Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

EMERSYN

I checked my stage makeup in the mirror before glancing at the time on the wall. Tonight marked our last weekend on the road. We’d close the tour for eight weeks, take a break and go home.

Excitement unfurled in my belly. I couldn’t wait to be back in Braxton Harbor and at the clubhouse. Even as the anticipation surged through my veins, I forced my breathing to regulate. We were close, but we still had these last three shows to get through.

Freddie lounged in a chair on the other side of my dressing room. Head back, his eyes were half-slits like he was dozing. I stole a look at him.

“Stop worrying, Boo-Boo,” he said without shifting his position. “I had a bad night. It happens.”

I stuck my tongue at him. “I could just be looking at you cause you’re all sexy and sweet.”

“Sweet?” That earned me a real snort, but the corners of his mouth curved. He gave a gentle rolling motion with his hand. “You may proceed to look at me for as long as you like.”

Not rolling my eyes took everything cause I was touching up the liner. It needed to be dramatic and I didn’t want it to melt off after the first set. Smiling, however, I could do. “Do you need to talk about it?”

Neither of us ever wanted to talk about the bad dreams. I still got them too. The nightmares came and went, dark memories that crept out of the rotted floorboards of the past. Didn’t matter how often we tore them up, something could trigger them.

A smell.

A sound.

A touch.

Shivers chased up my spine and I gave myself a little shake. No, I never wanted to talk about it. Need, however, was a pesky little beast.

Sighing, Freddie sat up and clasped his hands together loosely. His blond hair had gotten longer on the tour. It fell in waves, like those poets from the old movies and it always reminded me of Renaissance paintings.

Instead of looking at me, he was staring down at his hands so I gave him space as I straightened and studied my appearance. The body suit was one of the new costumes we’d ordered and it would stand out against the chorus. The past few weeks with Sully had me changing a number of my routines.

Tonight, we were going to show off a company wide number since these last three showings were all for charity. They’d reached out to Liam who brought it to me. The organization raised money and awareness for the survivors of human trafficking.

Despite the worry in his eyes, Liam put the choice and the call in my hands. My answer was an immediate yes, but I ran it past all of them first because it meant one more week on the road past when we’d planned to stop, because we needed the rehearsal time.

“I think it’s some of the stories we heard from the director yesterday,” Freddie admitted in a quiet voice. “I know she didn’t know about me. How could she?” He spread his hands out and exhaled a long sigh.

I debated between pivoting to face him or just letting him talk. When he lifted his head and his gaze locked on mine in the mirror, however, it decided me.

“At the same time, she could have been describing some of my childhood. The parts I remember anyway.” He grimaced, but he didn’t look away from me when I faced him. “Most of it is shadows and monsters. Pain. Pain and enduring. There was nothing to do but endure because complaining and sobbing just made more pain. Then came the drugs.”

Now he looked at his hands again. He flattened them out, his fingers were rock steady. That—that was a good sign.

“I thought I was fine,” he continued. “The people she was talking about, they weren’t me and I hated it for them. I’d cheerfully cut up everyone involved with hurting them. No one gets to do that to kids or anyone else. No one should.”

Agreed.

“I was angry. Anger is good. Anger is healthy.” A faint smile flickered over his face, one I understood on such a primitive level. “Anger is a feeling I can embrace, cause it’s not… sadness or despair or crushing guilt.”

The desire to wrap myself around him and shield him from the rest of the world burned through me, but I had to keep myself in place. Touch could trigger Freddie right now, particularly when he was being so vulnerable.

“So I thought, sucks for them and I was feeling kind of proud to be a part of this—helping them.” Now he slumped back, elbow on the arm of the chair and two fingers against the side of his head as he stared up at me. “Then I went to sleep.”

The struggle playing out across his face was so real. It hurt to see him hurting.

“I don’t know if I was just picturing myself in all the different stories she told or if those things happened to me too. I mean, they could have. I know there was a lot. The drugs used to keep it all away.”

No they didn’t.

“Ugh,” he grumbled. “No, they really didn’t keep it away but they could numb me, you know? Sometimes, it’s just better to not feel at all, but if I don’t feel, I miss out on stuff with you Boo-Boo and stuff with the guys. Now, I’m all up in my head and I’ve been jonesing all goddamn day.”

Anger surged through his expression as he rose.

“Fuck, I wasn’t going to dump this on you.”

“Excuse me,” I said, pointing a finger at him. “I’m your Boo-Boo and you’re my Freddie. There is no dumping . If you need me, then I’m here. If you want me, then I’m here. You listen to me, I listen to you. I can take a lot of things you say, Freddie, I will never not hear you. But you can stuff the dumping comments up your butt where the shit belongs.”

He blinked, surprise rippled through the anger and the worry. Like lightning dancing in a storm, his lips quivered with suppressed laughter. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re scary when you’re bossy?”

“Not that I’ve heard,” I said, head tilting. “Though Liam does call me Hellspawn.” I’d earned that name after I punched him in the nose for calling me princess .

“True,” Freddie agreed, then a real laugh escaped him. It was quiet, a little ragged around the edges and dipped in tears, but it was a laugh. Bit by bit, the sound escalated and then he opened his arms. I flew across the room and wrapped around him even as he lifted me.

He buried his face against my throat and I stroked my fingers through his hair. The dampness against my skin warned me of his tears, but I wasn’t going to melt.

“I’m always here for you,” I promised. “Always.”

“I don’t want to fall,” he whispered.

“I know,” I answered in the same soft tone. “I know you don’t. If you need to, hold onto me. Hold onto Rome. The guys. None of us will let you fall, Freddie.”

We couldn’t fix it for him. We couldn’t erase the addiction or the reason he’d descended into it in the first place. But as long as he was willing to reach out, we would always catch him.

Frankly, even if he wasn’t, still wasn’t going to abandon him.

A brisk knock hit the door. “Five minutes!” The techs were summoning us. The new opening number required me to be up there with them. It was a surprise for the guys too.

Freddie let out a wet laugh. “You need to go.”

“No, I need to be right here,” I told him. “They can do the number without me.”

“Absolutely not,” he said, pulling back to look at me. With careful fingers, I swiped away the tears on his cheeks. “You’ve been working on this all week, I want to see how great you look.”

I searched his blue eyes, then brushed a kiss to his jaw. I didn’t quite make the contact because he was already pushing himself so much. I also didn’t want to leave a lipstick smear on his chin.

“I promise,” he continued in a sobering tone. “I’m not going to slip off and get high. I’ll be right there on the side of the stage. I want a front row seat.”

“I’m not worried about that.” I really wasn’t, though his surprise made my heart ache. “I never want chasing my dreams to hurt you.”

“They don’t hurt me,” he told me. “Bottling this shit up? That hurts. I know better and I know I can tell you anything.” He pressed a finger to my lips. “I promise you, I know I can tell you anything. Doesn’t always make it easier.”

“That’s the truth.” I kissed his fingertip as he cut his gaze to the clock on the wall.

“Three minutes, Boo-Boo. Let’s go wow the world with this new routine.”

“I want pizza tonight,” I said as I let go and retreated a couple of steps. Freddie was asking for normalcy. I couldn’t possibly tell him no.

“Done. I’ll tell Rome so we can grab it on the way back to the hotel.” He already had his phone in his hands as he fired off a text. I gave him the time to get his walls back up.

One more glance in the mirror and then down at my outfit. I snagged the suit jacket that went over it and picked up the bowler hat.

At two minutes, Freddie and I were striding up the hallway to the stage. The other dancers moved ahead. The curtains were down, the hum of the audience invaded the backstage.

The air was electric as Freddie squeezed my hand once before I stepped away from him and out to the stage. With the curtains down and the lights low, I took my mark from memory.

The other dancers set up around me. The hush of anticipation threaded through us.

“Sixty seconds,” came the whisper from stage right as a tech began the countdown. The lights were darkening everywhere. Even beyond the curtain.

Eyes closed, I dropped my chin. Ahead of us in the dark, the curtains rose. The opening number was six minutes long and it involved every single dancer in the production. Men. Women. Me. I would blend in for the first three minutes because we were united.

The music began as the lights came up abruptly. The sharp notes of Beethoven Scherzo by David Garrett required us to hit our marks in unison. We danced as one. Everyone moving in sync until we broke into two groups then we danced in and around each other.

The three minute long piece filled with verve, performed by a man with such musical genius that it was impossible to not move when it was playing. The colors lit us up as we traded places, dancing in between each other, then in rounds.

Every strike, a stomp. Every sweep, a twirl. On the finish of that piece, every member of the chorus hit the stage, dropping in a circle around me as the light narrowed to me alone. The applause rolled through the audience.

David Garrett’s version of Viva La Vida poured out of the speakers. The beautiful strings flooded me and I sent my bowler hat flying as my suit jacket dropped and then I was leaping to catch the black silks that dropped toward me.

From the corner of my eye, I caught Freddie’s wide grin and that made me soar higher than even the music.

This was just the start.