Insider (Exodus End #1)(98)
Author: Olivia Cunning

Logan chuckled. “God, I remember being an opening act for a bigger band. You feel so fucking privileged to be allowed on the stage, to share the excitement of a famous band’s fans, but you feel like such a douche bag for pretending anyone gives a shit that you’re there.”

Toni couldn’t imagine Exodus End ever being in a position of smallness. It seemed to her that they’d always been marked for great things.

“Who’s here to see Twisted Element?” the singer asked about the other opening band, which would play a set after theirs was over.

A bit more applause and cheers sputtered from the crowd.

“Steve got Twisted Element to join the tour. He’s really good friends with their drummer,” Logan told Toni.

Zach Mercer. She already knew about his friendship with Steve. “Is it common for members of different bands to be good friends?”

He gave her an odd look. “Well, yeah. We’re all in this together, aren’t we?”

“Aren’t they your competition?”

He shook his head. “Our brothers. If we’re going to keep rock alive, we have to work together, not against each other.”

She smiled. That was a nice way of thinking about the music business. She wondered if the record label executives shared that point of view.

“Okay, I think I see some Sinners fans in the audience,” Chesterfield said, shielding his eyes with one hand against his forehead as he scanned the crowd.

“Maybe a few,” the lead guitarist’s words were mostly drowned out by the screaming, stomping, whistling, and clapping going on in the stadium.

A chant of “Sinners, Sinners, Sinners” began to rise up through the ranks.

“Who else is playing tonight?” the vocalist asked. “I forget.”

The audience erupted into chaos as they very loudly informed the world that Exodus End was playing.

The vocalist pointed to his ear. “What was that? Did you say Exodus End is playing here tonight?”

Toni had to cover her ears due to the volume of the crowd. When the roar died down a bit, she lowered her hands and fixated on the vocalist, hanging on his every word.

“Get the fuck out. Exodus End is going to be on this stage in less than two hours?” He jabbed a pointed finger toward the stage beneath his boots. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Logan chuckled. “He’s really getting them pumped up,” he yelled over the noise of the cheering crowd. “I hope we live up to their expectations.”

Toni glanced at him, beaming an exuberant smile in his direction. Of course they would live up to the fans’ expectations; they’d exceed them. She didn’t doubt it for a second. She wondered if they were ever swamped with self-doubt the way she was. Not likely.

Riott Actt finally began their second song and Toni tried to keep track of all that was occurring onstage. The flurry of activity was overwhelming. She didn’t know whether to watch the pacing vocalist, the wailing guitarists, or the rhythmic stylings of the drummer and the bassist. She glanced at Logan for direction and tried mimicking his devil-horn-shaking, head-banging, body-thrashing celebration of the music, but ended up feeling like an awkward fool.

“I have got to get in on that circle pit,” Logan said unexpectedly. He pecked her on the cheek and then vaulted himself over the stairs to the floor before hurdling the railing and several members of the audience and disappearing into the crowd. It took Toni at least half the song to comprehend what he’d done. She finally found the mental capacity to close her mouth. She stretched up on tiptoe and craned her neck, trying to see down into the audience and the writhing chaos occurring in a round area that at first appeared empty, but was actually the center of activity. Bodies bounced off each other around the periphery—shoving, stumbling, thudding, dancing, or maybe they were fighting. Hell, she couldn’t tell. It looked just plain violent from her vantage. She caught sight of a blue T-shirt, a tangle of golden wavy hair, and hard-muscled arms covered with sleeves of familiar gray-shaded tattoos. When Logan slammed chest first into a member of the audience, she cringed and hid her eyes behind both hands. What was he thinking? What if he got hurt and found himself unable to perform? How could he want to be involved in something that had to be painful?

Even though she personally didn’t want anything to do with the circle pit, Toni realized she should be getting pictures of Logan’s interaction with the crowd for the book. She sidled along the edge of the stage, hoping to stay out of sight as she cautiously made her way to the front left corner of the high platform. She looked through her camera, trying to capture Logan as one of the crowd, but it was all a hopeless blur. She couldn’t tell who was who. She noticed a riser at the very front of the stage but off to the far side and bathed in darkness. Riott Actt wasn’t using that part of the stage at all. Maybe she could see better from there. She’d be a bit higher up, but farther from the mosh pit. But that was what a zoom lens was for. To get the best shot, she needed a high vantage point, not a close one.

Once she was standing on the platform, she zoomed in on the mass of writhing bodies below. Scanning the crowd, she eventually focused on the center of the mosh pit and took dozens of shots in rapid succession. She hoped she captured something usable. Watching through the viewfinder, she cringed each time someone got shoved a bit too hard, hit a few too many times. She didn’t see the appeal of this ritual in the slightest. But then she didn’t have mass quantities of testosterone pulsing through her veins.

“Hey,” she heard someone yell from down below. “You can’t be up there.”

She wasn’t sure if the security guard was talking to her or not. Before she could figure that out, something hard and solid hit her in the stomach—an arm, she realized as the air wooshed out of her lungs—and then she was falling. Her arms pinwheeled before her, her hands trying to catch hold of something—anything—but all her desperately clawing fingers found was empty air.

Twenty-Five

Logan was having the time of his life releasing pent-up energy until the music stopped abruptly. The men in the mosh pit continued bounding off each other for several seconds before stopping to face the stage in confusion. Logan stared up at the band with the rest of the audience, wondering what had drawn their fun to a sudden halt. When he saw a familiar brown boot poking out from behind a riser on the stage and several concerned faces peering down at the figure attached to that boot, his heart skipped a beat.