Page 77 of Revelry

“From the top,” Zed counts us in, and Ash’s meaty bass merges with the melodic squealing from Levi’s Fender Telecaster. Leif hands me a new mic, one I haven’t dropped, like a little bitch, and this time when I open my mouth to scream the lyrics, my voice is as smooth and clear as it should be.

I glare at Ali as I sing lyrics about promises that we made but have long since been broken, and even though I wrote this song for a different redhead, it’s as true now as it was then.

Zed guides us through the solo and then the bridge, and finally it all comes to a sweeping crescendo of raw sound where my voice is the anchor. The song ends on a crashing thump from Zed’s cymbals, and I open my eyes, staring at the woman I just poured my heart out to. She stares back, and even from here I can see there are tears in her eyes. I’ve never seen her cry. She’s beautiful in her sadness.

Ali closes her eyes. Fat tears spill down her cheeks, and then she stands and exits through a side door in the auditorium without looking at any of us. I close my eyes, fighting the urge to go to her, or to look at Levi and see if he’s battling the same impulses. When I do look at him, I find him watching me. I stare back, complacent, annoyed, and just as fucking heartbroken as I was when Holly left me and took my kid with her, because just like I did then, I’ve done everything wrong right from the very start. I made wrong move after wrong move, and I fucked it all up the second I kissed Ali, because that was the second I gave her all the power. That was the moment I gave her all I had left, and now I’ve got nothing.

“How you doin’, Nashville?” Cooper shouts into the microphone. The crowd roars. He places a hand to his ear as though he couldn’t hear them, and shakes his head. “Hmm, I didn’t quite catch that.”

They scream again, and still he shakes his head. Cooper glances at Levi, “Quinn, you catch that?”

“Nope.” Levi says, leaning into the microphone in front of him. “I didn’t hear Jack shit.”

The crowd roars again. This time, stamping their feet on the stadium floor.

“Now that I heard.” Cooper chuckles and places the microphone back in the stand as Byron—one of the roadies—runs on stage and hands him a guitar and a pick. Coop places the strap over his head, and strums. “Alright, so this next song is a little bit of an ode to Zed,”

The crowd cheers, and some over-excited fangirl screams, “I wanna have your babies, Zed.”

He laughs and leans into the mic positioned above his kit. “Err, thank you strange American girl who I’ve never met before, but I’m sterile, got measles as a kid, so … no babies here.”

“Screw the babies, let’s just fuck,” the girl calls out and she’s pushed towards the stage by the crowd.

Zed smiles, and it’s damn near infectious. You can’t be in the same room as Zed and not fall even a little bit in love with him. He’s like a really overgrown three-year-old. “Think you can handle it?”

Levi steps up to his mic. “Please. There’s all of two inches to handle. Sweetheart, you want something to handle?” He spins his guitar strap around so his crotch is unobstructed and grabs his cock. “I got more than enough for you to handle.”

“Yeah, he should know, too. He handles it often enough,” Cooper says, and Zed beats the drums like at the end of a bad joke.

“Marry me, Cooper?” a girl from the front row screams, holding a sign above her head.

“Marry you?” he says, raising one brow and giving her his mischievous grin—my mischievous grin. “But, sweetheart, I barely know you.”

She responds with some whore-mouthed wisecrack about them getting to know one another on the tour bus, and he laughs and shakes his head, walking to the other side of the stage where he stands beside Ash. “Ash, tell me something?”

“Something,” Ash says. He grins and his adorable dimples pop out. The women in the audience practically turn rabid with their screams. He turns back to Cooper. “What do you wanna know, man?”

“Tell me why the women always wanna marry me, but never want to fuck my brains out?” Coop screams into the microphone. His question is met with an almighty roar from the crowd and Zed counts them in.

“This song’s called blow,” Coop growls through the intro.

Jealousy washes through me, white hot and searing, but I tamp it down. This is part of their job, and it shouldn’t matter that he’s suggesting to other women that they should have sex with him. It’s not part of the deal. None of this, whatever this is that I’m feeling, none of this was part of our unspoken agreement.

Coop’s eyes find mine as I stand in the wings, and his gaze is cold and challenging. Does he want me to suffer? Is this all just to hurt me because of what happened in the limo yesterday?

Taint play two more songs, each more scathing than the other, and with each of them Coop spends a good portion of it looking at me as he sings the lyrics. I’m beginning to sense a theme. Songs about heartbreak and betrayal were nothing new for the band, and even though these songs were written for another woman, there’s truth in them for us too.Which is disturbing.

I wait until he turns back to the crowd before I walk away. I’ve taken maybe five steps before he sings a bum note and I know that he has seen me. I don’t turn back. Instead I walk casually through the back room, ignoring Deb, Leif, and the rest of the road crew who aren’t manning the soundboard or waiting in the wings to switch out guitars. I head past security on the back door, basking in the tepid Nashville air, pushing through the throng of scantily-clad women muttering things like, “Who is she?”

“I don’t know, but if she was backstage then why the hell was she leaving?”

“Oh my God, you guys, it’s her. The redhead,” another girl says, and I turn and look at her with a curious expression. A petite blonde girl beside her squeals, “You’re so fucking lucky. I mean, CoopandLevi? I would die; I would like literally die. Is he really as big as everyone says he is?”

I stand there blinking at her as if I’m simple, my heart hammering against my ribcage.How does she know that?

“I … I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stammer and then I wander away, so rattled that I’m shaking from head to toe. How does anyone outside of the band and the road crew know? I mean, it’s not like the three of us walk around holding hands, or fucking in public, for Christ’s sake.

I had planned on heading straight to the tour bus because we’re leaving right after the show in order to make it to Georgia, but I’m too flustered. Instead, I start walking and wind up at a hot dog place several blocks away.

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