Page 145 of In Too Deep

The set started. The first songs were easy ones. Loud covers everybody in Hartswick knew by heart. Enough to get pints raised and tables singing while the heat inside the pub thickened with sweat, beer, and bodies packed too close together. By the third song, Jake’s T-shirt clung damply to his spine and curls stuck to the back of his neck beneath the stage lights. Then a few songs in, Deacon glanced over his shoulder at him, raising his eyebrows. The new song? Jake almost shook his head. Then he looked over at the bar again where Harrison stood beside DS Calder, pint in hand, but his attention wasn’t on Brodie anymore. It was fixed on the stage. On him.

Christ.

Whatever.

Jake gave Deacon a single nod.

Deacon grinned and stepped up to the mic. “Right then, you lot. We’re trying something new tonight, which means you poor bastards are hearing it first.”

A cheer rose from somewhere near the bar.

“Might be rough round the edges.” Deacon then gestured back at Jake with his guitar pick. “But this one was written by our Jake.”

That earned a few whistles and shouted insults making Jake roll his eyes.

“And because we’re classy as fuck in this establishment,” Deacon pointed to the old projector screens mounted around the pub, “we’re putting the chorus lyrics up. Means when it kicks in, you sing along instead of staring at us like dead fish, alright?”

The crowd roared approval.

Jake adjusted his grip on the sticks as Deacon stepped back from the mic and turned towards him. Now or never, he supposed. So he clicked his sticks together, counted them in, and brought the drums crashing down into the opening beat.

The song hit harder live than it had in rehearsal.

Raff’s bass rolled low and restless beneath the opening verse while Deacon’s guitar cut bright through the heat-hazed noise of the pub, but it was the drums driving the thing forward. Fast enough to feel reckless. Messy enough to sound honest. Jake kept his head down through most of the first verse, curls hanging around his face while sweat slid along the back of his neck, but he could feel Harrison watching him from the bar. Christ, he could feel him everywhere.

In every lyric Deacon sang.

Every beat Jake made.

Then the second chorus hit, the instruments dropping away until only the steady thud of Jake’s bass drum remained, beating through the pub like a pulse. Deacon and Raff stepped back from their mics and raised their arms to the crowd instead, and as the lyrics flashed across the projector screens, the entire pub sang along. Pints raised. Arms over shoulders. Voices loud and off-key beneath the crush of heat and music. They sang it as if it belonged to them already, completely unaware that Jake felt as though he’d just split himself open in public and handed strangers the mess inside his chest.

And Christ, they loved it.

Sang as if it was their own heartbreak. Their own fear. Their own stupid fucking hope. And Jake barely breathed through it.

Because Harrison was there. Watching him.

Then Raff crashed back in on bass, Deacon hit the final guitar line, and Jake drove the ending forward hard enough to make the cymbals shake beneath his hands. The song finished in a wall of noise and sweat and applause so loud it echoed off the low pub ceiling while whistles and cheers erupted across the room.

Deacon winked across at him through the applause, sweat dripping from his temples beneath the stage lights. Then he pointed dramatically at Jake with a grin so ridiculously smug it nearly made Jake laugh.

Bastard.

Deacon leaned back into the mic. “Right, you lot, we’re taking five before the next set, so go get drunker and pretend we sound better for it.”

The crowd cheered.

Jake needed air. Needed out before he did something stupid like walk straight to the bar and ask Harrison what the fuck any of this was supposed to be anymore. So he stood from behind the kit and headed straight for Raff.

“You got a vape?”

Raff dug through his pocket and handed one over. “Cherry ice, I think.”

“Christ.” Jake grimaced. “Vile.”

“Give it back then.”

Jake ignored him and hopped down from the stage, weaving through tables and half-drunk locals. Hands clapped his shoulder as he passed. Someone tried to hand him a pint. Someone else shouted something about the last song. He got halfway to the fire exit when a hand caught his arm.