Page 5 of The Darkest Note

Clipboard Guy huffs toward me.

I rip my eyes away from the three guys, realizing that I’m flushed and a little breathless.

“Okay, Soprana,” Clipboard Guy says.

“Uh, it’s Sonata.”

He waves away the correction. His eyes jump from the three newcomers and back to my pale face. “Curtains go up in three.”

I nod my understanding.

He turns and yells in his headset loud enough for everyone to hear. “Surano’s opening for The Kings in three! Get the lights ready!”

The three forces of nature—there’s no other word to describe the way they suck the air out of the room—notice me at the same time. The two on either end smirk and glance away, but the blond keeps his killer eyes on me.

DearBach,he’s beautiful.

The lights burn an orange glow across his tan skin so it seems like he’s bathing in fire. He raises a muscular arm—that looks like it lifts more than the guitar on his back—and squeezes the strap. I swear my soul presses in right along with it.

He smirks and my breath is ripped away by a charisma that doesn’t ask but demands my attention. Everyone disappears. All I can see is him. His dark eyes trap me in place. Violent and merciless.

I feel every step he takes in my direction. The rhythm of his stride ricochets down to my toes.

It’s frightening, the chokehold he has on me. I don’t know where it’s coming from. I only know that—if bad news had a face—it would be this guy.

Tattoos climb under his braided leather bracelet with the gold beads and disappear into the worn sleeve of his shirt. From the shaggy blond hair to the easy way the tight T-shirt wraps around his pecs, it all screams danger. Damage. Destruction restrained to the body of a Greek sculpture.

My heart starts racing at an unhealthy speed. The music in my head screeches to a halt. I don’t have a chord progression for him. I don’t even have a melody. He’s too much. He pushes out every sound, every thought until he’s all that’s left.

I want to look away, but I can’t take my eyes off him.

“What are you doing?” Clipboard Guy is back. And he sounds annoyed.

Breeze is beside him. Her smile is dreamy and I wonder if she hit it off with the guy she targeted on stage.

“You ready for this?” my best friend asks.

I drag my eyes away from The Kings and am eternally grateful that Breeze catches sight of them when I’m already enroute to the piano.

I hear her excited squeals and figure Clipboard Guy is getting attacked by her swatting. My best friend’s arm turns into a paddle board when she’s overjoyed.

The piano falls into my line of sight and I feel the draw the way I always do. An undercurrent, similar to the one I felt when I spotted that guy backstage, vibrates the air around me. Except this tug isn’t violent. It’s gentle. Warm water on naked skin. Sunlight kissing my palm. Enveloping. Whispering that I could drown and like it.

I tried my hardest to resist the call, especially when mom found out that I could make money playing music. She turned something beautiful and precious and stained it with her junkie fingers.

Even so, even when music felt dirty, it still sang to me. Dug under my skin and told me that I could never run away.

I feel my skirt flare around my hips as I take my seat behind the piano. It’s a Steinman and I’d be confused, dazzled even, if I didn’t know that this is Redwood Prep. Of course they have one of the most expensive acoustic pianos lying around for random students to use in their end-of-summer showcase.

I lift the lid and run my fingers over the gleaming keys. The weight of it takes my breath away. I’ve been practicing on the keyboard I lugged out of a thrift store. Those keys sounded like a dying toy and the key bed was so cheap that it sprang like a jack-in-the-box whenever I touched it.

Just outside the curtain, an announcer yells my name to the crowd. No one claps. Not even out of politeness.

They don’t know me.

They don’t welcome me.

I take a deep breath and settle my nerves. It doesn’t matter. They will never know me. The real me.