, or if his vision was clouded by his humongous ego. They weren't cold and distant now. They were warm and close. So close. Closer still...
Sean kissed me, long and slow. The mob of onlookers whistled and screamed, but somehow, I couldn't hear them anymore. His kiss erased the existence of everyone and anything that wasn't Sean and me. We wrapped around each other, gripping tightly like we thought someone might try to tear us apart. His mouth moved urgently over mine, sucking and biting and stroking with a purpose. With need. He slipped his tongue between my teeth to massage my own, and I let out a whimpering moan. I would never have enough of this man. I could never have enough of him. Kissing Sean was like getting to finally drink water after a long, sweaty run. I drank in the sweet taste of his lips, the masculine scent that surrounded me, and the pleasure of his hands on my back and waist. And then I drank it in some more.
Sean dipped me back, sending a rush of blood to my head. I yelped with delight, laughing even as his mouth continued to ravage mine. My scalp prickled and stood on end, and he brought me back up just as vertigo threatened to take me.
We broke apart a hundred years later to the applause of thousands.
“Woah,” I whispered.
Sean grinned. “Woah indeed. And if you liked that, I've got an offer you won't be able to refuse.”