Page 51 of Have To Be Mine

And then he started singing.

He was terrible. Gloriously, enthusiastically awful. He missed half the notes, forgot some of the words, and had to read frantically from the screen. But he committed to every second of it, throwing himself into the performance with zero self-consciousness.

The crowd ate it up. People were clapping, laughing, and even singing along. A group of women near the bar were practically swooning, calling out encouragement in Greek and broken English. I knew he could point at any woman in the cafe and they’d go home with him.

But Dash wasn’t looking at them. His eyes were locked on me. Every terrible note was all directed at me. Like I was the only person in the entire cafe. Like those beautiful women waving at him didn’t even exist. And holy shit, my entire being felt like it was glowing.

I found myself smiling. Then laughing. Then actually moving closer to the stage because I didn’t want to miss a single second of this absurd, wonderful performance. I wanted to be front and center.

When he hit the chorus, he pointed at me and sang “working on our night moves” with such ridiculous enthusiasm that I had to cover my face with my hands. The rose was still clutched between my fingers. I was already planning on drying it, pressing it, and cherishing it forever as a memory of tonight.

The song ended to thunderous applause. Dash took an exaggerated bow, handed back the microphone, and bounded off the stage directly to me.

“Your turn,” he said, slightly breathless.

“Not a chance.”

“Come on. I held up my end.”

“You said you’d make a fool of yourself so I’d feel better. You didn’t say I actually had to sing.”

“Well, it was implied.” He was grinning, his face flushed from the performance and the attention. “But I’ll let it slide this time.”

“This worked for your brother?” I asked.

“Oh yeah.” He nodded. “Elvis.”

“Elvis?”

“I’ll have to find that video, but basically, they got drunk in Vegas. He sang her Elvis and they got blackout drunk and ended up getting married by Elvis. Well, an impersonator, obviously. Not the real Elvis.”

I stared at him. “Briggs? As in your brother Briggs Blackwell?”

“The same one.”

I was never going to look at the man the same way again.

“Let’s get a drink,” he said. “We can see how many it takes for me to bust out some Elvis myself.”

17

DASH

Iordered us drinks at the bar. Something sweet and fruity for her, whiskey neat for me. We found a corner table where we could still see the stage but weren’t quite in the thick of the crowd. Krista was glowing.

Her cheeks were flushed, whether from the heat of the cafe or from watching me make an absolute fool of myself, I didn’t know. But she looked beautiful. I had to reexamine my definition of the word. My whole life, I’d thought I knew what beautiful was, but now I knew I was wrong.

She was beautiful.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she said.

“I told you I would.”

“You really went for it.”

“I’m a Blackwell. We don’t half-ass anything.”

She laughed and I realized I would run through a brick wall to hear that sound again. I was in trouble.