CHAPTER
TWENTY
The bass owns the room.It rides the spine of the song and turns the dance floor into one breathing animal, shoulders and hips moving like the DJ has his palm around everyone’s heartbeat. Strobes snap across faces—laughing, flushed, glossy with sweat—and the air tastes like citrus, liquor, and electricity.
We’re already three drinks in—“merry, not stupid” is the house rule tonight—and it’s the loosest I’ve seen my band in weeks. Eli has a glow-stick crown someone shoved on his curls, and he’s doing that ridiculous shoulder roll that makes people circle up and cheer even though he has zero business looking that good off a drum stool. Drew keeps veering between the bar and our little pocket of floor, pressing cold bottles into hands like a benefactor. Miles is a quiet menace in black-on-black, watching the DJ chain two songs without dropping tempo, then shouting in my ear about how we need to sample that snare for a future track.
And me? I’m grinning like a thief because he’s here. In public. With me.
Ollie stands close enough that I can feel the heat of him along my side. Hood down, cap low, the kind of camouflage that works on people who aren’t looking for him. I’m always looking forhim. He’s not wasted; honestly, I kind of wonder if he ever has been. But there’s a looseness to his mouth that I only see when the scoreboard’s off and the world’s hands aren’t tugging on his sleeves.
The song flips—kick heavy, synth dirty, vocal dragged like velvet—and a ring of bodies opens without anyone asking. Eli clocks it first and grins at me over someone’s shoulder. He shifts left, Drew shifts right, Miles steps in behind, and just like that they’re a wall—casual, laughing, not obvious—between us and a hundred eyes that don’t need to know anything.
“First public outing,” I shout into Ollie’s ear. The club is all throb, so I have to lean in to be heard. “How’s it feel?”
He tips his face toward mine, that barely there smile that ruins me. “Like a bad idea I’m glad I had.”
“Best kind.”
I slide a hand down his arm—only once, quick—and catch his fingers. He squeezes back, then lets go, but we don’t step apart. We press thigh to thigh as if the crowd did it for us. It didn’t. I did.
It’s stupid, how much it hits. A public brush. A close press. That’s all. Onstage earlier I had a thousand strangers screaming lyrics I wrote in the dark, a possible contract on the horizon, and still this—this—is the high I keep chasing.
He leans in again, close enough that I can feel his breath against my neck. “You’re staring,” he says, a half smile in his voice.
“Can you blame me?”
“Maybe a little.”
“I’m trying to memorize you before you disappear again.”
His expression softens, caught somewhere between amusement and ache. “I’m right here, Rafe.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “For now.”
The lights strobe pink across his face, and for a heartbeat, everything feels impossibly clear. He’s real and solid, but there’s a part of me that still doesn’t quite believe he’s here—that I didn’t just dream him into existence. He’s supposed to be miles away, already prepping for his next game, not standing in the middle of a Vegas club with my hand still warm from touching his.
He laughs softly, leaning in so his mouth almost brushes my ear. “You look like you’re overthinking.”
“I’m trying not to.”
“Try harder.”
I grin. “You’re dangerous, you know that?”
He gives a tiny shrug, pretending to look around the club even as he presses just a fraction closer. “You make me brave.”
And that—fuck, that almost undoes me. The words are right there, heavy on my tongue. I could say them. I want to. I can taste the shape of them—I love you—like a secret trying to break free. But not here. Not with bass shaking the walls and lights flashing over us like we’re in someone else’s dream.
So instead, I touch the back of his hand, tracing the veins that run to his wrist, and whisper, “You make me everything.”
He stares at me for a beat too long, eyes full of an emotion I’m terrified of misunderstanding.
Then, as if the universe can’t stand to let us stay still, a voice cuts through the crowd—high and thrilled and so completely Vegas.
“Hey!” a woman nearby shouts, teetering on heels too bright to be legal. She points at the guy next to her, who’s got a cheap band of tinfoil twisted on his finger and a grin so big it looks like it hurts. “We’re getting married!”
Her friend whoops. Our group cheers like we’ve been personally invited to fate’s dumbest good idea. The DJ sees it, clocks it, and slams a track change so fast the whole crowdstumbles. Another cheer goes up. The bride-to-be—if that’s what she is; she could be a very committed liar—holds up a single-serve bottle like a torch. “Vegas, baby! Tonight!”
