seemed to swell with the communal high. Energy buzzed through me, setting my nerve endings on fire with enough kick to keep me pinging off the walls through high school and well into college.
I didn’t want to know how Tod had scored seats a mere fifteen rows from the stage, but even my darkest suspicion hadn’t kept me at home. I couldn’t pass up a chance to see Eden live in concert, even though it meant giving up a Saturday night alone with Nash, during my dad’s extra shift at work.
And this was only Eden’s opening act….
Nash pulled me closer, one hand on my hip, and shouted into my ear. “I said, Tod used to date her!”
I rode the wave of adrenaline through my veins as I inhaled his scent. Six weeks together, and I still smiled every time he looked at me, and flushed every time he really looked at me. My lips brushed his ear as I spoke. “Tod used to date who?” There were several thousand possible suspects dancing all around us.
“Her!” Nash shouted back, nodding over the sea of concertgoers toward the main attraction, his spiky, de-liberately messy brown hair momentarily highlighted by a roaming spotlight.
Addison Page, Eden’s opening act, strutted across the stage in slim black boots; low-cut, ripped jeans; a tight white halter; and a sparkly silver belt, wailing a bitter yet up-tempo lament about the one who got away. The glittery blue streak in her straight, white-blond hair sparkled beneath the lights and fanned out behind her when she whirled to face the audience from center stage, her voice rising easily into the clear, res-onant notes she was famous for.
I stared, suddenly still while everyone around me swayed along with the crescendo. I couldn’t help it.
“Tod dated Addison Page?”
Nash couldn’t have heard me. I barely heard me. But he nodded and leaned into me again, and I wrapped my arm around him for balance as the cowboy on my other side swung one eager, pumping fist dangerously close to my shoulder. “Three years ago. She’s local, you know.”
Like us, the hometown crowd had turned out as much for Texas’s own rising star as for the headliner. “She’s from Hurst, right?” Less than twenty minutes from my own Arlington address.
“Yeah. Addy and I were freshmen together, before we moved back to Arlington. She and Tod dated for most of that year. He was a sophomore.”
“So what happened?” I asked as the music faded and the lighting changed for the second song.
I pressed closer to Nash as he spoke into my ear, though he didn’t really have to at that point; the new song was a melodic, angsty tune of regret. “Addy got cast in a pilot for the HOT network. The show took off and she moved to L.A.” He shrugged. “Long distance is hard enough when you’re fifteen, and impossible when your girlfriend’s famous.”
“So why didn’t he come tonight?” I wouldn’t have been able to resist watching a celebrity ex strut on stage, and hopefully fall on his face, assuming I was the dumpee.
“He’s here somewhere.” Nash glanced around at the crowd as it settled a bit for the softer song. “But it’s not like he needs a ticket.” As a grim reaper, Tod could choose whether or not he wanted to be seen or heard, and by whom. Which meant he could be standing on stage right next to Addison Page, and we’d never know it.
And knowing Tod, that’s exactly where he was.
After Addison’s set, there was a brief, loud intermission while the stage was set for the headliner. I expected Tod to show up during the break, but there was still no sign of him when the stadium suddenly went black.
For a moment, there was only dark silence, emphasized by surprised whispers, and glowing wristbands and cell-phone screens. Then a dark blue glow came from the stage and the crowd erupted into frenzied cheers. Another light flared to life, illuminating a new platform in the middle of the stage. Two bursts of red flames exploded near the wings. When they faded, but for the imprint behind my eyelids, she appeared center stage, as if she’d been there all along.
Eden.
She wore a white tailored jacket open over a pink leather bra and a short pink-fringed skirt that exaggerated every twitch of her famous hips. Her long, dark hair swung with each toss of her head, and the fevered screaming of the crowed buzzed in my head as Eden dropped into a crouch, microphone in hand.
She rose slowly, hips swaying with the rhythm of her own song. Her voice was low and throaty, a moan set to music, and no one was immune to the siren song of sex she sold.
Eden was hypnotic. Spellbinding. Her voice flowed like honey, sweet and sticky. To hear it was to crave it, whether you wanted to or not.
The sound wound through me like blood in my veins, and I knew that hours from then, when I lay awake in my bed, Eden would still sing in my mind, and that when I closed my eyes, I would still see her.
It was even stronger for Nash; I could see that at a glance. He couldn’t tear his gaze from her, and we were so close to the stage that his view was virtually uninterrupted. His eyes swirled with emotion—with need—but not for me.
A violent, irrational surge of jealousy spiked in me as fresh sweat dampened his forehead. He clenched his hands at his sides, the long, tight muscles in his arms bulging beneath his sleeves. As if he were concentrating. Oblivious to everything else.
I had to pry his fingers open to lace them with mine. He turned to grin at me and squeezed my hand, beautiful hazel eyes settling into a slower churn as his gaze met mine. The yearning was still there—for me this time—but was both deeper and more coherent. What he wanted from me went beyond mindless lust, though that was there, too, thank goodness.
I’d broken the spell. For the moment. I didn’t know whether to thank Tod for the tickets or ream him.
Onstage, soft lights illuminated dancers strutting out to join Eden as the huge screen tracked her every movement. The dancers closed in on her, writhing in sync, hands gliding lightly over her arms, shoulders, and bare stomach. Then they paired off so she could strut down the catwalk stretching several rows into the crowd.
Suddenly I was glad we didn’t have front-row seats. I’d have had to scrape a puddle of Nash goo into a jar just to get him home.
Warm breath puffed against my neck an instant before the sound hit my ear. “Hey, Kaylee!”
I jumped, so badly startled I nearly fell into my chair. Tod stood on my right, and when the cowboy’s swinging arm went through him, I knew the reaper was there for my viewing pleasure only.
“Don’t do that!” I snapped beneath my breath. He probably couldn’t hear me, but I wasn’t going to raise my voice and risk the guy next to me thinking I was talking to myself. Or worse, to him.
“Grab Nash and come on!” From the front pocket of his baggy, faded jeans, Tod pulled two plastic-coated, official-looking cards attached to lanyards. His mischievous grin could do nothing to darken the cherubic features he’d inherited from his mother, and I had to remind myself that no matter how innocent he looked, Tod was trouble. Always.
“What’s that?” I asked, and the cowboy frowned at me in question. I ignored him—so much for not looking crazy—and elbowed Nash. “Tod,” I mouthed when he raised both brows at me.
Nash rolled his eyes and glanced past me, but I could tell from his roving stare that he couldn’t see his brother. And that, as always, he was pissed that Tod had appeared to me, but not to him.
“Backstage passes.” Tod reached through the cowboy to grab my hand, and if I hadn’t jerked back from the reaper’s grasp, I’d have gotten a very intimate feel of one of Eden’s rudest fans.
I stood on my toes to reach Nash’s ear. “He has backstage passes.”
Nash’s scowl made an irritated mask of his entire face, while on stage, Eden shed her jacket, now clad only in a bikini top and short skirt. “Where did he get them?”
“Do