9
ED
Later, tucked deeply into the wings of the stage, Ed saw Pasha switch gears from average to amazing. Based on what he was hearing, management’s strategy looked crazy. Pasha usually did okay, but tonight, he rose head and shoulders above the boy band’s level.
Their performance had been bland tonight like their one good singer had stopped trying. Pasha, on the other hand, took the lyrics he’d been given and spun a story with them. Ed watched him stand at the dead center of the stage with his feet glued to the X, belting them out like he was giving the performance of a lifetime.
The host of the show stood beside Ed, tapping his toes as he listened. His quick glance Ed’s way was appraising. Ed could guess what he was thinking: Pasha was good enough to get through tonight without gimmicks like the T-shirts they wore.
Maybe the musical director thought so as well. All the other acts’ individual numbers had been largely generic. In comparison, his arrangement of Pasha’s music was innovative and challenging.
Perhaps Pasha took that challenge too far as the song reached its conclusion. He hit a bum note and faltered.
The audience drew in a shocked breath.
Pasha refused to let the music beat him, clawing his way up the scale, chasing the elusive note then holding it for longer than seemed possible. Pushed to the absolute peak of his range, giving everything he had, his chest heaved when he was done.
Silence stretched between Pasha and the audience, only snapping when he bowed low. Applause washed him back a few steps, arms flailing, and he laughed. He thumped the center of his chest twice before his arm swept in a wide arc encompassing the audience, acknowledging them in turn as if they’d done all the hard work. The fans simply loved it.
They loved him.
The host was with Pasha in an instant, delivering jokes in his trademark East End accent, but Ed didn’t hear what he said. He’d stopped listening the moment Pasha shielded his eyes with his hand and looked around as if searching for someone. Ed stepped out of the shadows where he’d kept watch, and the second Pasha caught sight of him, their smiles mirrored each other’s.
Pride, unexpected and all consuming, swelled somewhere beneath Ed’s ribs when Pasha’s excited grin expanded even farther. He watched Pasha thump his chest twice again and then point directly at him, pure joy radiating across the space between them.
Ed stepped forward like he’d been called.
Pasha thumped his chest twice more before raising his hand to his lips. He laughed when Ed caught the kiss he blew him, and then his eyes widened even farther.
Warm and dark and glittering, Ed focused only on them.
In front of thousands of strangers and fans crowding the London venue; in front of his mother watching the show onTV at home in Cornwall; in front of serving soldiers crowded around patchy live-stream coverage on laptops halfway around the planet, Ed hauled Pasha to him.
He grasped the back of Pasha’s neck with one hand, palm sliding on slick, hot skin before he tightened his grip. His other hand tangled with the cable attached to Pasha’s earpiece. It let out the muted, wasplike buzz of someone yelling orders as it dangled at Pasha’s collar.
Ed blanked out that unimportant faint sound. He didn’t hear the audience right then either—their cheers or the sound of multiple wolf whistles. All he was aware of was the sensation of hair sliding silkily through his fingers and the just-right curve of Pasha’s skull fitting into his palm. Pasha’s pulse under Ed’s thumb was a drumbeat that sped even as his lips parted in slow motion.
Ed closed the short distance between them.
With only inches between their mouths, the wasp buzz coming from the earpiece reached a furious crescendo.
Moments before he kissed Pasha, every single light in the venue cut out.
“Mum?”The buffet car of the Great Western sleeper train to Cornwall was virtually empty, but Ed kept his voice low all the same. “I’m on my way home.”
He listened to dead air, half-glad that his mother hadn’t been awake to pick up his call. “I’m on the sleeper right now. I’ll explain when I see you. There’s… there’s nothing to worry about. I promise.”
Nothing to worry about, apart from three words he couldn’t get out of his head. They repeated over and over in time with the sound of steel wheels above rail track.
Divide and conquerright when distance between him and Pasha was the worst thing.
Divide and conquerbefore he got the chance to say sorry for a mistake that now seemed stupid.
Ed checked his phone again for at least the twentieth time since he’d been escorted from the venue to the station. After midnight now and still no reply to any of his voice mails and texts. Wondering what Pasha must be thinking was going to keep him up for the remaining eight hours of this journey.
He nursed a cup of tepid, too weak tea and leaned back against the deep blue fake leather of his seat. Outside, the sky over Reading’s suburbs was dark gray and orange. If he squinted, they could be the same colors he’d seen overseas so often. Smoke and the glow of burning vehicles and buildings streaked the night sky in the same way as this urban light pollution. That thought lent perspective.
He’d faced worse situations than this and survived.