And this is where it gets weird. She assumed from the beginning that I was obsessed with him because he’s famous, hot, and I knew him as a child, but that’s not it. I just don’t know what it is. “I don’t know if he’ll believe me after the interview, but yes. I just want him to know it was real and it was as important to me as it was to him. I don’t expect anything more than that.”
But that’s a lie, isn’t it? If I’m being honest with myself? I do expect things. I’ve gone over every possibility, from Bash telling me I’m insane and calling the cops to us becoming best friends and just about everything in between, and none of it includes him simply acknowledging my existence and moving on. I don’t have delusions that we’ll end up married, but that’s less about him and more about me.
I don’t know what love is. I don’t feel it, I’ve never experienced it, and I don’t expect a rock god to change that for me no matter how sweet he was when I needed him.
I just need the connection.
“Yes, I’ll tell him,” I repeat. “I just have to get in front of him first.”
“Well, the meet and greets will help with that.” Bending slightly, she applies some black lipstick and pops her lips. “You’re wearing red, right? You’ll stand out in the crowd more.”
My makeup bag lays open and exposed on the dresser, untouched. “Yeah, I guess. God, I have to get out of my own head.” I’m not meeting him tonight, I know that, and they really are my favorite band. When I made the connection that the man singing the lyrics that stitched me back together was the same one who once fed me and gave me blankets when my own parents wouldn’t, I locked myself in my house for a week. I missed interviews, a book release, and the launch of the companion documentary — but I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Fate was either throwing me a bone or setting me up for a complete mental breakdown, and now I’m probably mere days away from figuring out which one.
I should enjoy this while I can.
––––––––
Front row center doesn’t seem close enough. There’s an army of muscular, tattooed badasses standing between me and the man who thinks I’m a ghost, and the venue is packed so tightly it has to be a fire hazard. I can hardly move with bodies all around me, screaming and clamoring to get a taste, just an endless sea of pheromones and animalistic, hivemind frenzy.
I fucking hate crowds.
Grabbing Brooke’s hand, I squeeze my eyelids closed as the noise around us becomes deafening and Hollow Apparition takes the stage. I can’t look, not yet, and she knows it. She squeezes my hand twice to signal me to look up, and when I do, I meet fiery amber eyes.
They really haven’t changed at all.
But Bash isn’t looking at me, he’s looking through me, like I’m every ounce the ghost he claimed.
He’s holding that microphone so tightly the veins in his arms are visible, his messy hair falling over his forehead the way it used to when he was young, and the smile he gets when he holds out the microphone for the crowd to sing along toMidnight Rainis breathtaking.
I’m so close I can see the details in the graveyards he has tattooed on his hands, the same ones that used to hand me food without asking for anything in return.
“God, he is so hot!” a girl behind us yells, and in this moment that has to be some sort of understatement.
He’s wearing black cargo pants that fit every inch of him perfectly with multiple silver chains dangling around the buckles, and the shirt he’s wearing looks like a newspaper article of some kind of massacre.
Maybe they died like my sanity did, because yes, in this lighting, in this place, with the energy of ten thousand people roaring behind me like a hurricane... Sebastian Kincaid looks like a god. The line between what I convinced myself I want and what I seem to want now blurs until it's nothing more than a shadow, easily stepped over, easily ignored.
No wonder he’s so popular.
The screams turn deafening when he spits up into the air and asks the crowd if they’re awake, but when he walks directly in front of me and kneels down to belt out his next line, I find myself joining the crowd.
Brooke’s nails dig into my forearm excitedly, yet I can’t feel anything but the pulsing, driving need for him to look at me.
Reallylook at me.
But this is Bash in his element, and I’ve watched enough interviews to know better. He doesn’t see us, not really. He sees the music, the flow, the lyrics. He sees the energy and the pain being echoed back to him, but not us. Never us.
Just look at me.
If I can think it enough times, I can will it into existence. But the universe proves me wrong when he stands up and moves away, commanding the crowd like he has no clue that everything he needs is standing right here.
“Fuck,” Brooke hisses. “We should make a sign for the next show.”
No, I’d never risk ruining someone else’s experience by blocking their view with a sign. He’ll see me.
“Just sing. This is the only chance we have to experience this for the first time.”
She gives my hand one more squeeze before she starts singing alongside him, and when he hops off the stage and moves into the crowd, my heart begins tohammer in my chest. See? I just had to be patient. He’ll make his way to me, he will see me.
