The Knife-Sharp Edge of Greatness and Ruin

On the other side of the green room from where Xan and Rhiannon were cooling down their throats, Jonas paced like a zipping target in a shooting gallery even though it was nearly one in the morning. The house manager at their next venue didn’t want to get his lazy ass out of bed before four in the afternoon to unlock the venue, but roadies needed to be in there by noon to set up, just like at every other venue on the tour. When they had booked the arena, the start time had been in the contract, and Jonas gently told the man that there was a financial penalty for the venue if they couldn’t get in there by noon, even though the guy thought that was not his problem.

Jonas ran his hands through his hair and negotiated with every weapon is his vocabulary to get the roadies inside the arena with enough time to set up the equipment and stage.

The two singers were still watching him, his friend and client Xan and the new backup, Rhiannon, who seemed so sweet in her dealings with Rade and Grayson. They had once again been stoned out of their gourds that night and Jonas just wanted to grab them by their throats and tell them to cut it out. Directly before a major rock concert was not the time for an intervention, so once again, Jonas had coaxed them to being functional. Once again, the show had been a smashing success.

Really, Jonas had only been surprised that Tryp hadn’t been lying on the floor with them. Those three were poison for each other.

Last week, Rhiannon had helped coax Rade and Grayson from under the stage when Jonas had been at the very end of his professional wits, too, and he had wanted to hug her, but the image of her soft body in his arms had raised so many unprofessional red flags that he had refrained from even shaking her hand.

He had been “accidentally” meeting Rhiannon at noon in the gym every day and occasionally grabbing a light lunch together afterward. At first, his oversight had been professional, to make sure no one was bothering her because she was fresh, female meat among five alpha males and a swarm of roadies, but he liked hanging out with her more and more.

He liked her a lot.

Indeed, those fleeting meetings were moments of sanity in a maelstrom of tracking down drugged-out musicians and dealing with asinine obstructions.

If Jonas came on to Rhiannon and she left the tour, Xan would have his head, and rightly so. She was too good a singer and a steadying influence to fuck around with. Killer Valentine teetered on the knife-sharp edge of greatness and ruin, and Jonas meant to see them triumph, even if he had to kill them all in the process.

Rhiannon and Xan were still watching him, so Jonas grinned his everything’s-so-cool smile and gave them a thumbs-up, then went back to making sure that tomorrow wouldn’t be the clusterfuck that would snap Xan into a million pieces or drive the Terrible Threesome over the edge of addiction into madness.