While my face remained just above the surface.
Where I brushed on beauty and light and life.
Refilling my tray with another round of drinks at the bar, I angled back into the crowd where I delivered them, then set my tray on a table that had recently been abandoned, a slew of empties of all different sizes piled on the high-top table. Carolina George was playing my favorite song, the one that gripped me with melancholy, the one I always felt compelled to sing along to under my breath.
But tonight…tonight while I cleaned that table with my back to the stage, I felt my mouth moving, the words slipping free. No one could hear me above the riot of noise, anyway, but there was something freeing in the form. Freeing in the fact that I was letting myself go.
That gorgeous song trailed off in its somber finale while I slowly swayed, lost in it, lost in the power that struck like a chord in the dense air.
Emily spoke into the mic. “We’re going to take a short break and we’ll be right back with you.”
Applause lifted around me, and I ducked my head as if it would make me invisible, taking the time to tuck that feeling back deep inside my chest. I tossed a rag to the table, wiping it down while a rush of energy stirred through me.
A clamor took over at the stage, spilling over into the crush of people who gathered at its foot. The high-pitched screech of feedback from a speaker set up on the stage sent my nerves racing, the confused rustle of bodies setting me on edge.
At the mic, a throat was cleared. Deep. Deep. Deep. I realized the sound had hit my ears, but really I felt it. Felt all that strange intensity sucking the air from the room, rippling as a billow of curious energy through the crowd before it powered into me.
Chills lifted at the nape of my neck with the light strum of a guitar.
Words came rough where they were muttered into the mic. “Forgive me for stepping in this way, but I have something I’ve got to say.”
My heart stopped dead before it took off at a sprint.
Another light strum of guitar followed by the same voice that’d held me hostage in my living room weeks ago. The same voice that held me hostage in my dreams. The same voice that haunted and comforted and dwelled like a ghost in my mind.
That beautiful, beautiful voice for a beautiful, beautiful man.
Rich and soft, hard as steel, a velvet blade cutting me straight through.
Life… Life passes by. Set in stone, but without direction.
I… I close my eyes. Get lost in a storm, that I never saw coming.
This…this wasn’t angry and aggressive like all the songs I’d listened to again and again when I’d been hidden away in my room with buds pressed into my ears, lost to his voice until I’d deciphered every violent word.
No.
Tonight it was sorrowful and filled with the same kind of hurt that had plagued me for days. These words fell over me like a dark cloak of regret, blinding my eyes and trapping me to the spot.
Emotion fisted me everywhere—heart and lungs and soul—and a wave of dizziness rushed me as my legs shook.
Slowly, I turned toward the source of the voice, carefully, worried if I moved too fast it might fracture this fantasy.
My throat throbbed with the sight in front of me.
Sebastian was on stage.
Here.
In Savannah.
At Charlie’s.
He’d dragged a stool up to the mic and had an acoustic guitar propped on his thigh, one boot hooked on a stool rung and the other bracing himself on the ground.
A single spotlight lit him up, everything else darkened to a near black, because this man was the only thing I could see. His invasive presence struck me with all his severity. His arms corded and taut, the color imprinted on his skin twitching with tension.
My gaze took in his face as if I’d glimpsed beauty for the first time, all sharp angles and defined lines and warped, harsh perfection. And that mouth…that pretty, pretty mouth just kept pouring out words that slammed into me, one after the other.
Regret.
Shame.
Confusion.
Lust.
Those strange grey eyes roved the darkened crowd that couldn’t appear to be anything more than silhouettes, but it was as if he felt me, was seeking me out. I whimpered when they locked on me, finding me, and the tether that tied us together stretched thin, awareness erupting between us.
Pulling.
Pulling.
Pulling.
A tremor rumbled all the way to my bones, and I pressed my hand to my mouth as he told me things in a song that he’d never had the courage to say before. And they were honest and bold and packed with turmoil.
Please… Please lift me up. Don’t have the heart to let you go.
Don’t… Don’t make me say it. ’Cause I don’t know what these feelings mean.
I was in so deep. Drowning in the turbulent waters that were Sebastian Stone.