by Unknown
My cheeks color like a burn. We stare at each other, but it’s Josh who breaks off first, lowering his gaze to his drink.
“Go out the door and go left,” Les says, surprising me. “Just keep walking. You’ll see him eventually. He’s sitting alone in one of the exit tunnels. That’s where he usually goes to psych himself up for a performance.”
“Thank you, Les,” I say quietly, then head toward the door.
The hallway is less crowded and I can see that road crew has started clearing a path for the guys to get onstage. I peek into exit tunnels, and then ahead of me I see one of the security team standing in an archway and I know that is where Neil is.
I hold up my pass, but the sentry doesn’t let me through. He says, “He doesn’t want to be bothered.”
I peek around his hulking form and beyond him I see Neil. He’s sitting almost on the floor, crouched, back against the wall with hair tumbling forward. He’s still, perfectly still, and he looks intensely quiet, a touch sad—though I don’t know why he would be sad, tonight is a big night for him—and definitely nervous.
Maybe I shouldn’t bother him. There is something about how he’s sitting that screams he wants to be alone.
“Five minutes,” blares a voice from the walkie-talkie.
The security guy looks in at Neil. “Five minutes, man.”
Neil looks up and sees me. “It’s OK. Let her through, Clive. That’s my girlfriend, Chrissie.”
Clive steps out of the way. I make my way down the concrete decline until I reach Neil. He doesn’t move. He just sits there. I don’t know what I’m seeing, what this is. But it makes my distress, that hideous scene with Nicky which made me want to run to the safety of Neil, seem instantly insignificant.
Josh’s voice fills my head. Don’t run to him and dump your shit all over him. I crouch down until we’re at eye level and silently I reply, I’m not going to, Josh. I love him. Why don’t you get that and leave us alone?
“Hi.” Neil’s voice is faint, nearly all breath. “I was wondering where you were.”
“I was wondering where you were. What’s going on?”
He shakes his head. “Just thinking.”
He takes my body in his hands, turns me and then sets me with my back against him. He instantly surrounds me with his legs and arms, and I’m suddenly reminded of the night in his van when I confronted him and he told me his history with Andy Despensa. He feels just like he did then, as if he’s filled with troubling stuff he doesn’t want to share and is embarrassed over.
He lets out a long, shuddering breath and buries his lips in my hair. “I’m scared, Chrissie. I’ve never performed in front of such a large crowd. I don’t want to fall on my ass. I don’t want to do this.”
His words don’t surprise me, though I’m not exactly sure how to deal with this. This is new for me. Neil unsure, doubting himself.
“Then don’t. We can fly home.” I close my hands around his wrists, stretching out our arms and making a silly flapping motion. “Then you can surf. And I can do nothing. If you don’t want to do this then don’t.”
A reluctant laugh fights its way out of his chest. Good. I’ve amused him.
“You can do nothing, rich-girl. I have to work.”
“Then go out there. Work.”
His laughter comes a touch less strained. He melts into me, his hands gently caressing my arms. “You are a pretty cool girl. Have I ever told you that? You’re not blown away by any of this. You don’t get impressed. Nothing will ever pull you into the hype. Wherever you are, you are always just Chrissie.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad thing being just Chrissie,” I say in a silly, exaggerated way, and Neil relaxes into the wall, laughing.
He kisses my head. “A very good thing. You are the only thing real in my world right now. Don’t change. Not ever.”
“I won’t.” I turn in his arms until I can face him. I kiss him. “It’s going to be fine. You’re going to be great. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe that.”
“I love you, Chrissie.”
I spring to my feet and pull him up by his hands.
“We’re going to be OK, Neil.”
He loops his arm around my shoulders and we walk toward the main corridor.
“You ready to do it?” Clive asks.
Neil nods and starts to leave, but we’re held back by a tree-trunk-size arm.
“I’ve got to clear the hallway. Give me a minute, Neil.”
Neil starts to laugh as Clive raises his walkie-talkie to his lips. He turns me to face him, holding me in a sloppy drape of his arms.
I frown. “What are you laughing at?”
He shakes his head and puts his nose against mine. “This. It’s fucking nuts. I walked down the hall alone to get here. No one gave a shit about me.”
I make a pout. “I give a shit about you.”
He smiles. “Good. You’re the only one that matters here.”
A minute later we’re being escorted down the main corridor, the guys about ten feet ahead of us. The sound from the arena is deafening and Neil is lumbering beside me, still looking like he doesn’t want to go onstage. Excitement flutters start building inside me. I haven’t seen Neil perform in anything but a small club. He’s always gone out on the road without me.
The lights are shut off on the stage as we climb a short flight of metal stairs. Neil’s held back again, and his fingers clutch my hand tightly. His fingers do flexing motions around mine. Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze. Then I feel the loss of contact and he is running on stage.
Clive points at an empty area just out of view of the audience. “You can stand here.”
The stark corridor below is flooded with people and the side stage entrances fill up. There is a deafening assault of guitars. The lights switch on. I try to keep up with the action in front of me. A raspy, powerful voice, velvety and yet haunting and laced with despair. A voice I know.
I spot Neil center stage, hugging a microphone, hidden under his unruly hair, but he doesn’t look at all like he did the last time I saw him perform. There is something supercharged about him, mesmerizing, coiled, and in control. It’s a sharp contrast to the Neil I found in the exit tunnel. A sharp contrast to the Neil I expected to see now.
I stare at him, unable to see anything else. Center stage adores him, and my skin grows numb with roiling emotions. Their music is raw and fresh, powerfully intense. The band is amazing, and Neil doesn’t hide beneath his hair on stage anymore. He is running wild, stirring the crowd into a frenzy. It didn’t even take one song and he has them totally engaged and with him.
There are stories all over the place in the entertainment press about how Arctic Hole is about to be the next big thing out of Seattle. But those stories are wrong. Neil and the band are not breaking into stardom. Christ, how could I get so much wrong? Miss so much about what was going on in Neil’s life? Simply not see? I was wrong about each and every thing I believed on the way to Seattle and then here.
Arctic Hole is not on the edge of breaking into stardom as a band. They’ve already broken, and it happened before today. Neil must have realized that. The guys know it. You can’t miss something like this, not when you’ve worked so hard to make it happen.
Arctic Hole has already made it. There is not a single reason why Neil should want me here. Every door is going to fly open soon. Opportunity everywhere. Possibilities everywhere. Girls everywhere. Whatever he wants everywhere.
Another guy would have left me in Berkeley in the past. Neil should have done the same. Instead, he brought me with him and I am in love with him for the first time in our life together.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The stage shudders from stomping feet throughout the stadium. Neil is on the last song of his set, and the stage’s wings are packed with bodies to the point of being crushingly overfilled. People started pouring in from the tunnels when Neil climbed the rafters.
Jesus Christ, what possessed him to do that?<
br />
Still-water Neil hanging from twenty feet above the audience, somehow with the microphone still in hand and singing, and then dropping into the crowd beneath him. It was insane, and oddly exciting; his command of the stage, and I couldn’t guess what he would do next. It moved the packed arena into something beyond frenzied. The crazier Neil gets the more they love him.
I should probably cut out now to the safety of the green room before the band breaks. With the way the stage sides are packed it is going to be madness to try to keep up with Neil once he comes off stage, but I want to watch this as long as I can. He’s put on an amazing performance tonight.
The cluster around me starts fidgeting, alerting me that people are going to be in motion along the wings soon. Across the stage, security is already in place to cut a path for the band.
Pushing through the bodies, I slowly make my way back to the green room. Crap. Delmo and Scream are still here, drinking, laughing, and doing their rituals to psych up for on stage.
I sink down on a sofa, really not wanting to be in here. Thankfully Nicole hasn’t returned since Vincent shoved her from the room. Maybe I should go to Neil’s dressing room because security will take the guys there first.
I’m about to leave when the atmosphere of the room shifts abruptly as Neil and the band return from the stage, sweating, exhausted and excited. Flash bulbs explode from all sides, but Neil is focused on the guys, a saturated towel hanging from his shoulders and still panting from the exertion of performing. They are laughing, talking, and oblivious to everything around.
Neil is oblivious even to me. I didn’t expect that one, but it’s definitely petty that it bothers me. He’s got a lot going on, lots of people vying for his attention. It’s stupid of me to be butt hurt that he didn’t run to me first.
“You were fucking out of your mind tonight,” Nate Kassel exclaims in an overly animated way unlike him.
“What the fuck made you climb the rafters?” Josh interjects heatedly.
Neil shrugs. “I don’t know, man. I didn’t think. I just did.”
The stage manager comes in to give the two-minute warning for Scream. Delmo moves from his circle, pausing beside Neil. “Good show, kid, but if you keep that up you won’t last a year on the road.”
“Maybe you can’t keep it up for a year, old man, but I can,” Neil teases, earning an affectionate swat from Vincent as laughter and heckles erupt around them.
I watch their faces move close together as Delmo launches into what looks like a keep-private kind of conversation with Neil. I wish I could hear their words, and anxiousness moves through my digestive tract. God, I hope Vincent isn’t bringing up that hideous scene with Nicole. As Neil listens, surprise flashes on his face, followed by anger, then a no big deal kind of expression. Vincent pats Neil again on a bicep.
I wonder if I should continue to hang back or go to Neil. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but I definitely don’t want to piss off the guys again by making the wrong move. Though that’s probably hopeless. Pretty much everything I do ticks off Josh.
In front of me the crowd start to move, blocking Neil from view. Scream is exiting the green room for the stage and I wonder if Neil is going to want to watch from the wings, but I don’t really want to.
Unexpectedly, Neil cuts through the bodies, takes my hand and pulls me to my feet. “Give us twenty minutes,” he snaps to Josh.
Startled, I stare up at him as he practically drags me from the room.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Not now.”
Fuck! What did Vincent Delmo say to Neil?
The tic in his cheek twitches the way it does when he’s angry, and I feel something restless and pulsing inside him. Crap, I don’t want him angry. Not tonight. I don’t want to ruin this night for him. Or for me.
He takes me to the dressing room. He bolts the door, and I hang back, silent, as he crosses the room.
“I need to rinse off,” he murmurs, not looking at me as he pulls off his dripping wet t-shirt and tosses it on the floor. At the doorway to the showers, he pauses and looks back at me. “The only person in the room I wanted to be with and you stayed away. Why, Chrissie?”
Crap. He sounds hurt as well as angry. I don’t want to fight with him and I don’t want to hurt him. Not anymore. Not ever again.
A knot rises in my throat. “I don’t know. Everything happened too quickly in there. I thought it best to stay out of the way since you were deep in discussion with the guys.”
His eyes rapidly search my face. “Don’t leave. Don’t move. I’ll be only a minute.”
I stand frozen on my spot, hardly in the room. I hear the showers turn on and sounds of him washing. The shower shuts off and Neil reappears, a towel draped low around his hips.
He lies down on a sofa. I bite my lip and his eyes darken. “Why are you staring at me that way?”
My breath catches. “I don’t know.”
He turns onto his side, his head resting in his palm. His gaze slowly moves down my body and then up. My heartbeat picks up and I am instantly hot everywhere.
“You haven’t looked at me this way for a very long time.” His voice is husky. “I’ve missed it, Chrissie.”
Just like that the room is flooded with sexual tension.
Oh my. He’s not pissed. He’s totally turned on. I don’t have the faintest idea what he is seeing in my eyes, but it’s lit some kind of fire in Neil. My breathing alters and the soft muscles against my panties frantically start to pulse. Tingles move across my flesh.
“I love you,” I whisper.
The color of his eyes darkens and there’s a jolt through my veins.
“You’ve never done that before,” he says quietly.
My brows hitch up. “What?”
“Saying I love you to me without me saying it first. That’s the first time you’ve done that, Chrissie. Ever.”
A hint of something I can’t decipher mingles with my warmly liquid senses. “I love you, Neil.”
The look in his eyes charges. The way he is looking at me takes my breath away. I have never had a guy look at me this way. Not even Alan. Never like this.
I stare back at him, panting and excited.
“You don’t have a clue what you do to me, do you, Chrissie? How much I love you? What you are to me?”
The lines of his face tighten with desire and so much more. I want him. Here. Now.
“Why don’t you show me?” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “No. Tonight you show me. Tonight you said I love you first. Please, Chrissie, make love to me.”
I burn from head to toe, urgent to have sex with him even with the sharp bites of shame I can’t repel nipping at my senses. The way Neil is looking me and his words say a lot about how unfair I was in how I loved him before, it tells me he knew it, and he stayed with me anyway. He’s known all along that I never shared myself with him completely, and it doesn’t matter, not to him. It is enough for him that I want to now.
Everything around us is changing, we feel different and new, and I want it so. And by the current moving between us I feel that what was inside me standing between us won’t be there once we walk from this room.
My scattered senses are only vaguely aware of my movements toward the sofa and the removal of my clothes. Between kisses, I grab his towel and drop it to the floor. He is fully erect. He’s out of his mind, burning hot, ready for me just like I’m ready for him.
I want him so badly I am not even conscious of the touches, the kisses or the moves that end up with me surrounding his body with my own and riding him. My breathing catches as I swallow his flesh, rush and claim him. I groan as he tilts his hips upward in the rhythm of my motion, filling me so deeply that my head begins to sway in pleasure. We are moving in an effortlessly perfect cadence. My lips on his lips. My hands on his body.
I have no idea what I’m doing. The command of my limbs is no longer my own, and
we are gloriously one in the acts of our bodies. The feeling of him radiates through my limbs. His breathing is hard, matching mine, and his face is taut with anticipation and want. It feels so incredible, this frenzied exchange neither of us control.
I plant my hands on his shoulders and stop the motion of our bodies. His eyes open.
“I love you,” I whisper against his lips. I take his mouth in a deep, thorough kiss.
I gently roll my hips and continue, slowly increasing the pace with each swallowing of his flesh. His head rolls on the sofa and his eyes close. I watch him. I move my hips, slowing stroking up his flesh and then down. Over and over again. I kiss his jaw. I move my body. I kiss his brow. I move and touch him. I tighten around his cock, and his flesh quivers. I flick my tongue on the skin of his neck. My need is desperate and so is his and I am swept away by my love for him until I am nothing but frenzied movement, touches and kisses.
I watch him as I ride him and Neil is savoring this like a guy who has wanted this for a very long time.
~~~
We are sweaty and curled into each other, lying on the sofa. Neil is smoking and his expression says we are not moving from here any time soon. He told Josh to give him twenty minutes. We’ve been bolted in here two hours.
My eyes fix on the cases holding the band’s change of clothing. I see everyone’s personal shit everywhere. We left them sweaty and waiting on us in the green room. I bury my face against his chest, giggle, and then peek up at him.
“We have to get dressed, Neil. We can’t stay in here forever. The guys might want to shower and change, don’t you think?”
“Why not? We’re alone. It’s quiet. Perfect. Fuck them. They can go back to the hotel as is.”
I sit up. “We’ve been in here a long time. I’m going to be totally embarrassed when we go out there. That is, if anyone is around.”
Neil starts to laugh. His eyes are so bright they’re gleaming.
I frown. “What’s so funny?”
“You are.” He eases up to put a kiss on my nose and then he stomps out his cigarette in the ashtray. His laughter intensifies.
