NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: PLEASE read the Auxilliary chapter "Note to Readers" about the content of this story to ensure you are not disappointed about investing in it! Although the story is complete, Volume 3 is unique and you may not wish to commit the time without being aware of it!

*****

Kelly

It all started with a YouTube video I posted last June.

By August the video had three hundred twelve views, twenty-four likes, and one thumbs-down. In other words, no one noticed it.

Until Crash did.

Sitting at the formica counter of the dressing room, my reflection lit by the glowing bulbs that march in perfect formation around the mirror's edge, I'm supposed to touch up my make-up. Instead, I struggle to inhale. Avoid looking at my gold hair, cut stark for drama, reddened eyes lined in deepest black.

"Are you sure?" Merv, the head of security, shifts his weight in the shadows behind me. I nod.

He turns in that impossibly light way he has despite his size, opens the door, and slips out, glancing at me over his shoulder. As the noise and light from the arena outside slide in I tense, but the door closes without anyone coming in to replace him.

I made all the crew leave, but they're still nervous about me being alone.

They should be.

Away from my mirror, the room is dim. I like it that way, feeling closed in. Hidden.

The thunder of the audience in the arena over my head is a physical thing, feet, hands, and voices chanting Crash's name, pounding on the floor—my ceiling, my walls, my bones.

My desert-dry tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

The thunder overhead takes on a rhythm, a stomping demand. Crash Happy has finished the set. While the studio musicians play, I picture the stage going dark. Backstage, Crash and Tommy will wait while the crowd gets rabid. I close my eyes and imagine Crash, his lean body poured into torn black jeans and a muscle shirt that shows off the tattoos on his upper arms. The nervous tension that makes him stand on his toes and shake out his hands. But I know he'll kill this. He's only two years older than me, but he's done so much more than I've ever been allowed to.

Once, I asked Crash what it was like on stage. How he could connect with the audience—because he's famous for it. Always. Every show.

He said that each crowd is an entity with its own personality. Some are playful, others solemn. Some worship. Others destroy. He said you just have to figure out how that night's crowd wants you, then give yourself that way.

If that's true, then tonight's crowd is an expectant beast, already pissed that it's being forced to wait for him.

For me, too, I suppose.

Shadows of the things that happened to me scratch their claws on the corners of my mind. I shove out of my chair to pace between the sleek couch and the coffee table. Both black.

Why does everything have to be black?

My bitter laugh dies when I'm struck by a flashing memory of fingers twisting in my hair.

My throat closes.

None of this should have happened. I obeyed the rules.

In contrast with my light blonde hair, I'm painted in midnight: black kohl around my eyes, lipstick the darkest red of coagulated blood, so dark you can only tell it isn't black under lights. Black mesh, black belt, black leather pants, boots, soul.

My eyes burn again and my ribs squeeze, iron bands that want to stop my breath completely.

No. Not now.

The monster squeezing my chest ever since the day my mother died is back. But I have to sing.

Leaning on the back of a chair, I force myself to inhale through my nose, exhale through my mouth, remind myself: There are people, dozens of them, between me and that beast of a crowd. And between me and that smaller, more frightening beast of a man who's probably in it—or watching from the green room. There's an entire security team right outside my door, hired to be my personal wall. Plus a coterie of publicists, managers, make-up artists and only-the-Lord-knows who else, hired to ensure I'm driven mad with the constant noise, demands for my time and attention.

It doesn't matter if that man is here. As soon as I walk out of this room, I'll never be alone. Not for a second. And even he'll lose interest eventually.

Won't he?

The thought freezes me in my tracks.

I lurch upright. I need to tell. I need to scream what I'm ever more certain he did to me. He can't be allowed to—

An image comes to me of Crash's eyes if I were to tell him what has happened. How they would narrow, then cloud. Confusion turns to shock . . . then rage.

How every hard, guarded, broken thing in his heart would swim into his gaze whenever he looked at me after that.

My lungs stop working, encased in steel ribs. My knees wobble. I sink to the couch, head in my hands, pleading with God to inject oxygen back into the air. Ignore the wetness on my lashes. This make-up is indestructible—it has to be. I'll sweat like a pig under those lights.

Inhale. Exhale.

The monster doesn't care anymore. I tell myself. Or, if he does, he'll lose interest in me once the world does. He has to. Because I won't survive if he doesn't.

I barely register the tap on the door over the thunder from above.

"Come in," I croak into my own lap.

A creak and the rush of the pounding, the voices, the echo. I shiver.

Then the door closes, pushing it all back, holding the slavering crowd-beast at bay for a minute longer.

The Production Assistant's voice is quiet, but unconcerned. "Can I get you something, Ms. Berkstram? It's almost time." Apparently, she's accustomed to neurotic artists losing their shit.

I shake my head.

Inhale through the nose. Exhale through the mouth.

Sitting up straight, I grab for the arm of the couch while my head spins. Wait for it to clear.

Inhale healing. Exhale pain.

"Are you ready?" she asks.

"Not even a little bit."

She chuckles like I was joking, offers me a hand to my feet, and uses the other to push a button on the little black box at her waist. "Artist Two is on the move," she says into the microphone of her headset.

Another voice crackles, "Roger. Five minutes until cue."

It's time.

I take her hand and let her lead me out of my cave. My security wall—four guys personally selected by Merv, each big enough to have to maneuver through standard doorways—appear around us as we step into the fluorescent maze of the cement hallways, wide enough to drive golf carts, ceilings vaulted to allow equipment movers easy passage. I am engulfed by them, steadied by their presence.

Even if he's here, they won't let him near me. They won't. I squeeze my hands so hard, my nails—grown out so I can pick guitar strings, just like Crash—almost pierce my palms.

I go rigid when a roar, a tidal wave of demand, beats at the foundations of the arena around us.

Then the answering pulse begins, Tommy on the drums. The heartbeat of this life.

The beast stamps its feet in time, howls when Crash croons to it, the gravel of his voice soars, grinding through my skin and bone to the heart underneath.

I stumble. Oh, Crash, why did they do this to us?

"Don't worry," one security guy says, patting my shoulder with a palm the size of a Christmas ham. He has a kind smile. "He can't wait to see you."

He means Crash.

But I'm more concerned about the other he.