But I can’t push it here. If I do something crazy, it’ll be Rob’s head, and the last thing I need is to be on someone else’s shit list.
I thank him and dismiss myself, Rob watching me with some questions still in his eyes—questions I hope he forgets. When noone’s looking, I sneak back into the wings of the stage, dodging both house crew and our own as they tear down and load things away. The whole auditorium is clear, the big lights up, only venue staff and workers left doing their things, sweeping and mopping the floors, breaking down equipment, taking things down. No one is left out there. I slip back into the hallways and search for a side door, but the only one I find leads to an unused loading bay with no access to the main parking lot. I could go around the perimeter of the whole damned building, but just the thought of Rob getting in trouble for my antics stops me.
I can text Timothy, but something holds me back. Maybe it’s him knowing who I am now—who Ireallyam. It makes a difference what I do now. How I handle this. Whether I send a simple fucking text or not.I hate this so much…
“Mr. Holt.”
I turn. Raj stands there in a sweated-through tank, blinking. We’re in a back hall near the dressing rooms and the loading bay door. No one’s been by this way for a short while now.
And he keeps blinking. Intentionally. “Mr. Holt …?” I ask with a lift of an eyebrow. “Since when do you call me that?”
He smiles strangely. “I was studying the audience tonight, as I so often do during these shows, and … couldn’t help but wonder to myself if you still like horseshoes?”
Now it’s me blinking at him. “Is that a riddle?”
“Partly. Anyway, I think you may enjoy some time in private. To think about horseshoes. In a dressing room.” He comes really close to me, close enough to lick my ear. “And my room issomuch more private than yours. No one ever checks up on me. Not even Dee. My drawers are always stocked. Just around the corner across from Wily’s. I’m going to chat with Emmett about literally nothing at all for thirty minutes exactly. Please don’t touch the sticks.”
He’s gone quicker than he appeared.
And I’m completely lost what the hell any of that meant.
I feel like I’m on some covert mission that makes no damned sense when I turn the corner and find Raj’s room. Wily is in his own across the hall, his door wide open, back facing the hallway as he scrolls on his phone. I surrender to an instinct to be as quiet as possible when I slip into Raj’s room and close the door.
Someone in an oversized Soul Biter shirt and hat sits in front of the snack table. He looks up from a basket of fruit, eyes on me.
I stop short. “Timothy?”
He rises from the table at once. “Austin.”
I can’t tell whether that’s an angry Austin, happy one, or a “still-processing-this” tone of voice. I plain can’t tell anything. He is blank. Wide-eyed. Standing by a basket of fruit.
He’s here. He’s really fucking here.
And shouldn’t be. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Austin … Chase … Holt,” he mutters, still in a daze.
“It isn’t safe to be with me. If someone sees you …”
“I feel … so stupid.” He just spent the last hour and a half with this information and still looks like he learned it five seconds ago. “How’d I not know it was you? I’m smarter than this. I’m the one everyone in my class came to for test answers. I’m singlehandedly responsible for AJ passing statistics. I tutoradvanced calculus.”
I come up to him, if anything but to bring down his voice. “I’m serious, Timothy. You shouldn’t have come here.”
“I was just returning your hat.” He takes it off his head. Then he looks down at it. “Except it isn’tyoursigned hat. It’s just …asigned hat—whichyousigned—from the merch table where those two horny guys need to figure out they love each other already.”
That last part flies over my head. “Look, I didn’t want to lie or hold back the truth about who I am, Timothy. I was just—”
“I know.” His response surprises me. “I don’t blame you. Not even angry about it. I think.” He says all of this to the hat. “I was fully prepared to leave you alone. That’s what you wanted, right?”
Itwaswhat I wanted, technically. But hearing it from him, in his own words, feels hurtful. “Of course that isn’t what I want.”
“What do you want, then?”
“I want you to look at me, for one.”
He looks up from the hat.
Right into my eyes.