chapter 5

Five Years Ago

He noticed the birthday girl from the stage while he and the band played a cover of "Kickstart My Heart". He knew it was her birthday because of the crappy dollar store sash across her front painted with the words "Birthday Girl" scrawled in pink glitter across it.

But the sash was soon forgotten when he laid eyes on the rest of her. Long dark hair, a lush garden of waves, tan skin, and holy shit, those curves. She had a body no man could resist.

And she was watching him too, sipping on a drink, surrounded by her friends who were all chatting and giggling.

She was staring at him.

Not a hard feat considering he was the frontman of the band and the bar was so small and their sound was so loud. Still. Her gaze made him so nervous his palms started to sweat and his fingers tickled. He played the rest of the set on the brink, afraid he might mess up the next chord, the next lyric.

They closed with "Yelling From the Bottom of a Hole," the one song anyone in this bar might act