At the band meeting backstage right before the show, even though the Grand Garden Arena had good facilities, the band decided to pull a runner because they didn’t want to hang around the venue all night, because, well, Vegas.
They took the stage in darkness, finding the green-glowing strips of tape for their marks, and at Tryp’s downbeat, thousands of lamps and floodlights blazed to life, blinding Rhiannon for a moment before she saw the swarm of people beyond waving like wheat fields at night. Green lasers traced geometric shapes over the audience, warping with the swaying crowd. Giant screens were mounted above the stage near the cavernous ceiling and cast glowing light on the skeletal catwalks far above.
Onstage, Rhiannon dragged her mic stand a foot behind her mark so that when Xan looked back, she was not quite in the focus of the spotlight because she was just a little backup singer and no one important, certainly not someone who might challenge him.
Two songs later, when Xan glanced back to check on her, he frowned and glanced at the light batten far above their heads.
Rhiannon didn’t want to get the lighting designer in trouble, so she scooted the stand back up a couple inches, to where it was less obvious that she was out of the light’s focus.
The first set went off without a hitch, mainly because Rhiannon didn’t get intimidated because she couldn’t see much of the 18,000 screamers beyond the fiery galaxy center of stage lights.
During the intermission, Xan waved her into his white privacy tent to run through hums and soft scales to keep their vocal cords limber but not strained, just like usual. He stood with one big hand on her shoulder as he tapped out notes on a piano app on his phone, and they sang together.
Maybe everything would be okay. Maybe she hadn’t entirely screwed this up.
Tears stung her eyes, but she shouldn’t smear her heavy stage make-up either, so she stared at the peaked white fabric above them to let her eyes suck the moisture back in. He side-hugged her before they went back out on the stage.
They ran onto the stage with follow spots for the second set. Tryp swung up into his drum kit like he could have flown over the audience if he had wanted to. Cadell’s guitar intro seemed especially sharp, and Xan’s voice rang over the rioting crowd beyond the supernovae of lights.
Rhiannon danced through the first five songs, singing her harmony lines at just the right volume to augment Xan’s clear tenor, and they reached “Standing on the Mountaintop” with no mishaps.
She tapped her foot on the pressed fiber floorboards, hoping that counted as knocking on wood, because they were on track for a perfect show.
The first verse went without a bobble, Xan singing like a blazing angel up there, like his long frock coat was hiding bright white wings. She came in on the refrain, singing her line just like a nice little harmonizing backup girl.
The second line was a little more challenging, a little closer to the top of Xan’s range, and his voice streaming through her monitors wavered on the last syllable.
Rhiannon looked away from the dazzling stage lights that whirled like hot pink and orange cyclones and watched Xan.
At the third line, Shout it from the mountaintop, that powerful ascending crescendo, Xan reached for the notes. Just as he stomped his motorcycle boot and flung his fists to the side, blasting that last, held note of the line, his voice cracked, failed.
Rhiannon took his note and sang it hard.
This was different. This was a show.
If she had thought about it, she wouldn’t have usurped his line, not again, but she had just acted on instinct to finish the note. She quailed at what she had done, but she sang it loud, fully committed.
The follow spots moved away from the stage, whirling over the audience, and Xan spun toward her, his hand at his throat and panic in his eyes.
Rhiannon sang his line, and he nodded and held out his hand. She snatched up her unopened water bottle, wrenched her microphone off the stand, and sang as she trotted up to him, holding out the water.
He took the bottle and sipped it slowly as Rhiannon sang the melody line during the next verse. His throat contracted and he rubbed the side like it was spasming. His expression was utterly blank, impassive.
Rhiannon looked over the enormous audience, eighteen thousand strong, swarming over the floor and walls of the arena, and much, much closer than when she was way at the back of the stage. A bunch of teenagers at the front were dancing hard, the girls trying to get Xan’s attention with their undulating bodies, and the guys were trying to get the girls’ attention by grinding against their stomachs and butt cheeks and turning their chins away from the stage.
She kept singing as Xan sipped, and he took a deep breath, relief in his brown eyes. He made a rolling motion with his finger, signaling for her to continue, and he held his glittering microphone close to his mouth and came in softly, singing her lower harmony line. He slipped his arm around her waist like they were two buddies up on stage, or lovers, singing together, instead of the rock star and the anonymous backup singer from the shadows.
Over in the wings, Rhiannon saw Jonas frantically scrolling through his phone, then talking fast to someone.
They sang the last two songs up in front of the crowd, with Rhiannon taking the higher, more challenging line and Xan singing harmony.
After the curtain call where Xan applauded her and she applauded him, they all jogged off-stage to pretend that the show was over, but of course the audience would demand encores.
Jonas grabbed Xan’s arm as he came off the stage. “No talking. I called Leena and got her out of bed. She said that she’ll be on the first flight here tomorrow morning. It gets in at one o’clock. She said to do warm-downs, starting now, and that you need to cancel tomorrow’s show.”
“I can’t cancel another blasted show,” Xan said, his British accent becoming more clipped. “All those people came here tonight! They deserve their encores.”
“No talking! Leena said no talking!” Jonas yelled over the audience’s stomping and rhythmic clapping.
“I’m not canceling the fucking show!” Xan yelled over the racket. He grabbed Rhiannon by the hand and hauled her out on stage, telling Cadell, “We’ll just do ‘Be the Night,’ all right? Not ‘Rock the World.’ Just ‘Night.’”
Cadell nodded and lifted his guitar strap over his head.
Xan pulled Rhiannon out to center stage again, and the bright spotlights hit them as she took a deep breath to steady herself. He leaned down and whispered to her, “Take the melody line.”
She nodded, shocked.
They sang the moderate ballad together with Rhiannon on the top notes. Man, she did not know how he did this every night, belting out hours of songs near the top of his range, all at full voice.
After that song, they jogged off the stage again, but the audience started stomping and clapping in unison before they had even left the stage because they all knew that Xan Valentine always came out for one final solo. The other band members all dashed for the SUVs, pulling the runner, ready to waste the night in Vegas.
The audience continued to pound and scream like they were trying to shake the roadies off the catwalks.
Xan glared at the opening of the tunnel, stage lights still blazing at the end like there was an angry mob out there screaming for his head.
“Take your guitar,” Rhiannon said to him. “I’ll sing some, and we’ll get the audience to sing the rest. When Sting used to lose his voice at the end of his concerts, he’d sing one line of a verse, and the audience sang the rest.”
“I haven’t lost my voice,” Xan insisted, his voice grating in his throat. He grabbed his acoustic guitar from its stand.
“Of course not, but you don’t want to stress it any more tonight. Hum if they’ll let you, just like if we were cooling down.”
The audience roared as they walked out. The roadies had already set a bar stool at center stage, and Xan perched on it. Rhiannon waved to a technician on the side to get a hand microphone.
Xan set his guitar between his thighs with the neck near his shoulder, playing it like a classical guitar instead of laying it across his lap. He adjusted the mic pointing at the body of the instrument and picked the strings with his fingertips.
The audience shrieked at the opening melody line of “Alwaysland,” but Rhiannon held up her hand, shushing them. The quieter they were, the less Xan would have to project.
Truth be told, her throat was tiring, too.
Xan played the melody, plucking harmonics on the strings, and Rhiannon stopped to watch. His long fingers looked delicate, plucking the guitar’s strings, and his left hand danced down the frets.
He nodded to Rhiannon.
She sang the first verse quietly, sweetly, to the crowd, and the audience began to sway. Xan hummed the harmony line behind her and came in gently on the first line of the refrain.
The audience began to sing.
Rhiannon and Xan glanced at each other and let their voices fade, leaving the audience to sing the rest of the chorus while Xan played his guitar for them.
For the next verse, they sang the first line again and then dropped down to humming while the audience took over.
The crowd’s soft singing bordered on reverence, Because while I live, because while I breathe, because while my heart beats in my body, I will love you like we live in Alwaysland.
Chills swept over Rhiannon’s arms and down her back.
Damn, but these people loved Xan. He played his guitar like he was stroking a woman’s back and gazed past the dimmed footlights into the crowd, watching them sing to him when he couldn’t go on, and a tear glistened on his mascara-black eyelashes and spilled over.