Because the Night (The Night Songs Collection) (17 page)

Chapter Thirty Five

I had no idea where to find Tristan, so I headed to the side stage area. I figured he was getting dolled up for the concert. Every time I came here, Tristan distracted me to the point that everything else disappeared. It was nice to have a chance to really see what went on.

I climbed up on a road case, crossing my legs and playing with the hem on my skirt as I watched the roadies set up and the fans file in to the theater. Some of the burlesque dancers practiced their routine off to the side. Graceful, sensual, and confident. Their bodies, moving in a synchronized striptease like well oiled machines, amazed me.

No other girls loitered around the side stage area. Maybe they were with their respective band member of choice, wherever they primped for the show. Circus performers joined the burlesque dancers by the side of the stage, signaling the concert was about to begin.

“You look good enough to eat tonight. I should make you part of the show.” Tristan raised his eyebrows at me, his face painted as a gruesome skeleton. “You’ll upstage us all.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“We’ll talk after the show.” He squeezed my bare knee and ran out on stage.

Still no girlfriends came to the side of the stage to watch the show. How strange. These were all good looking guys with a lot of money, any woman’s fantasy. Did they really keep the girls at bay? Would no one else put up with their behavior? Or did their shenanigans just bore them all, watching night after night?

A small group of girls materialized a few feet away from me. Their gestured wildly and hugged each other. Something told me they weren’t the other band member’s girlfriends. Some of the fans practically worshiped the band as if they were Gods who’d come to earth. It bordered on uncomfortable to watch.

My suspicions were confirmed during the drummer’s solo. The band members came off stage. I watched the singer and the bassist choose two of the girls, bend them backwards, and puncture their necks to draw blood.

Tristan wound his fingers through my hair, but I didn’t turn towards him. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the group of girls. He finally got my attention by putting his mouth up to my neck.

“Stop it.” I shooed him away playfully.

“The way you were staring at them, I thought that was what you wanted.”

“You know what I want.” I looped his hair around my fingers and pulled him towards me.

Cupping my face in his hands, he leaned in towards me. “You told me we couldn’t do that in public.” He looked out at the stage, which had fallen silent.

“Are they waiting for you?”

“Are you?”

All the muscles in my stomach clenched. “Go back to the show.” He backed away from me, out onto the stage for his solo. The others had chosen new drinking partners and made the most of their break. I grew uncomfortable watching them, so I let myself watch Tristan soak up the spotlight and the adoration of the crowd.

The concert passed in minutes after that, my eyes fixated back on Tristan. I followed him into the backstage area and waited. He had disappeared to rinse the makeup off, and reappeared in jeans and a sweatshirt, his hair tied back in a low ponytail.

“Who are you and what did you do with Tristan?” He never looked so normal.

He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I thought this was what you wanted. Come on, I have an adventure planned.”

Even though it excited me, I could only imagine what that mean as he took my hand and led me out of the room, pulling me past the logjam of hysterical fans in the hallway. They reached out to grope him, pull on his hair and clothes. Some declared their undying love in shrill hysteria. Others shouted obscenities at me. We barely had room to get through. They’d crush us if they could. Where was Tony, or any of the other security guards? These girls would eat the meat off our bones if given the chance. We pushed ourselves against the wall and made our way to the door.

Tristan led me out to a parking garage. Not what I expected. I hadn’t seen him outside of the Alta Vista since I’d come to Vegas, except that one night at The Bloody Heretic Hall. Maybe he’d gone out the wrong door to escape the vultures.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked.

“We’re going for a ride.” He swung my hand back and forth playfully, drunk with freedom. Hopefully only freedom if he planned on driving.

“You’re allowed to do that? Just go?” Somehow I considered him a caged exotic animal in this life. He didn’t seem to have much free will when someone had access to the inner workings of his mind.

We reached the back part of the garage. In every space sat a luxury vehicle, the likes of which I’d only seen in magazines and on TV.

“Who’s going to stop me?” He opened the passenger’s side door of a silver Viper and motioned for me to sit inside.

“I don’t know. Talis, maybe?”

“She doesn’t have to like it, but she can’t stop me.” My stomach lurched into my throat as Tristan pressed the accelerator to the floor, fishtailing around the corner of the garage and on to Paradise Road. Music blared from the speakers, matching the ferocity he drove with.

She’d kill us both, if Tristan didn’t beat her to the punch.

He wove through traffic like he planned to qualify for a race and took the onramp to Interstate 15 with alarming speed. My heart pounded in my chest and I clung to the door handle for dear life. “Drive like a normal person, please.”

“You’re no fun, have I ever told you that?”

“I’m plenty of fun. I just want to get wherever we are going in one piece.”

“And then we can have fun?” He smiled at me, not paying the least bit of attention to the road. The speedometer needle hovered around one hundred and ten miles per hour.

“Whatever. Just slow down.”

“I’ll go as slow as you want, beautiful.” He continued to neglect the brake, and the city passed by us in a terrifying blur.

“Where are we going, anyway?”

“You’ll see.” The sky grew darker as the buildings faded away. Nothing surrounded the city, and I doubted Tristan planned to drive all the way to Salt Lake, even at the speed he was going. He turned off the highway in a desolate spot. No one else but tractor trailers shared the two lane road with us.

He pulled on to a dirt road and after a few minutes driving on a bumpy stretch not meant for a luxury sports car, he cut the ignition. “We’re here.”

“This is it?” This was the middle of nowhere. Just us and outlines of Joshua trees against the night.

Tristan got out of the car and circled around to the trunk to grab a blanket. I opened my door, peeking out tentatively. “What are you waiting for? Come on.” He pulled me up off the seat into the blackness.

He jumped up on the hood of the car, and then patted the spot next to him for me to do the same.

I shook my head. “I’ll scratch the paint.”

“Someone will fix it.”

“Tristan, this car cost more money than I’ve made in my life.”

“Then someone will be very happy to fix it.” He patted the hood again, and I slid across it, cringing at the scratches I surely left in my wake. He wrapped the blanket around me and pulled me in between his legs.

“So how’s work?” He startled me, opening with such a normal question.

“Fine, as long as you don’t show up.”

“Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad. I could do much worse.”

“I know. It’s just one place I don’t have to worry about my connection to you. I hate that people start staring and whispering the minute I walk in somewhere. I don’t like all that attention.” I looked down, even though it was impossible to see much in the dark. “Please don’t screw it up for me. I really need the money.”

“My offer stands. I didn’t mean to offend you. I just wanted to help. It’s just money. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Says someone who’s never had to worry about money.”

“It doesn’t buy happiness, I can tell you that.” His tone flattened, like he tried to pry himself away from any emotion attached to his confession. I rested my body back against his chest, thankful to finally feel relaxed with him, since, well, forever. He didn’t say anything else, he wrapped his arms around me and leaned back against the windshield.

“So really, why did you bring me here?”

“Look up at the sky.”

Millions of stars sprinkled the black velvety blanket above us. The only clouds in sight drifted across a waxing moon. Tristan looped his hands around my waist and pulled me in closer as I stared wordlessly up at the sky.

“It’s beautiful.”

“You can’t see the stars in the city. All the bright lights obscure them,” Tristan explained. I’d never even thought about it. So much went on at street level in Las Vegas I never once thought to look up at the sky.

“So you just brought me out here to see the sky?”

“Yes and no.” Tristan’s tone stayed soft. “Since you’ve been here, you’ve just seemed so annoyed with me. When I first saw you again, I wanted to freak you out. Because I knew you’d hate all of this. Hate me. But it didn’t work. I’m not saying that to be a dick, I know that humans get lured into fixating on people like me. And believe me, I’m not upset about that. At all. But sometimes I worry you really do hate me.”

Neither the cool desert night nor the cool radiating through Tristan’s sweatshirt had chilled me, but his confession made me shiver. I didn’t answer him right away. I needed to rehearse the words in my head to make sure they were the right ones.

“I could never hate you. I couldn’t stand not having you in my life. I thought your disappearance was just drugs at first. I prepared myself for that, for walking into a mess I knew I couldn’t clean up. I never prepared myself to deal with the afterlife, or the fact that you can’t make a move without half the world knowing about it. And honestly, I don’t know why the hell you’d want me, when you could have any girl —“

“Because,” he interrupted me, cupping my chin in his hand to turn my face towards him. I could only see his features in silhouette, even this close. Only his eyes caught the light from the moon. “Every single one of those girls wants something from me, or wants me because of who they
think
I am. You are the only one who’s ever cared about me. I could see it in your eyes even that first night you came back to my apartment. You were scared out of your mind, not just for you. You were scared for me, too.”

“I was.”

“It killed me. But I had to give you a chance not to get sucked in to this.”

“You were four years too late.”

“I know.” He sighed. “I hated getting you involved in this nightmare. But I gotta admit, I love watching you in action.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the only girl I’ve ever met who has the balls to be herself. The rest of them are just sheep, they’re all the same. Good for one thing. I can’t stand it when they open their mouths. But you’ll stand up to anyone — your mother, all those fan girls that give you a hard time, Talis, me.” I could see the outline of his lips turn upward in a smile. “It’s kind of refreshing to have someone remind me what an asshole I am every once in a while.”

“I never thought of it like that.” I let myself absorb his words. “I just always thought I was a freak.”

“I guess we freaks need to stick together.” His hand slid up into my hair, pulling my head towards his shoulder. “So anyway, I brought you out here because I racked my brain trying to remember the last time you weren’t pissed at me. I had to go all the way back to when we used to sneak out and sit on the beach at night.”

“I’m not always pissed at you.” I said softly. “It’s just, I don’t know, you’re kind of impossible sometimes. I did try to not get sucked in. I was so mad at you for messing everything up with Blade. And we know where that got him.”

“You never wanted him.”

“That’s not true!”

“You used him as an excuse to stay in Vegas. Argue with me about it if you want. We can agree to disagree. You just need to forget about him, Callie. If you don’t, you’re going to get yourself hurt and there’s going to be nothing I can do about it. If it happens, I don’t know what I’ll do. My life isn’t my own, no matter how much I hate it.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do to change that?”

Tristan shook his head. “As long as my creator walks the earth, I answer to her.”

“But you still see me.”

“You cast a spell over me too, beautiful.” He ran his hand up and down my back, looking up at the sky, eventually working his way back up to my hair.

My heartbeat thundered in my ears, the only thing making sound on this desolate road besides the cooing of an owl in the distance. Nothing else needed to be said at that moment. Tristan’s plan to rewind time had been brilliant. I felt all the tension I harbored surrounding him dissipate. Everything felt pure and uncomplicated, if even just for the rest of our time there tonight.

If only we could go back in time and change it permanently.

I sat up straight, so we were eye to eye, lip to lip, and smoothed his hair back along the line the elastic captured it in. The blanket he swaddled me in fell away from my shoulders as he pulled me forward by my hips and kissed me gently. I pushed forward, intensifying the kiss, calm enough to really feel what was happening for the first time in a long time. Usually Tristan tasted sweet and spicy, like his beloved Venom. Tonight his mouth tasted simply like mouthwash. Completely sober. My heart swelled knowing this night was genuine and untainted.

And probably way too good to be true. I hated myself for thinking that way.

“I need to bring you back.” Tristan’s words roused me from the near dream like trance of the kiss. My head swam as I pulled away. No blood tonight. Even more perfect. I wanted to be fully present on this planet tonight. “The sky is brightening.”

I slid down off the hood of the car and climbed back inside. Neither of us spoke on the way back into the city. Like a lightning bug in a jar, I wanted to capture the moment for as long as possible, even though I knew it couldn’t possibly last.

The city still hummed with activity, revelers still wandering around aimlessly, with beer bottles in hand. I guided Tristan to my building. It felt funny to have him there with me, a part of my world I thought he’d never see. We didn’t have much longer that night. I didn’t know what would happen to him if he didn’t make it back a safe place in time, and I didn’t want to find out here where he’d be so exposed. Without saying anything, because I didn’t know if I’d be able to make the words stop, I simply leaned over to kiss him goodnight. He looked back at me, wide eyed. I don’t think either of us knew how to end this night. I forced myself to break away from his stare, grabbing my bag and getting out of the car hastily.