It takes a second for that to register, but when it does, I start to defend Holden’s honor. Bad news? Yeah, right. But before I can muster anything more than a weak attempt at being a white knight, Holden sweeps me into the darkened club with a low groan.
Our eyes meet as we reach a break in the crowd, and a shadow flickers across his face. There’s more to the story, and I would guess it has something to do with that magical and extraordinary and spectacular girl that he loved once, but I’m not going to pry. We all keep dirty little secrets hidden away. I should know, since I definitely have more than my fair share.
“Everyone does things they’re not proud of,” he says gruffly. “Do you want a drink? Whiskey?”
It’s certainly tempting, but I need a mostly clear mind. “Just a beer.”
He leaves me at a dingy table while he rounds up a couple of beers. It’s not much of a club, especially compared to a place like Phillips, but I like it much better. Apparently, Holden wasn’t lying about this being his old hang-out, because he seems to know almost everyone here.
He moves effortlessly through the crowd, seemingly immune to the stares of the patrons and to his own charms. After slamming the beers on the table, he winks. “Did you manage to survive a few minutes without me?”
I roll my eyes. “I did.”
“Rich girls don’t usually come to places like this.”
“Will you stop with that? You’re being a nuisance.”
He looks contrite. I forgive him. We drink our beers in companionable silence as the opening act starts to warm up.
“Hey.” A red-haired vixen curves her arm behind the empty chair at the table and gives Holden a little side smile. The slut parade is officially on, I think, with another eye roll for Holden, who does not appear to be entertained.
“Tori,” he says through clenched teeth.
I look back and forth between the two of them, trying to discern whether there’s a history here that I’m not privy to, but it quickly becomes clear that she hasn’t come to talk to him.
Her eyes travel the full length of me, taking in the dress and my hair. “You’re Stella Granger, aren’t you? That girl who got kidnapped a few years back?”
Before I can figure out how to respond to that, Holden steps in, his voice carrying a dangerous undercurrent.
“Back off, Tori.”
She sneers. “You shouldn’t have brought her here if she didn’t want to be gawked at. Everyone knows her face.”
Everyone knows her face.
I had forgotten about that, too.
I refuse to allow Holden to defend me. I can be tough. Even though I’m not wearing combat boots and black eyeliner, the Stella I built to protect myself from all of the pain isn’t completely gone.
“That’s me.” My tone is as clear as Holden’s. Back off, bitch. “I don’t talk about my personal life with strangers, so it would probably work out better if you just went back to your table.”
Undaunted, she bends her head to mine and inspects my face. “I heard that you went insane.”
I say, coldly, “People say a lot of things.”
After a few seconds, she does back off, although I think Holden’s murderous glare probably had a little something to do with it.
It isn’t a victory, because after she leaves, the buzz begins to build all around us. I hear the chatter. I feel the unrepentant stares.
“We should leave,” Holden says.
It’s a kind offer, but I have to face this head-on. I’m not Stella Walton from Madison, Wisconsin. The fake name, the fake hair, the fake boots—it’s all cowardly. What’s worse, it’s a slap in the face to my parents, and most importantly, to my brother, who deserves better.
I deserve better, too.
“We came for music. Let’s listen to music.”
He doesn’t argue, but he does get me another beer when I ask for it. Clear heads are overrated, and I deserve a reward for staring down one of my demons. I just need to tackle all of the others.
Baby steps.
The first act is a grizzled man who looks like he probably attended Woodstock. The original one. Randomly, he has a handlebar mustache which I totally love. The chords he’s thumbing with his guitar are even more bizarre, owing more of a debt to Joni Mitchell than Ozzy Osbourne.
I raise my eyebrows. “What kind of music do people play here?”
Holden doesn’t blink, and with a perfectly straight face, he says, “Country.”
For a moment, I believe him. Then, the notes of the man’s lazy guitar start to pulse, transforming quickly into a thumping rock beat. Holden lets out a short laugh.
“Rock, mostly,” he says, taking a swig of my beer. “Open mic is always a bit of a free for all, though. Disappointed?”
I glance back towards the burly man, whose voice perfectly matches his appearance—deep and soulful and thick with the wisdom of living a lot of hard years.
“He’s great,” I say, fully meaning it.
Holden nods. “That’s why I love it here.”
When the man finishes his song, there’s a rousing burst of applause before he leaves the stage.
“So, when are you planning to get up there?” I mean it in jest, but then I realize that there’s probably a good chance that music is just another of Holden’s many hidden talents.
He raises his eyebrows and hums a few bars of the man’s song. So, people can hum off-key. I thought that was an old wives’ tale.
“Tone deaf,” he says.
“It’s a miracle. I’ve finally found something that you’re bad at. I thought you were put on this earth to make the rest of us feel totally inept.”
“Just you.” His taunt is accompanied by a non-flirtatious wink. Ugh.
“What is it with you and the winking?”
He grins. “Can’t help myself.”
“Couldn’t you just have the voice of an angel and keep the winking to yourself?”
“My charm is a burden that you’re forced to bear.”
Our banter isn’t quite distracting enough to let me ignore the whispers that are clearly directed at me, and there’s no hope of wiping the scene on the patio from my memory, but it will have to do for now. I take another sip of beer and exchange a few more barbs with Holden.
“Who do you think the next act will be?”
“Definitely a girl.” His mouth twitches as he gives me a sideways look. “A blond-haired girl from the right side of the tracks with a secret life as a burlesque dancer.”
“Give me some credit. If I had a secret life, it would be much more interesting than that. I’d be a runaway acrobat. Or a cage fighter.”
“For that, I would definitely pay top dollar. You would have gotten an A-plus in your independent study,” he says, releasing a long laugh.
I prepare a quick retort, but there’s a prickling at my neck that stills my tongue.
The crowd rustles in anticipation for the next act, and I look towards the stage, irrationally hoping for that burlesque dancer.
I should really have known better.
I see his guitar first. His back is to me, but it doesn’t matter—I’ve known every inch of his skin. And even if I close my eyes, I can’t deny the fire in each and every one of my nerve endings.
“Son of a bitch,” Holden mutters. “You have some kind of luck, Stella.”
Bad luck. Or divine intervention.
Pretty much the same thing.
I
watch Luke’s movements for any sign that he might have spotted us. As the band behind him finishes their sound check, he picks mindlessly at a few chords. The murmurs of the crowd build to a frenzied pitch, which I suspect is more due to his looks than any particular display of talent.
He’s oblivious to it all, even to the little cluster of girls near the stage who are doing everything they can to catch his attention. One of them rips her shirt in the attempt to draw his eyes to her breasts. Idiot.
A simpering idiot who will probably wind up in his bed tonight.
I look to Holden for help, but he just shakes his head and rocks backwards on his chair, the implication clear—he’s not coming to my rescue this time. We can stay or go, but I am the one who will be making that decision.
I want to go. I need to stay. It’s not a fair fight.
Maybe I did learn one thing from that magical, terrible night with Luke. Need beats want. Every single time.
He slides the guitar over his shoulder and steps to the microphone. When the crowd goes quiet, everything else ceases to matter—Tori’s words, the blatant curiosity emanating from the people around us, the girls standing at the stage, the grizzled man with the voice of an angel, and even Holden, fade into the distance.
“I’m only going to play one song tonight.”
The edges of his voice are jagged, and that rawness releases a rush of emotion inside me and an unrelenting need to protect him from more hurt.
Then again, I tried to do that once. I failed miserably.
I love you,
I said.
Forget that ever happened
, he said.
“It’s about a girl.” He looks up from the guitar, a wry smile on his lips. As his eyes sweep over the audience, the smile disappears and is replaced by a look of withering intensity. “But then again, what isn’t?”
His little introduction gets an appreciative response from the crowd. There are still some stray catcalls as the band starts to beat a relentless pace and he begins to strum.
The song is too fast to be a coffeehouse croon and too slow to be a rock jam. The beat thickens, the hum of drums and piano thumping below a lingering guitar hook.
His fingers move impossibly fast across the strings in an intricate combination of notes and chords. Whistles continue to echo across the room, but at the first wail of his aching, tormented voice, silence falls like a knife.
“Liquid stars beneath my fingertips. A perilous concoction that I could not resist.”
The raw gravel of his voice scratches over the words, elongating syllables and infusing each with a particular kind of pain that is both universal and his alone.
Suddenly, I understand what he does with all of the emotions he seems to lock away—they’re all there, turning and twisting in his voice, creating a vibration that is deep and soulful and rough and broken all at the same time.
Its beauty nearly knocks me to the ground.
It’s not like I haven’t heard him play before. He and Jack started a band in ninth grade, and even though I teased the pair of them about traumatized eardrums, they were pretty decent. Like Holden, I’m basically tone deaf, but Jack had a pure voice, clean, crisp, and surprisingly pretty. They added a nameless drummer who had an elementary sense of rhythm and a bass player who managed not to screw up every single note, and they were in business.
Of course, Luke was the real talent, using his beautiful fingers to coax harmony from discord. I always wondered why he didn’t take music more seriously, but when I tried to ask him about it, he just laughed off my questions, so I chalked it up as another one of the things that he was absurdly good at but had no passion for. Guitars for girls, he and Jack used to joke. Now I know—it wasn’t that he didn’t care, but that he cared too much. Passion rings through every chord, every breath, every word. Fear, not nonchalance, I realize.
But I’ve never heard him sing, not even a few bars to help Jack learn one of the songs he had written. I assumed it was because he couldn’t, but I was wrong about that, too.
“Your eyes have their silence, but I know the curves of your face. Everything that I knew fell out of place.”
I lose myself in envy. He does feel, he does love.
He just doesn’t love me.
“Chasing infinity, your skin melts into mine. Destiny collided and broke apart.”
He’s lost in the music, his fingers and voice and flesh intertwined with the guitar. The fireworks explode in my chest, breaking my heart into countless pieces. There will come a time when I’m not able to put it back together, when I lose myself in wanting him. I may already be there.
“You said love and meant desire. I can’t, I don’t, I won’t believe. I would only break your heart. You might be heaven, but I’m hell for you.”
His voice fractures apart on the last word, and I know that he’s left something unsaid. He covers it quickly with swift, electric fingers that slide over the guitar as the music builds to a crescendo.
“Lies on my lips that you cannot see.”
His gaze burns me from the inside out. I slink down into my chair, hoping by some miracle, he hasn’t actually seen me, even though he’s clearly staring me down.
He could be drunk or high or blinded by the stage lights.
The burning intensifies. I raise my chin, and all of the doubt is erased—he sees me.
“I told you it wasn’t real. Of all the things I’ve done...”
His voice doesn’t waver. It’s hoarse, and hungry, but it doesn’t crack. Time stretches between us, and while he continues to sing, I can’t listen or focus or force myself to hear, not until the music starts to fade away and his voice once again breaks apart.
“This is not a love story.”
His helpless eyes stay locked on mine, even as the crowd begins to cheer. He’s not going to look away.
It’s a little murder, but I break the connection.
“I have to get out of here,” I say, desperate to be anywhere but here.
“He wrote you a song,” Holden replies, his voice gentle. “Maybe we should stay for a few more minutes.”
“We do not know that he wrote me a song.”
“Yes, I think we do, Stella.”
I shake my head and try to clear it. “I need to get out of here for a little while,” I mutter. “I just need some air.”
I rise from the chair and grip the edge of the table with shaky fingers. Holden stands up, but I motion for him to sit back down.
“I need to be alone.”
His jaw is set in a stubborn line. “It’s not safe for you to be outside alone in this neighborhood.”
“Holden, I need a few minutes. I’ll stay close to the door so that Eric can keep an eye on me, and I’ll come right back in. I promise.”
Finally, he nods, but I see that he isn’t happy about it. I’m on my feet and out the door before he can think of a winning argument.
When I finally break into the clean air, I gasp out a few breaths when the truth strikes me—the whole, complete, and undeniable truth.