Page 27 of Bonding the Band

I waited expectantly for some further explanation, and when it didn’t come, I sauntered my way over to the mini fridge to mislead him before snatching the laptop out of his hands and taking a flying leap into the back bedroom with it. Before he could react, I kicked the door closed with my foot and slid to the floor to brace my body against it while I opened the laptop.

Hendrix’s body hit the door with a thump, the vibrations ricocheting through me. “Give it back.”

“In a minute.”

Security footage wasn’t what I had been expecting. I recognized the backstage at the Seattle venue. Hendrix sat with a pretty brunette, the grin on his face so different from how he usually looked. Curious. I couldn’t zoom in very well to get a decent view of the person with him. “Hen, is this the omega?”

He was quiet for a long moment before the barely audible words “I think so” came floating through the door.

I stared at the footage, rewinding the moments of their laughter—unfortunately silent, since the video had no sound—and watching her get up to follow Hendrix a dozen times before I finally wiggled away from the door so he could come inside. Hendrix looked sheepish as hell.

“When were you going to show us?” I asked.

“After I finished watching.”

I climbed onto the bed, stretching out onto my stomach and patting the bed next to me. Hendrix lay down, the laptop in front of us as I drew the footage back to when she first appeared on it. This omega was a mystery. She’d come back with someone and then had simply sat on the bench on her phone while her friend came in to see us.

“What did you guys talk about?”

Hendrix groaned and dropped his face to the blankets. “I wish I fucking knew.”

“Your brain really must be scrambled if you don’t remember anything about her. She’s cute as fuck, from what I can see. You look so happy talking to her.”

I wasn’t oblivious to how much Hendrix struggled with being a rock star. Sure, he ate up the attention, but I had known him a hell of a long time and was well aware that fame brought as much as it took away for him. He had always been an anxious perfectionist, and the easy access to drugs and casual partners wasn’t a cure for that. They might bury it for a time, but the high always wore off. The Hendrix of our high school days wouldn’t recognize the man next to me now. I was pretty sure our fans wouldn’t recognize him like this, either, considering what they expected of him on stage.

“It would be so much easier to find her if we could trust no one would go after her.” I sighed, my gaze following the omegaacross the screen. “The simplest thing would be to put out a post and actually Cinderella this shit up, get her to come to us. I’m pretty sure if we announced that we were looking for a brunette omega, the entire audience would show up with brown hair.”

Hendrix snorted. “You’re not wrong. Not to mention, we’d probably cause a riot if it got out that we invited the VIPs from a single concert to a secondary event.”

“Did seeing her jog any memories?”

“No.” He pouted, resting his chin on his crossed arms. “But I’m still pretty sure she doesn’t like the band.”

“Us as people or our music?”

He shrugged. “I’d like to be able to say it’s just our music, since the fans don’treallyknow us, even when they think they do.”

I mused silently to myself and backtracked the footage to see the person she had come in with. The perky blonde was much more Hendrix’s usual speed. I paused the video where most of the blonde’s face was visible and took a photo of the screen, too lazy to screenshot and send it to myself.

Hendrix frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Turning Internet stalker.”

Searching for tagged images of our Seattle VIP experience led me to hundreds of photos. I scrolled through them slowly, comparing the face of every single blonde with the woman who had accompanied Hendrix’s mystery omega.

I sat up sharply when I found one photo of a smiling, bubbly blonde that was as close to a dead ringer as you could get with grainy video. I turned my phone to Hendrix. “Does this look like the friend?”

He squinted, eyes flicking between the two screens. “Could be. Why?”

“Well, we know the friend likes us. If we can find her, maybe she has some tagged photos with your omega. If she does, we can reach out. If she doesn’t, we reach out to the friend.”

“Pretty sure she’s gonna think we are a scam account if we do that. There’s probably a thousand people pretending to be us floating around out there. Plus, you know the kind of shit celebrities get into when they go DMing fans.”

“Do you want to find her or not?”

“Yes.” Hendrix pulled out his own phone. “Let me help you stalk. We need to be one hundred percent sure before we reach out.”

We spent the next hour staring at photos until my eyes blurred and Beckett and Arlo had returned from their equipment check.

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