Page 37 of Wild Obsession

Emotion clogs my throat. All I manage is a nod. Cameron releases my shoulder and scoots off the bench. It seems that was enough emotion for him, as well, but I don’t mind. I watch the highway roll past the window a bit more calmly than I did an hour ago, Cameron’s words echoing inmy head.

His voice is still rattling around in my brain when we make our final East Coast tour stop in Boston. By the time I step onstage, I feel like I can actually play. I remember that I’m here for me and Erin and Kelsey and Cameron — not my parents, and definitely not Keannen.

I don’t know how his set went tonight. The crowd seemed to like it, but for once I wasn’t clinging to the side of the stage to listen and stare hopelessly at him. I focused on myself, putting on headphones and going through our set in my head.

Erin glances at me before we begin. For the first time in many stops, I’m able to smile and nod in return.

The whole crowd feels it the moment we start. This isn’t the band who stumbled through the past several tour stops. Everything clicks into place tonight. I don’t so much perform as sit back and let the music happen to me, every beat thumping through my hands perfectly on time.

Some piece of me keeps replaying Cameron’s words about being a family, about mattering, about deserving better even when other people say I don’t. Who the hell is Keannen to tell me what I do and don’t deserve? He’s been pushing me around this entire tour, trying to trip me up, trying to ruin my band’s shows. Now he wants to act like he had no idea what he was doing? Yeah, sure, innocent bully Keannen, who justhappenedto lure his ex-boyfriend onto a tour bus and whisper all those filthy promises into his ears.

No way. He knew what he was doing, and he wanted it. It wasn’t a game for him. Otherwise, he could have given me blue balls and walked away. I may not be experienced, but I know you don’t give someone an orgasm that good for nothing.

I want more.

I think he does too, but the stubborn ass is going to fight it to the bitter end simply to prove a point. Him and my parents are both hung up on the version of me who existed when I was seventeen, but I’m not a child anymore. The young, innocent part of me died when my mother ripped me out of that car and started shipping me around the country to cure me of my sexuality.

I crash through the set, but it isn’t frustration propelling me through the music this time around. It’s desire. I want another chance with Keannen, even if it’s dirty and bitter and loveless. I want him to touch me, and I don’t give a shit about the consequences.

Cameron said I deserve more. He said I should demand more. As the final notes of the set echo through the venue and the crowd roars, I finally dare to believe he’s right. I do deserve more than the scraps Keannen has been teasing me with. He wanted to get a rise out of me? Well, he’s succeeded. Now, he needs to deal with the consequences.

I stand with my band and wave and bow for the crowd. A wall of sound washes over me as the lights go down and the curtain closes. Emmett will get a better review of thisperformance than the previous ones, but he’s not the man I’m thinking about tonight.

Screw my parents. Screw Keannen. Screw our whole painful, convoluted past. I’ve spent twenty-five years trying to be good enough for other people to want me. It’s about damn time I do something selfish.

Keannen doesn’t have to love me. Tonight, he only has to want me.

Chapter Eighteen

Keannen

I CAN ONLY RUN for so long.

I’ve been skipping out the second shows end. The others have definitely noticed, and Jacob is particularly unhappy about it. I don’t see what the problem is. It’s not like they’re not used to my shitty attitude.

“Because you’re part of the band,” Jacob said when he confronted me about it on the bus. “You’re part of thefamily.”

I scoff at the memory, just as I scoffed when Jacob first lobbed that cheesy line at me. I haven’t had anything resembling a family since I was about fifteen, and this group of musical misfits isn’t going to change that, no matter how many times Jacob tries to use his big, soft leading man eyes on me.

“I’m not one of your future groupies,” I grumbled.

Jacob rolled his eyes. “Good because you’re not my type.”

“Yeah, then what is your type? Still trying to get in the security guard’s pants?”

That shut him up. His cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink and he stomped off, muttering to himself.

Regardless, here I am, sitting in the greenroom after our set instead of running away as I’d like to. I slouch on one of the beat up, smelly couches you can always find in greenrooms. It’s like every time someone had to set up a greenroom, they drove around town looking for the grossest curbside freebie they could find. It’s fine, though. I’m equally gross after playing a whole set.

I scroll through my phone, ignoring my bandmates as they filter in and out of the room. Some of them are watching The Ten Hours. The only person with me right now is, thankfully, Levi, who is about as inclined to talk to me as I am to him.

We can both hear that The Ten Hours’ set is going great. I try not to, but I started grinding my teeth without noticing, which makes it pretty hard for me to lie even to myself.

Tim has been playing like shit since that day in Baltimore. Unlike during the first half of the tour, I do feel alittlebad this time. I wanted to mess with him, but not like this. I never intended for feelings to get involved. Thishas gotten way too messy and dramatic for my taste. Hence my desire to slink off every night after we play. I’m not interested in the joint outings with The Ten Hours after most shows. Instead, I go to the hotel room or the bus, put on headphones, and watch dumb videos until I fall asleep.

Seems I won’t be so lucky tonight.

“He’s still here,” Jacob declares far too jovially when he and the rest of the band enter the greenroom.

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