Page 96 of Not Another Love Song

Gwen watched a sound check for the first time, enthralled by the many moving parts that went into it. Alex seemed bored with the whole process, while Dominic kept getting distracted with showing off tricks on his violin for Gwen. Carlos, the drummer, never showed, which was unsurprising to the rest of them.

They went with Jaden and Dom to a quick dinner before heading back, and Gwen could hardly believe how much the guys ate when only an hour away from a performance. She could never eat before a Pops concert.

“How did you all meet?” Gwen asked when she and Alex were walking back to the venue.

“Lorenz found them. He created the group.”

Gwen looked up at him, feeling her stomach turn unpleasantly.

“Oh. Do you all get along, though?”

“Yeah,” Alex said, guiding her across the street. “Forrest had a problem with me from the beginning, though.” And just before Gwen tried to ask which one Forrest was and why she hadn’t met him yet, Alex said, “So Lorenz replaced him. We found Mac.”

He pulled the stage door open for her, and as she walked through, blaring sunlight switching abruptly to backstage dimness, her mind worked quickly.

“So, if they don’t get along with you, they’re fired?” She laughed. But when he pulled off his Ray-Bans and glanced at her, she realized it wasn’t a joke. It was a fact.

He looked down a bit guiltily. “Well, it’s called Thorne and Roses. I’m Thorne.”

She nodded, not wanting to press it.

The concert was an evening of three groups, each playing a forty-five-minute set. When Thorne and Roses joined a few days before, ticket sales skyrocketed, selling out the rest of the auditorium, so the venue put them as the final act.

When it was time for their set, Alex brought Gwen to the stage manager to tell her where to stand. He held her face in his hands and kissed her as the rest of the band entered the stage in the dim red lights. She heard people starting to scream as Alex’s lips parted from hers. He gave her a wink and a smile, and when he turned around and strolled onstage, the noise thundered. The lights flashed, Carlos counted them in, and when the sound boomed from the speakers, she watched as Xander Thorne slid his bow across the strings of his thin red cello.

“Back in Black” soared through the auditorium. Xander played the riffs in the opening with his bow, his fingers moving dexterously over the strings. Dominic did most of the connecting with the crowd, creeping down toward the edge of the stage, touching the fingers of the audience’s reaching hands. Jaden and Mac played keyboard and bass, respectively, holding down the accompaniment as Xander took lead on most songs.

She shivered with the thrum of energy. Gwen had never been to a rock concert before, only classical music in auditoriums with padded seats. She peeked out the curtain and found hundreds of people standing at the edge of the stage, jumping and dancing. She almost wished Alex had gotten her cleared for the floor, just so she could watch from the front. She’d certainly dressed the part: ripped black jeans and a ribbed band T-shirt.

Looking back out to him onstage, she smiled. Alex was electric, a different person. He was Xander Thorne. He flipped his hair at the end of a phrase, and she laughed, knowing the movement so well. He was overconfident, overtly sexy, and he didn’t give a fuck about anything happening on that stage.

The speakers vibrated her entire body, and the lights flashed across her face in their automated pathways across the stage. She watched the band wind their way through a U2 cover, the entire crowd singing along with them. At the end of it, he looked over to her with a smile that made her stomach flip in circles.

As the crowd cheered for them, and Dominic riled them up with a call and repeat, Alex crossed to her, exiting the stage to drag her face to his. She squeaked, laughing when he kissed her, biting at her and running his hands over her breasts and hips.

“What are you doing!” She laughed. “You can’t just take a break to kiss your girlfriend!”

“Watch me,” he growled, grabbing her ass.

An amplified voice caught her attention.

“And once Xander is done humping his girlfriend, we can get back to it.”

She gasped, seeing Dominic giving her a shit-eating grin from the stage. Alex huffed against her neck and turned back to glare at him. He held her face in his large hands and kissed her one last time before returning to the stage.

Jaden and Mac were holding each other close, mocking them, running their hands all over each other. Gwen blushed and pressed her fingers to her lips.

As Alex grabbed Ruby again and prepped for their next song, a humming of noise caught her ear.

“Gwen!”

“I love you, Gwen!”

“It’s Gwen!”

She frowned, peeking out from behind the curtain to see who could possibly—

And the noise slammed against her ears. So different from the acoustics of Carnegie Hall with its three thousand pairs of sophisticated hands clapping together. This noise…This noise was electric. She waved and smiled from where she stood at the edge of the stage, and five hundred young people screamed.

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