Rafe’s voice turns rougher as he sings the next lines, and I swear I feel them in my bloodstream.
“I count the miles like rosary beads,
pray the road will bend,
but every city takes a piece of you,
and calls it love again.”
Heat floods my body. Not sexual this time, but something deeper, aching and raw. He’s singing about us. About hotel rooms. About stolen nights. About goodbyes that feel like ripping.
I stand frozen while his words unravel me.
When he hits the chorus, the crowd joins in even though they’ve never heard it before, instinctively catching the rhythm of longing.
“So touch me slow, before you go,
make forever fit inside one night,
promise me you’ll come back whole,
promise me I’m still your right.”
Emotion presses hard against my ribs. I have to brace a hand against the equipment case beside me. Then Rafe turns slightly, just enough to look toward the side of the stage. Toward me. And he winks. It’s quick, barely anything. A flicker of acknowledgment no one in the crowd will catch. But every person backstage could.
I should look away.
I don’t.
I can’t.
The song is too full of feeling. The lyrics hit me too hard. My body reacts like I’m being claimed in public without anyone realizing, like his wink is a hand around the back of my neck.
I think about our wedding night—about the way he’d held my face in his hands, eyes shining, voice steady.
“This is how it’s always going to be between us,”he’d said.
And I’d believed him with everything I was.
I still do.
We will always make it work. Even if we have to carve the time out with our bare hands. Even if we have to choose each other over and over until it becomes the only religion we’ve ever known.
The song ends, and the applause is wild.
Rafe steps back, chest heaving, eyes bright like he’s barely holding himself together. The band gathers around him briefly, Eli pounding him on the back, Drew grinning like he knows that song just killed half the audience, Miles nodding approvingly.
Then they launch into their last track—fast, brutal, electric—and the crowd explodes again.
When it’s over, the venue feels like it might lift off its foundation from the force of the cheering. Rafe and the guysrun backstage, vibrating, soaked in sweat, adrenaline still firing. The crew swarms around them. People shout congratulations. Someone hands Eli a beer like it’s a ritual.
Rafe’s bandmates hug him first, sweaty and loud, laughing and breathless. I’m grateful for it, because it gives me permission. I step forward into the chaos, and Rafe turns like he sensed me. Like even in this noise, he knows exactly where I am.
He pulls me into his arms. The hug is brief. A fraction too short. Not enough. Never enough. But his mouth brushes my ear as he holds me. “Mine,” he murmurs.
My whole body answers the claim like it’s a vow. “Always,” I breathe back.
And then he lets me go, because that’s what we do. We take what we can. We hide the rest. We survive on stolen seconds. But the way he looks at me as he steps away—eyes burning, promise written all over his face—tells me the rest is coming.
