The crowd starts chanting.
She looks over her shoulder at me one last time.
I nod.
She steps forward, and right when she hesitates, I put a hand on her lower back and push her gently onto the stage.
At the sight of her, the crowd erupts.
Her shoulders go stiff for one second before she shakes it off and moves toward the mic.
The light hits her. The room quiets. The energy shifts.
She looks over at me from the stage wings, and those green eyes find mine.
Then her chin comes up, her shoulders drop, and she raises the violin.
I know she’s going to tear the place apart.
I put my back against the wall, cross my arms, and listen.
From the other side of the fire door, the psychic appears with two drinks. She hands me one. “Told you.”
I look at her.
“Scorpio rising,” she says, nodding toward the stage. “Fixed sign. You’re not going anywhere.”
The fuck?
From the bar, Piper’s fiddle opens up, and the crowd loses their collective mind.
I think about a girl in a sundress pressing a keychain into my hand five years ago so I wouldn’t forget where home was. I think about how little the man she almost married actually saw her. How small she had become to fit into his life.
And I listen to her now because Piper says so much through her music.
“Yeah,” I say under my breath.
I’m not going anywhere.
Forty-Three
Piper
“Piper Callahan, ladies and gentlemen.”
The crowd erupts.
I’m standing at the edge of the stage with a borrowed violin and sweat running down my back. My hair is everywhere, and my heart is beating out of my chest. Cal is looking at me like he knew exactly what he was doing when he handed me a violin in a festival field this afternoon.
My fingers ache, my bow arm is trembling, and I’ve never felt more exhilarated in my entire life.
An hour.
I played for anhour.
The members of the band are grinning like idiots behind me while someone in the front row is pounding the stage like they’re trying to break through it.
I take a bow, breathless and shaking with adrenaline. “Thank you,” I gasp, laughing.
