Together, it was a shared experience. A give and take.
A conversation.
For someone like me, a conversation was everything. I’d lost all hope of even being able to talk at one point. But I knew I could understand words. I could hear music—this right here. I could always have this. And that brought me more peace when I was in therapy than anything the doctors told me. If I still had music, I had joy, connection, and a conversation.
What magic!
I watched the crowd and the band, and I watched Fen, too. I saw the awe in face, and I was pretty sure he was feeling something close to what I felt. Maybe he was finally appreciating what his father had built, even if he could never bond with the man himself. Maybe there was some peace to be found in the thing Serj created. This festival was more than “scamming” people for luxury tents or trying to pack bodies in front of stages. It wouldn’t have lasted this long if that’s all it was.
There was some good here.
Velvet was waving Fen over to introduce him to someone semi-famous, a little farther backstage. I squinted into the dark and let him go. I was too enthralled with watching the show andthe crowd. Toward the end of the song, someone stepped behind me, and I felt a chin rest on my shoulder.
My head told me it should be Fen, but my instincts saidnope. Fen didn’t smell like beer.
I flinched and looked out of the corner of my eye at the cheek next to mine.
Eddie.
Before I could jerk away, he folded his arms around mine, trapping me, and pressed the length of his body against my back. It was ridiculously intimate. Not a hug between friends.
Eddie had never once made me afraid of him.Ever.I wasn’t sure if he’d been drinking enough to be drunk, or what was happening. I just knew it didn’t feel right. I panicked a little and pushed him off, and when I looked at his face, he was laughing.
A joke? It didn’t feel funny to me.
As the song ended, he leaned down and put his mouth against my ear and said loud enough for me to hear over the crowd, “We can hit it on the side, like you and Fen did when we were together. Fen’s just using you to get at me, anyway. Let’s have some fun.”
Then he backed away.
Mother trucker.
I wasallkinds of panicked now. But Eddie just walked away as if it wasn’t any big deal. Was he threatening me? Or joking? Maybe he was high—I honestly couldn’t tell.
My eyes searched for Fen’s and found them full of fury.He’d seen.He was marching toward Eddie, and it looked like he might dismember him.
They were too far away from me backstage, and it was too loud. I couldn’t hear them. I could just see the sharp lines on Fen’s furious face, and the way he pointed his finger at Eddie.
The way Eddie strolled toward him, unbothered—or pretending to be, at least.
When they met in the middle, Fen pushed Eddie.
Pushed… violently shoved.
I tried to shout, to make them stop, but my word-pixie woke, scrambling things up, and the words Icouldspeak were lost under the thunder of the concert.
Suddenly, the brothers lunged toward each other in a flash of bodies.
Someone’s fist came out. Eddie’s, I think. Fen’s head rocked backward. Then he was stumbling, and stagehands were rushing toward the boys, breaking them up, blocking my sight.
Everything inside me retracted in pain. This was exactly what I didn’t want.This.
This nightmare.
Of which I had a leading role.Ruiner.
I watched in horror as security held the boys apart until they’d cooled down. Fen was wild-haired, still furious. Eddie was laughing. Both of them had hurt each other—mentally and physically. Utter disaster.
Was this how things were going to be now, with Eddie back? The two brothers were going to be at each other’s throats again, and I was the wedge in the middle. I wasn’t sure why that wasso shocking. Did I truly believe I could float like a bee from one brother to another without any fallout?
