Page 110 of Of Heartbreak and Harmony
“For the show. You’re watching from backstage.”
Callie blinks a few times, licking her lips nervously before responding. “Why?”
I give her a small smile. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Her gaze flits away from mine, and she nods. “Sure. Whatever you want.”
She brushes past me without another word, and I watch her back until she disappears into the girls’ dressing room.
I haven’t spoken to her since everything blew up last night. I tried once, and she asked me to give her space. She said she was tired and overwhelmed, so I backed off. I left her alone for the rest of the night. I didn’t seek her out this morning. In all honesty, I needed the space, too.
My mind is still reeling from everything that was revealed last night.
On one hand, I’m glad everything is out in the open. But on the other hand, I just can’t fucking believe our label pulled that shit right under our noses.
Though, I suppose a lot could have happened over the last few years without us knowing. We were a fucking mess. It was all Hammond could do to keep us from falling apart and self-sabotaging. It shouldn’t surprise me as much as it does.
No wonder Callie fucking hated me. I’d hate me, too.
Truthfully, I kind of do now.
How many bands did we screw over? How many dreams did we crush? How many lives did we irreparably alter? It was all I could think about last night. That, and the look on Callie’s face when she told me about my band’s role in ruining hers.Pain. There’s no other way to describe it. She was in pain. She’d been holding on to it for years, letting it fester, believing that I’d betrayed her in that way. She hated me. She blamed the band. And truly, she had every right to.
While I didn’t have a direct hand in the label’s actions, it still happenedbecauseof me. Because of The Hometown Heartless. We’re all guilty by association, and I know it’s going to take a while to repair the damage that was done in our name.
Tonight, though...
Tonight, I’m going to work on repairing the one thing only I can fix. The thing I care about the most. Tonight, I start winning back my Firebird.
“We’ve got a little surprise for you all tonight.”
The crowd cheers loudly and Sav laughs into her mic.
“Oh, you like the sound of that? Good. Because you’re going to hear something never before played in public.” Sav pauses dramatically, letting the roar of the crowd climb higher and higher before she laughs once more. “But to play it, we’ve gotta switch some things up.”
One of the roadies comes walking out to the stage with an acoustic guitar. Sav slips her electric off and trades it with the roadie for the acoustic as the venue practically shakes from the sounds of the crowd’s excitement. Instead of putting the guitar on, though, Sav turns to me.
“Hey, Tor?”
I grin at her and speak into my mic. “Yeah, Savvy?”
“How would you feel about taking the lead on this one?”
Sav’s such a fucking showman, and the crowd eats it up. I can’t help but laugh at her theatrics. There are multiple reasons why she’s our frontwoman, and one of them is how well she works a crowd. They start chanting my name as I set down my bass and walk up next to her. When she hands me the guitar, another surge of screams floods the stage.
“Thanks, Sav.”
She winks. “It’s all you now.”
Sav saunters over to my mic stand, so I turn and look for Callie. I find her standing in the wings of the stage, right where I wanted her. I lean into the mic, speaking to her but broadcasting it out into the stadium.
“I don’t suppose I can get you to come out here with me?” Her eyes widen comically as she shakes her head. I chuckle into the mic. “Didn’t think so. Well, just stay right there then, because this one is for you.”
When she nods once, I turn my attention back to the roaring crowd.
“This is a song I wrote a few years back after meeting someone at a music festival. We’ve never played it live until tonight. It’s called, ‘Firebird.’”
As I begin to play, the crowd’s cheering grows softer, everyone eager to hear this never-before-heard song. I keep my eyes on the wings of the stage, never taking my gaze off Callie, and when I start to sing, the first verse flows out of me as smoothly as an exhale. It feels like I’m sharing a long-kept secret, finally revealing it to the one person for whom it was meant.
