Page 38 of Claimed By the Rockstars: Part One
The guitar strap settles over my shoulder, grounding me. I can do this. I've performed half-dead before. This is just another day of pushing through because the alternative is admitting I'm human. It's easier to treat myself like an unfeeling monster because that's what I look like, and it's so much fucking worse if I'm human.
Bells walks in right on cue, and the universe laughs at my misery.
She looks annoyingly healthy. White hair artfully messy, honeyed eyes bright and alert behind her tinted aviators, an iced coffee drink that looks like unicorn shit with whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles in her hand.
"Morning, sunshine," Rafael calls to her, because he's apparently decided they're friends now. Great. Fantastic. Another complication I don't need.
"Morning." She shoots me a look that I can't quite read through the fever haze. Suspicion? Curiosity? Concern? Fuck if I know. Fuck if I care.
We run through the first two songs without incident, which should have been my first warning that the universe was just winding up for a bigger hit. Bells sounds good—better than good, which means the infection is having its way with my brain. Fucking itself clear through my logic centers.
Then we get to "Ashes."
Nash's song. Nash'sfavoritesong, the one I know he wrote about the accident, about guilt and survival and wishing you'd died in someone's place. The one I can barely get through on my best days, and today isnotmy best day.
Bells starts singing, and something's wrong.
The arrangement.
She's changed the fucking arrangement.
"Stop." My voice cuts through the music like a gunshot. "What the fuck are you doing?"
She stops, eyebrow raised in challenge. "What do you mean?"
"The bridge. You changed it."
"I improved it. The original phrasing was awkward. This flows better." She says it so casually, like she didn't just desecrate something sacred. And she might not know it's sacred, but she does know she's pushing my buttons. This is deliberate. She's testing me. Seeing how far she can go before I truly snap.
And I can't do a fucking thing about it.
Not because I'm not a vicious son of a bitch, but because she's a fuckinggirl. Because some fundamental wiring in my brain that survived the fire, survived Nash's death, survived everything, won't let me raise a hand to a woman no matter how enraged I am.
I see the satisfaction light her eyes the moment she realizes it. She's been pushing and pushing, waiting for me to react the way I would with any male singer who pulled this shit—with violence, with intimidation, with the kind of rage that clears rooms.
But I can't.
And she knows it.
My knuckles go white where I'm gripping the edge of the mixing board, the only thing keeping me from either collapsing or doing something I'll regret. The infection throbs. The fevermakes the room tilt. And Bells stands there, waiting, daring me to prove her theory right.
Phoenix and Rafael have gone completely still, barely breathing, clearly expecting me to explode. To finally cross that line I've been dancing around for days. They don't understand why I don't.Can'tunderstand, because they don't know what I know.
"Change it back," I say through gritted teeth.
"No."
"Change. It. Back."
"Make me."
The challenge hangs between us, and we both know I won't. Can't. Whatever combination of fucked-up wiring and ingrained conditioning is keeping my violence leashed, it's stronger than my rage. Stronger than my need to put her in her place.
And she's counting on it.
"You know what?" I push away from the mixing board, movements jerky and uncoordinated. "Sing it however the fuck you want. I need air."
The walk to the exit feels like miles. The floor keeps trying to trip me, the walls closing in, my vision graying at the edges.
