Page 35 of Knot Their Opening Act

But how many of them show Kai Hartley taking the piss out of me? Or trying to start something that hasn’t, doesn’t, will never exist?

My whole body feels like it’s made of fumes and thorns and jets about to take off. I shut the phone down but shove it in my leggings pocket, then grab my room key and head down to the 24-hour hotel gym.

After getting lost in a labyrinth of identical corridors with enormous floor-to-ceiling abstract paintings as the only differentiating feature, I use my room key to open the glass gym doors. The desk isn’t manned at this late hour, but there’s a sign that says to help oneself to bottled water and juices in the fridge, towels in the cubbies and shower rooms, and that the equipment, “including the climbing wall,”is use-at-your-own-risk.

There’s a sign-in sheet but I don’t feel like letting anyone know I’m here, so I walk past it, grab a towel from a cubby, and head through another set of double doors.

From this new corridor, there are doors leading to a weights room and a machine room on the right, a pool and sauna on the left, and a climbing wall at the end of the corridor.

As I push through the glass double doors into the climbing area, I remember all the walks Viv and I used to do, with her old dog Chewie. Out to Wales, sometimes up to Snowden, sometimes to the Peak District, and once even to the Dolomites which scared the living shit out of both of us, but at least a tour bus took us to a fairly high starting point.

I’d spent most of my happiest times with Viv, and learning to be okay on my own was going to be a long path. It’s not the being alone part. It’s the being without Viv.

I’d rather be alone than with someone like Tristan ever again. I know my own company won’t disappoint me. And if I get bored with me, I can disappear into songwriting or a video game. Like I do.

Tonight though, I need movement, an outlet for adrenaline, and a forceful push of the emotions inside me to the outside, where they can die for all I care. My brain is shouting that I should be holed up in my room, making a video or doing a live where I can refute the toxic slander that Kai’s spewed out into the world. But right now, my body needs to move.

Plus if I do any video or live right now, it’ll look like I’m sitting around stewing after a massive gig in Edinburgh rather than, I don’t know, celebrating on the town, like I imagine so many music fans expect artists do every night.

I set my towel on a bench and look around. Current pop music blasts through unseen speakers, and the size of the space nearly takes my breath away. The climbing wall Viv and I used to use was more for a fun social than for proper training.

One side of this space is a lead climbing wall, with points along the routes to hook your rope into. That’s not something I’m going to dream of trying. I just want to move my body around a bit and focus on breathing and movement and not much else. I head over to the bouldering wall, which is signed as being twenty metres. Pretty damn high as far as I’m concerned.

I plop down on a bench and check my laces are good and tight. I read over a brief warning sign about climbing solo then head on over. How hard can it be? I don’t plan on going all the way up anyhow, because it’d be just my luck to get halfway and decide I can’t back down without falling. And a broken bone or worse stopping me from continuing this tour I’ve barely started is a humiliation I don’t plan to tempt.

And yet. There’s a dark little voice in the back of my brain.You could get out of this. Not by falling and getting injured. But just by quitting. You don’t have to subject yourself to the ridicule, to Fable, to?—

But Thomas. He was kind. He was reassuring. He was everything I needed in that moment, and he didn’t give me the impression he would be off bragging to the others—or for that matter, slagging me off. In fact, he said he would tell no one.

And like most touring Alphas, I had to assume they were all on suppressants. So no one would know I was in heat from my scent. Just from any visible cues. And I needed to get better at hiding them, at least for tomorrow. Friday morning I’d be in the big tour bus, but at least in my own small bedroom. I could close the door and be non-existent for a few hours. As long as I kept it quiet, they wouldn’t be the wiser.

And if things got really bad, maybe Thomas could sneak away while the others slept … So risky. But the idea’s planted in my head and my thoughts start to drift there, and to every sensitive inch of my body his lips touched.

Stop that. Stop thinking.

I shake my head and approach the wall, placing my hands to the first set of brightly-colored grips. I don’t know exactly what they’re called, but there are all different shapes. I plant my feet on the lower ones and begin to pull myself up.

After a few minutes of careful concentration, the floor’s somehow dropped a good three meters below me. My fitness regime mostly consists of weight training and a run on a treadmill or outdoors two times a week. Not the most I could do, but certainly not nothing. This is a new kind of challenge, and pushing myself like this feels good. But I’m aware it would feel a whole lot better after a full night’s sleep—not after spending a day having frantic sex, performing an eight-song set, and feeling my nerves want to rip free from my body to strangle a certain Alpha, all while trying to maintain a semblance of control over my heat.

So far, so good. After Thomas this morning, the burning urge between my thighs and up through the center of my being has been much tamer, which just the occasional peaked nipples or hint of slick. Nothing as bad as some make it out to be. Although I’m guessing it was Thomas’s assistance that brought it down several notches.

Who knows what tomorrow brings. Or even tonight, but hopefully it waits til I get back to my room.

After rising a couple more sets of grips, my shoulders and lower back start to complain, but there’s a thrill of being so far off the ground without a rope or a handrail. Just my own energy and strength and will to push me on.

That’s the theme of this tour, I guess.

A single bead of sweat runs down my back. I make sure my left hand is firmly buried in the deep pocket grip while I reach around with the right to itch the spot and relieve myself of that sweat when I hear the double doors opening, and glance down. Two people enter. Shit.

From here, all I can see are the tops of heads. One’s a sandy blonde, the other slightly balding and grey. Two men.

Oh brother.

I grip the wall again with both hands and look up. Do I keep going, or should I get back down and rest? It’s not much further until the section of bouldering wall I’m on inverts, and that really is beyond my limit—at least for tonight without any kind of spotter. Or net at the bottom to catch me.

More sweat is sliding down my skin. My neck and the undersides of my knees, in particular. And then, I realize with great disdain, my inner thighs.

But that’s not sweat. It’s slick.

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