Page 73 of Soulless Saint

I missed the shit out of her these past months and really hoped she liked Toby and Kate. If she didn’t, one of them might leave with a few less fingers than when they arrived.

A text from the woman herself lit up my phone screen, and I smiled widely as I opened it.

Ava Jade: Your secret password is Carnage. Don’t ask, Rook chose it. Give the password to any of the security team after the show and they’ll escort you backstage. We have a whole studio set up with drinks and snacks and all the goodies for us to catch up once the curtains close.

Ava Jade: Oh, your roommates are invited, too. In case that wasn’t obvious. I want to meet them.

“You guys good for a little backstage party after the show?” I shouted over the music, and Toby swerved a little on the highway, earning himself a blaring honk from the car next to us before he cranked the volume down, twisting in his seat to look back at me with wide eyes.

“You’re not serious?”

“Dead serious.”

“Is that even a question?” Kate asked in a high pitched shout, shaking the back of the driver’s seat. “This is going to be the best night ever!”

I laughed, thumbing a reply to Ava Jade.

Becca: Count us in!

Toby howled as he turned the music back up, he and Becca singing along to one of Primal Ethos’ older hits. Gravedigger.

I chewed my lower lip, unable to stop myself from wondering if Hardin and Kaleb would be at the show tonight. If they were, would I see them? Would they also be invited backstage after the show?

After the very public apology from Hardin and spending last Saturday night barreling down the canyon roads with Kaleb in his race car, I thought…

I didn’t know what I thought, but I definitely didn’t expect for them to go totally MIA.

Neither of them had come into DBD for coffee this past week. Not when I was working or when the others were on shift, either. I asked.

The closest I’d come to seeing them at all was watching their baby blue Ford Bronco prowl the streets of The Row, finding it parked in various places around campus, sans the men themselves.

I was starting to wonder if they both finally took the hint and were backing off like I asked them to. Except, now that they had…

“Ow,” I muttered to myself, tasting copper on my tongue from biting my lower lip too hard. I put my fingers to the corner of my mouth and they came away red. Shit.

I tugged a tissue from a box Toby had on the floor in the backseat and dabbed the blood away, hoping it didn’t ruin my makeup. Since we had to leave pretty much right after our evening shift at DBD, I didn’t have a lot of time to make sure everything set properly. But at least my inky black liner wings were sharp, painted with precision only someone with a very stable hand could achieve.

As much as Toby tried to get me into something with color tonight, I won out, winding up in my signature shade: black. The dress I wore was from a mid-tier designer I wasn’t super familiar with, but for the thirty dollar price tag at the thrift shop, this baby was worth every penny.

Brand new, with a cut out back that extended downward to hug around my waist, only a thin strip of fabric running down the middle from my breasts held the thing together. It was sexy as sin and hugged my curves like a glove. Way better than the yellow number Toby was trying to force on me. I mean, yellow? Did the guy know me at all?

I wadded up the bloody tissue and stuffed it into my clutch, digging for the lip stain I brought to try to hide the fresh cut.

My phone vibrated again as I swiped it over my lips, the cherry red color doing its job to cover the broken skin even better than I thought it would.

I traded the lip stain for my phone, finding a message there from Aodhán. We’d been texting back and forth for the last week. Even though I’d managed to keep him at arms’ length so far, the guy was persistent. He came in for coffee daily now, using any excuse to hang around the front counter and chat until I inevitably excused myself to get back to work.

Aodhán: Enjoy the concert tonight.

My lips turned upward as I tapped the message to thumb out a reply, but hesitated. Wait. Had I told him I was going to the show tonight? I flicked back through a couple days of messages but found nothing about the show. Huh. I must’ve mentioned it to him when he came in for coffee.

“We’re here!” Kate said, tugging her little jacket off to leave in Toby’s car. She wouldn’t need it in there. With floor tickets, we were going to be hot as hell, crushed in with all the other fans.

Out the window, twin lights scissored back and forth, crossing each other in the sky as Toby joined the line of cars trying to get into the main parking lot. They were at a dead stop, brake lights painting all of us in shades of crimson.

The show was going to start in ten minutes. We’d miss the intro.

“Awe, what the shit is this!” Toby groused, slapping the steering wheel.

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