Page 8 of Before You Fell

His twin stands beside him in silence, bass hanging low, face unreadable.

Jett doesn’t grin at the crowd, he just watches it. Studies it.

He is the kind of guy who sees too much and says too little, which is annoying as shit when he looks at me as if I am one bad choice away from proving him right.

Cruz rolls his shoulders on my other side, fingers sliding over the neck of his guitar—his rings flashing under the stage glow. He gives the crowd a filthy grin, the kind that makes half the women out there think he is about to ruin them personally.

Cruz has never meant a damn thing personally in his life.

That is his charm. That is also why someone will probably stab him one day.

The man fucks through women the way other people work through cigarettes. Uses them, ruins them, forgets their names before they have even found their underwear. He says love is for men who enjoy being leashed and settling down is just a prettier way to say buried alive.

Cruz would rather choke on his own guitar pick than belong to one woman. Or so he says.

The opening tune rumbles through the speakers, low and dirty, vibrating through the stage as the crowd loses its mind.

Bright lights explode overhead as the music hits the first beat, white and gold and blinding enough to turn the whole stadium into a living, screaming thing.

The scream of the crowd hits me straight in the chest.

And fuck, there it is. That thing no drug has ever managed to beat. That violent, beautiful, filthy rush of being wanted by people who don’t know me well enough to hate me.

They know the voice, the hair, the mouth, the tattoos, and the swagger. They know the songs that cut them open and the version of me that stands under lights and makes pain sound pretty.

But they don’t know the boy underneath.

Good. The boy underneath is a pathetic little thing with his father’s voice still rotting in his head and old shame sitting in his bones.

The man onstage is untouchable.

I raise one hand and the stadium explodes.

The sound punches through me so hard my ribs feel too small to hold it. Thousands of people scream as if I’m something worth losing their minds over and I let them. I fucking let them because this is the only place I know how to be worshipped without being known.

I pluck the mic from the stand and move forward, heading for the edge of the stage with my guitar heavy against my chest and the lights burning hot against my skin.

Girls scream from the barricade. Hands reach for me. Signs bounce in the front row. Someone has my name painted across her big tits in glitter, her tiny shirt doing sweet fuck all to cover it. Someone else is crying before I have even got there.

I feed off it. Every hungry gaze and outstretched hand. Every mouth forming my name as if it tastes good. Every girl staring at me as if I am the bad decision she came here hoping to make.

I take it all and let it fill the hollow places I pretend do not exist.

Being wanted feels better than breathing.

Breathing only keeps you alive.

This makes living worth the damage.

Jax smashes into the drums behind me, the beat slamming through my spine hard enough to rattle bone.

Jett comes in next, his bassline dragging the song lower, dirtier, giving all that pretty pain something ugly to crawl through. Cruz’s guitar screams across the top of it and the crowd surges forward as if the music has wrapped a hand around their throats and pulled.

The first line of the chorus leaves my mouth. The stadium sings it back and my grin spreads slowly.

Yeah. That’s it.

Willow’s words in my mouth. My voice carrying them. Their pain becoming mine for three and a half minutes before it turns into applause, money, sweat, and girls screaming themselves hoarse for a man who didn’t even bleed enough to write the song.