Page 169 of The Broken Note

That’s what the fan who met me backstage last night called me.

And maybe that’s what I am—the world’s emotional punching bag.

I take a seat behind my piano, fingers to the keys. Mask on.

Not Cadence Cooper.

To them, I’m Soprano Jones.

I place my fingers to the keys. A low, haunting melody crawls out of the piano. Notes too dark, too dangerous to exist in the light.

I bend my face over the keys and wild, violent emotions seep through the cracks in my heart.

It’s unfortunate.

Every day, I get up and I put my feelings in their cages. But they always break out and escape into the night when I play. Music does that. It unlocks the door to the pain, the pleasure, the fear, the joy.

Everything.

I’m masked, yet I can’t hide here.

The crowd is silent. They’re always silent. Listening. Waiting. Holding their breath until I remind them to breathe.

The leader of the band strums his guitar.

Acoustic. Dutch preferred electric…

But I’m not thinking about him.

I hammer my fingers against the keyboard. Angry stabs. Louder. Louder.

The music builds around me, feeding on my angst. Greedy for more of the pain that crawls out of my melody.

The audience starts singing and screaming. A mass of bodies sway from somewhere beyond me.

I don’t see it. I don’t hear it.

My fingers move lower. Lower. Until I’ve run out of octaves and there aren’t enough keys to express the depth of my anger.

I climb back to the higher octave and hold the chord just as the song ends.

I’m breathing hard, wrung out over my piano when the last note fades. The crowd roars and chants my name.

‘Soprano! Soprano! Soprano!’

The band members smirk at each other. They think it’s a gimmick when I flop over my piano like this. The hidden girl, covered from head to toe in a veil and mask. A marketing shtick. A one-way ticket to going viral.

They don’t mind that I don’t practice with them. Or talk to them. Or care about them. For a no-name band on Jarod Cross’s roster, I’m what sets them apart.

The leader turns with his guitar and smiles at me. Suddenly, his image putters out and I see Dutch at the mike, guitar over his shoulder. Blonde hair messy. Amber eyes molten gold under the spotlight.

He’s smiling cockily at me like he did the night he dragged me on stage to play the triangle. The night I made the first real step into overcoming my stage fright.

‘Don’t look at them, Brahms. Look at me.’

My skin suddenly feels too tight. My fingers curve on the edge of the piano desk, but I can’t shake the striking-hot agony inside me.

And I really can’t breathe.