Page 10 of Love Songs

I danced around the stage, leaned down where Craig had set up my cell phone behind a stack of amps and made faces for Jaylin to laugh at later. I dropped to my knees at the foot of the stage and held my mic out for the closest fans to sing while hands scrabbled at my skin and clothing, looking for purchase. Iwasn’t used to being this close to the audience, but I loved it and feared it in equal measure.

We played six songs back-to-back, and my voice held strong through each one.

“What a beautiful day it is here!” I shouted into the mic, sweat dripping down my face and my chest heaving from exertion. “Are you all having a good time?”

The audience roared.

“I said, are you having a good time?”

They roared louder still.

“We have time for one more song,” I teased, wishing the set was longer. “You might recognize this one.”

Arthur counted in our latest number one song,Wicked Forever, with his drumsticks. Kirk launched into a wailing guitar intro, and I blended my voice into the fading note. The crowd erupted into a single entity of synchronized motion, and my contact high reached for the stratosphere.

A shower of sparks shot into the air on either side of the stage with a rhythmic pulse perfectly timed to the beat.

This song was my biggest post-surgery challenge yet, and I was sailing through it. My voice might be a little deeper now, a little raspier, but I was back, and I didn’t want the night to end.

A breeze joined the mayhem of sound and bodies, sweeping through the band shell and cooling my heated, exposed skin.

I raced across the stage and held the mic into the air, toward those on the right side, encouraging them to sing the chorus.

“You and me, wicked forever,” their collective voices rose into the heavens.

Running to the left side, I did the same, motioning up with my free arm. They rose to the challenge, singing louder than the opposite side had.

An acrid fishy smell caught my attention. There and gone so fast it had to be my imagination, because why the hell would I be smelling fish on a stage?

Standing mid stage while the center audience sang, trying to out-volume the sides, the back of my throat tickled. A flare of worry gripped me, and I swallowed the itch back, but when I reached the song’s bridge, the itch became a scratch, and another, stronger smell assaulted my senses: burning plastic.

Then all hell broke loose.

BACK AT THEfire station booth, my attention kept straying to the band on stage. Specifically, to the singer for the band on stage. As much as I loved his music and had been a fan ever since Ryan had first introduced me to the Dallas Blade Band, I’d never seen them perform live. Concerts weren’t my thing. That might have to change, because watching Blade move across the stage from all the way over on Main Street was a sight. I could only imagine how much more thrilling it must be right up close. Close enough to see his chest rise and fall, and the sweep of his gaze, the lift of his mouth, and the sweat trickling down his creamy skin.

Blade’s voice carried across the park and danced on my eardrums. I didn’t know if it was because the show was live or the acoustics or what, but Blade’s voice had a quality to it I’d never heard before on his recordings. Deeper somehow, with a touch of grit to it that reminded me of smoky bars and hard liquor. Not that I drank hard liquor, and smoky buildings, in my experience, usually meant they were burning down. But whatever had changed about his voice, I liked it.

The song ended and the cheer the audience sent up rivaled our fire engine siren. I frowned. I’d been so fixated on Dallas that I hadn’t noticed the audience had doubled in size, and a fissure of concern spread through my chest. Being outdoorseliminated capacity and exit concerns, but the growing crowd brought all kinds of risks with it. Just because they weren’t confined inside a building didn’t mean they were safe from harm. Fortunately, Sheriff Sturn was over there keeping an eye on things, along with a couple of his deputies, but that still didn’t ease the impending sense of doom in the pit of my stomach.

Dallas launched into what would be their last song, and everything seemed to be okay, even though that gut feeling didn’t subside.

“Hey, Holly,” Whittaker interrupted. “Can you help me reset for the fire hose demo?”

“Sure thing,” I said. A breeze ruffled my hair, and my scalp prickled when I stepped out of the covered booth.

Not a minute after I turned my back on the show, I heard someone shout, “Fire.”

I spun around to see flames licking up the band curtains in the stage wings.

Shit-shit-shit.

“Whitty, stay here with Eldi,” I shouted as I grabbed a fire extinguisher from the booth, thankful that we had almost our entire firefighting kit here for demonstrations. “Jackson, come with me.”

We raced across the park to the band shell, yelling at everybody to stay calm and get back as we went. We split off at the stage, Jackson going to the front to help move the crowd closest to the fire away, while I jumped onto the stage and doused the flames with the extinguisher.

Luckily, the fire was small and hadn’t spread beyond the one curtain, so it only took a couple of minutes to put it out. Smoke rolled across the stage and dissipated as the light breeze grabbed it.

Once I was satisfied that there were no more embers or risk of a flare-up, I turned to the audience.

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