Goddammit.
I need this weekend to be over already.
I’m ready to grovel for this woman as I watch her walk away from me, her perfect ass swaying. I’m still staring when she makes her way down the steps and out of the stage area, replaying every touch, that fucking kiss…
Andi stepping into my sightline with wide eyes pulls me out of the daze.
“And… you’re not with her yet because…” she says, advancing on me.
“It’s complicated,” I say.
“Yes, it looksverycomplicated,” she says. “It lookedsocomplicated when she had you pushed against the wall with her hand around your throat.”
I shove her, laughing. “Get out of here,” I jokingly tell her. “You’re distracting.”
Andi laughs. “Have fun trying to focus,” she taunts, walking past me to the exit. “Happy rituals.”
Yeah, my focus is about to be absolute shit.
I push the door to the dressing room open to a quiet, tense room. Mads is getting his hoodie and headphones on for his walk around the venue, Reed is setting up on the floor for his meditation, and Zeb is already pacing, jabbing at the walls as his favorite crime podcast plays.
I grab my headphones so I can begin my own routine, and when the first beat of the playlist blasts through the speakers, I run my sticks down the length of the vanity countertop, ending with a few hits on the wall.
Let’s fucking go.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
BONNIE
“Hey!Someone… Someone help them up. Nah, get them the fuck up,” Reed shouts at the audience, mid-song. He glances over to Liam. “Can we get—someone? Security? Anyone? Make sure they’re okay.”
Fuck.
Gemma was right.
These fuckers are tense.
I don’t know if it’s just something in the air or if it’s just an intense group of people attending, but the vibe feels off. Radio Eleven has never felt like this—if it had, we wouldn’t be back here.
I hold my sticks in my lap and wait for security to help the people who were trampled and possibly hurt.
For the third time.
Liam is directing a few guys and Kade is standing at the edge of our stage by Mads with his finger to his headpiece as he watches it from higher ground. I glance up, and I see Gemma in the walk above. I’m surprised she isn’t on the ground smashing heads herself. Though, something tells me if she did, she might be in the middle of the fight herself.
Security lifts someone over the audience—a guy with a bloody nose—and Reed starts pacing, tossing his mic from one hand to the other.
“Okay, I need you fuck heads to repeat after me since some of you seemed to have left your fucking manners at home: if someone falls down, we pick them back up,” Reed says, his tone getting more and more annoyed by the minute. “Let’s not ruin the pit for everyone. Don’t be an asshole. We’re all here for a good time, yeah?”
The crowd roars back at him.
“That’s what I fucking thought.” He pushes his sweaty hair off his forehead. “They say, if you repeat something twenty-one times, you’re bound to remember it. But I don’t have time to say this twenty-one times, so let’s get it through your heads in three. If someone falls down—”
He holds the mic out to the audience.
“—we pick them back up!”
“If someone falls down—”
