Page 27 of Brutal Secrets

I guess this is Stevie’s new conquest—only just old enough to drink and not interested in anything more than a private gig from someone famous.

She hasn’t glanced up here once since we came off stage. Yet again, Stevie has picked the wrong girl, but I’m not one to talk. I haven’t gotten laid in so long I’ve almost forgotten what sex feels like.

I sink down on the leather bench next to him, nursing my soda water with lime. “Ready to head off? I can give you a ride back to Manhattan.” I reach over and twang one of the strings to get his attention. “I’ll take this back with me if you’re going out clubbing.”

He grins, his forehead shining under his thinning hair, and nods as I stand to shrug into my jacket. He doesn’t stand a chance with this chick, but no one likes to hear that shit from their friends, and I’m not gonna be the one to break it to him.

Rising to his feet, Stevie slings an arm around my shoulders. He’s too thin, probably from snorting too much coke, but I’ve given up lecturing him about that too. I lean into him as we pick our way through the chairs to the exit, but he crashes into me from behind as I stop short and stare across the room.

It can’t be.

Not Vadim.

Not after all this time.

But I can’t help looking.

Stevie follows my eyes to the booths at the back of the VIP area. “Not that guy. Please tell me you’re wrong.”

He pulls on my elbow and drags me toward the velvet rope separating the high-rollers and poseurs from the people actually having a good time downstairs.

I stare at the corner where I thought I saw the man who is the subject of a hundred song lyrics I’ve written. I’ve spotted Vadim’s shadow in nightclubs, on street corners. Once I even thought I saw him at my daughter’s school drop-off. I must have had a particularly poor night’s sleep before that imaginary sighting.

Stevie pulls me around to face him and spits out his next words. “I thought you were over all this nonsense. You stopped taking these crazy gigs. You’re not still looking for him, are you?” He tilts his head toward the corner of the balcony, eyes narrowing.

“Don’t patronize me, Stevie. I only came tonight because you asked me to give you a bit of moral support. I stopped searching years ago, and I’ll probably be wrong this time too, but...”

“You promised me.” His biting tone sinks through my skin as he looks at the crowd of men standing close to the balcony. “Everyone knows who you are, Sera. If that bastard had really wanted to find you, he’d have found a way.”

“Don’t talk about him like that. It’s harder when you’re famous. I’m not always easy to reach.”

I look at the men in the corner. There are five of them, laughing and joking with one another in a tight huddle. They’re all muscular and vaguely threatening, but one of the men stands apart.

His back faces us, and I can only see the wide set of his shoulders and the way he bends his head to his friend, but there’s something familiar about the way he moves, even when I can’t see his face. The strength and the silence. No drama. Just an implicit threat.

“He’s had ten years. Trust me, if he didn’t come for you, it’s because he didn’t want to.” My best friend looks at me with pity in his eyes. “It’s not like he didn’t hear the songs. They had constant airplay for two whole summers.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, babe. I know men. If he’d wanted?—”

I hold my hand up to stop him, lips tight. I know what he’s going to say. I’m the one who wrote a whole album about a man whose last name I didn’t know in the hope he’d seek me out. I don’t need another reminder that it didn’t work.

I glance back to the other side of the balcony. Most of the other customers have given the men a wide berth—there are two empty tables next to the group—but a huddle of girls who look barely out of their teens flutters around them like butterflies in short dresses. The man I’m watching is the only one who doesn’t put his hand on the girls.

Fixing Stevie with a hot stare, I set my jaw. “It’s not for me, okay? I have to ask. If there’s a chance, then I need to know.”

I start toward the men, my friend trailing in my wake and muttering under his breath as he follows me. I don’t need to hear what he’s saying to get the gist of where he’s going with this, but if it ends with embarrassment and me apologizing and buying a round of drinks, then it’s nothing I haven’t done before and it won’t kill me.

I tap the tallest of the six men on the shoulder and put on my brightest, most confident voice. “Excuse me. You look like someone...”

He turns. There are a few more lines around the eyes, but...

It’s him.

I can’t stop the smile from bursting across my face. “Vadim,” I whisper, and reach for him. My hand freezes in mid-air as I wait for him to smile back, for his face to mirror the joy I feel.

His lip curls and his brows pull together in a frown. He’s looking at me like I’m something he scraped from the bottom of his shoe as he mutters something too low for me to catch. And I’m still smiling at him like an idiot, my arm held aloft and the grin frozen on my face. To let the smile slip would be to admit that Stevie was right all along.

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