He believed in me? How could he? Why? I didn’t deserve this.
All those silly dreams as a girl, sitting in my room with my guitar or ukulele, playing my silly little songs about teenage crushes and heartbreak and loneliness and being misunderstood by the big, bad world.
Those silly little dreams, the ones where I’d sing into my mirror, recording myself on Dad’s old boom box, and later on my computer, pretending I was singing for thousands of people, to a sold-out stadium. There’d be flashing lights and people screaming my name.
I’d just wanted to be seen, back then.
I didn’t know what fame was back then. Now, having been around Myles, I had a much clearer idea about what it meant for him, but shit, I had no idea what it meant for me. I’m about to find out, I think. I can feel that, and it’s terrifying.
God, there are so many things to be scared of, and they’re all piling up and coming to a head.
All those silly little dreams, crushed in a moment by a father’s careless words: “You’re just not talented enough, Lexie.”
All those silly little dreams.
And here was Myles North, superstar, top of any list of sexiest men alive, top of any list of most talented performers. Award winner. Showstopper. Globetrotting multi-millionaire.
A man who kept his four Grammys in a box in a storage unit, because he cared more about playing music than he did anything else.
Except for me.
He believed in me.
I couldn’t ignore that.
But I wasn’t sure I could be what he wanted me to be.
He wanted to love me.
He wanted me to love him.
There would be a moment, soon, when I’d have to make a choice—believe his words, or Dad’s.
You’re just not talented enough, Lexie.
or
I believe in you.
All those silly little dreams…
About to come true.
If I could find the courage.
Myles
Showtime.
I was keyed up as fuck—feeling higher and wilder than if I’d bumped a couple lines. I hadn’t—I was stone sober.
The dome was packed to capacity. House lights were low, house speakers playing modern country. The jabber of tens of thousands of voices overlapped in a million ways, and I knew from experience I wouldn’t have been able to make out a single voice or conversation even if they had been speaking English.
I was jumping up and down, shaking my hands. My T-shirt was already damp and sticking to me, and I’d taken my hat off and put it on backward and forward a dozen times. Hands shaking. Knees shaking. Gut churning. Head spinning. Lyrics ran through my head, and I sang them as they occurred to me. Went through scales, up and down, tongue twisters.
Then the music cut out. The stadium lights dimmed.
Darkness covered everything. I heard Jupiter move, saw his broad outline swagger to his set, straddle the stool. Twirl his sticks.
“Ready boys?” he called.
Brand and Zan were there, plugging in. “Ready,” they both called.
“Myles?”
I let out a breath. Glanced at Lexie, standing next to me. “Kiss me for luck.”
She clutched me by the shirt, yanked me to her, and kissed the jitters right out of me. “Kill ’em.”
And shoved me toward the stage.
God, she looked hot. Booty shorts—cut-off denim, white fringes, ripped back pockets, just barely cupping the lower edge of her perfect ass. Knee-high cowboy boots, red leather, glittery, pointy toed. White button-down tied under her boobs, cinched tight to keep them in, mostly unbuttoned. Hair swept to one side, minimal makeup.
Fucking perfect.
She had her guitar and ukulele, and I’d heard her in the hotel room, all night and all day, going over songs. In the bathroom, alone. Refusing to let me be with her as she played.
“Myles?” Jupiter again, voice pitched low. “They’re going nuts, bud.”
I leaned over and kissed her once more. Grinned at her, and then snatched the cordless mic from the stagehand, the guitar from the new tech…whose name eluded me in the adrenaline of the moment. Good kid, though. Swung it by its strap around my shoulder, headstock pointing down and jogged out on stage.
“Hit it, Jupe.”
As practiced: a full half a dozen beats, BOOM—BOOM—BOOM—BOOM—BOOM—BOOM…
And then the lights kicked on, brilliant and blinding, and Zan and Brand hit the huge opening lick of “Hookups and Hangovers” and the crowd, already howling and clapping and whistling, erupted to a deafening roar. I stood at the very front and center of the stage, arms raised overhead, a huge grin on my face—the one I thought of as my show-biz grin, million watts, the one that had landed me on magazine covers and lured probably way too many women into my bed. Brand and Zan twisted out the opening—Zan’s six string electric howling as he trotted his fingers through a complicated hammer-on series of notes, Brand with his huge bass thumping and growling. And then they silenced their strings and Jupiter kicked out the beat, a steady pound on his bass drum and a quick clacking tapping interlaced rhythm of his sticks on the snares and snare rim. I stomped my foot on the stage in front of the mic, hands clapping over my head, and within a beat the crowd was stomping and clapping with me.
Stood up close to the tilted-down mic, swung my guitar around and led us back into the melody as I sang and the crowd sang with me, and we went through it all again because they like short verses and catchy choruses they can sing along to.
And then it was muscle memory and autopilot, feeling alive as you only can on stage in front of tens of thousands of people, fingers stinging from the strings and sweat pouring down, ears ringing, my whole body shaking with the adrenaline rush of performance.
Song after song, all the hits, the crowd singing along in a strange mixture of English and Japanese.
