Page 94 of Closer

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

NUMBER ONE FAN

LEVI

It took four backstagepasses and a two-hundred-euro tip to convince the usher to let me in. I watch the beauty on stage from the back of the room, slowly drawn closer step by step with each note she plays. She looks exactly the same, and yet she’s a completely different person. Stronger somehow, even more determined than before, and beautiful. So fucking beautiful. I can’t believe what a cock-fuck I was the last time I saw her. I’ve said and done the things to her that are unforgiveable. Even now, I can’t reconcile myself with the guy who’s standing here, watching her play, but I guess that’s what happens when you become an addict, you change. You do shit you never thought in a million years you’d do. You hurt the people you love. Just like I hurt Brie.

The song is hers. I know it, though I’ve never heard it before. I know I’m the one who caused the kind of pain that’s pouring from her and across the strings. I know, because it sings to me. It draws me closer, and it speaks of all the horrible things I said and did. Her cello is my wrist and her bow is the scalpel. In a way, it feels as if cutting had been my vice, because every stroke is an open wound. It’s misery, and it echoes mine. I lean against the wall, because I can’t breathe. I close my eyes and just listen, just for a beat.

I deserve this.

I deserve to hear the hurt I caused, to feel it.

But I’m here because I’m hoping that the new and improved Levi Quinn now deserves her forgiveness. I don’t know. I shouldn’t even be here. I should have waited until after the show, but I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t live without her. I can’t live without her.

I move as silently as I can towards the front of the stage, and she glances up, her eyes lock with mine and her hands falter. Fuck. I can’t do this. I shouldn’t have come.

I melt back into the shadows as if I was never here, and leave the opera house. I look like a fucking arsehole in this expensive suit, in my shiny designer shoes that I’ve already scuffed. It’s summer in Paris, and the narrow streets are too hot for suits and ties. I walk for an hour, maybe more, past restaurants and clothing stores, and then I stumble across a bar. It’s dim lighting and cigarette smoke welcoming me the way alcohol, easy women, and joints like this have lured musicians since the beginning of time. I stand there on the street, listening to the sounds of the revellers, the sounds of glasses clinking in toasts, and music playing too loud.

I want a drink.

I want a drink so bad my balls ache. I let out a deep breath and summon her face. She stared right at me. Right at me, the long line of her throat exposed as she rested her head to the side and played her perfect sad song, and looped around her neck ... were my pearls. The ones I’d given her. The ones I used inside her to make her come. All this time she kept them, she wore them tonight.Fuck me. She could have thrown them out months ago. I would have thrown them out if I were in her shoes. She could have sold them—they’re worth a small fortune, any jeweller she might have taken them to would know that. Instead, she wore them to her first headlining concert.

My feet move at a rapid pace. My legs piston as I weave my way through blocks of weekend crowds. Paris is still a goddamn maze to me. I have no idea where I am, but I have to get back. I have to see her. When I get to the opera house, the doors are closed, but I bang on the glass and the usher I’d bribed to let me in stares at me with a worried expression.

He starts speaking in French and I shake my head. “English. S'il vous plait.”

“Monsieur, we are closed. The concert is over.”

Already? Damn, I’m in the wrong genre. “You gotta let me in. I gotta see her.”

“I’m afraid I cannot do that. She is meeting with her fans.”

She’s doing a fucking meet and greet? I didn’t know classical music had fans. Well, obviously, she does, but I didn’t know they sat around after a show taking pictures and getting her to sign autographs, though I guess ... why wouldn’t they? She’s incredible.

“You have to let me in.”

“I cannot.”

“Please? I’ll give you whatever you want.”

The arsehole raises his brow. “Anything?”

I nod, desperate now. “Anything.”

That rat bastard.

When he ushers me through the door, I’m down a fucking signed Slash guitar and plane tickets to Australia for two.Business class. It’s worth it though. There’s a gathering of maybe thirty people milling around the centre of the stage. They’re crowding her. I can’t see her, but several people turn my way as they wait in line.

“Brie,” I shout. More faces turn toward me with an annoyed expression. “Brie!”

A hush falls over the crowd.

“Brie!”

A chair scrapes back and she stands, the crowd parts.

“Levi. What are you doing here?” she bites out. I launch myself onto the stage. Not hard when you’ve been doing it as long as you’ve been playing guitar—though this time I use my left hand.

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