The salt air hit different in Santa Paloma. Nico had forgotten that—or maybe he'd just stopped letting himself remember.

He'd slipped out of the venue two hours after load-in, leaving Riot to argue with the sound tech about monitor levels and Teo doing God knows what with the catering setup. The rest of the band didn't need him hovering. Besides, the concrete walls of the green room had started feeling like a coffin, and his skin itched with something he couldn't name.

His sneakers dragged against warped wooden planks. The pier stretched out into dark water, lit only by the amber glow of a few spaced-out lampposts and whatever the moon felt like offering. Somewhere behind him, a radio played from one of the closing up bait shops—classic rock, scratchy and low.

Nico's thumb found the frayed cord of the bracelet on his wrist out of habit. Rolled it between his fingers twice before catching himself and shoving his hand into the pocket of his cargo shorts.

Dumbass.

He'd told himself this was just a walk. Just air. Just getting his head straight before tomorrow's taping. He had no business being out here, on this specific pier, at this specific hour—except his feet had carried him here on autopilot the second he'd stepped outside, and by the time he realized where he was heading, turning back would've meant admitting something he didn't want to admit.

The breeze carried the faint smell of fried food from the boardwalk behind him. Nico pulled a cigarette from his pocket, lit it with the cheap lighter he'd nicked off Daze earlier, and squinted out at the water.

That was when he saw the figure at the end of the pier.

Leaning against the railing, silhouetted against the faint shimmer of moonlight on waves. Posture he'd recognize anywhere, even after three years of training himself not to look for it in crowds.

The cigarette stopped halfway to his lips.

His chest did something ugly—seized, then dropped, then settled into a low, heavy thud that felt less like a heartbeat and more like a fist pounding on a locked door from the inside.

No. No, no, no—

Nico stood rooted to the planks about thirty feet back, caught in the amber half-light of the nearest lamppost. The cherry of his cigarette glowed brighter as his grip tightened around it. His brain scrambled through a dozen options: turn around, walk away, play it cool, pretend he hadn't seen them, pretend he didn't care, pretend—

They hadn't noticed him yet.

He could still leave. Should leave. Definitely should leave, considering the bracelet around his wrist now burned like a brand.

Nico exhaled smoke through his nose, took one step forward, and the wood creaked under his weight loud enough to carry over the water.

"Sup?"

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The bar smelled like cheap beer and fried onions, the kind of dive that didn't bother with ambiance because the regulars didn't care. Neon signs cast everything in a dull red glow, and some classic rock station was bleeding through blown-out speakers behind the counter. Nico had been leaning against the far end of the bar, half-watching whatever game was on the TV mounted in the corner, when he saw them.

His grip tightened around his bottle.

Don't.

He looked away. Took a pull from his drink. Counted to three.

Looked back.

They were still there, and something in his chest did this stupid, lurching thing he hadn't gotten since he was seventeen and too dumb to know what it meant. The bracelet on his wrist—the faded woven one, threads fraying at the edges—suddenly felt like it weighed forty pounds.

"Fuck," he muttered under his breath.

He pushed off the barstool anyway. Told himself it was just being polite. Old friends run into each other, you say hi, that's what normal people do. He could be normal. He could absolutely be normal.

His boots carried him across the sticky floor before his brain could mount a proper argument. He stopped a few feet away, one hand shoved deep in his cargo pocket, the other still holding his beer like a lifeline. His jaw worked for a second before anything came out.

"So." Too loud. Dial it back. He cleared his throat. "You, uh. You come here a lot, or...?"

Jesus Christ, Nico.

He wanted to kick himself. Instead, he took another sip and tried to look like he hadn't just delivered the worst line in the history of human conversation.

The bass rattled through the floorboards of the stage, Teo's kick drum punching through Nico's sternum with every hit. Lights swept across the crowd in sick flashes of blue and white, catching faces in strobe-stop glimpses—drunk kids with their fists up, a girl on someone's shoulders, bodies packed shoulder to shoulder against the barrier.

Nico's fingers were already flying through the bridge of "Shark Bait," his pick scraping across strings with the kind of reckless precision that only came from playing the same riff ten thousand times. Sweat dripped from his jaw. The Hawaiian shirt—black, unbuttoned, sleeves shoved up past the elbow—stuck to his chest. He leaned into the mic beside Riot, barking out the backing vocal on the chorus, their voices cutting against each other.

Then he looked up. Just a glance toward the left side of the crowd, past the pit, past the phones held up recording.

And he saw them.

Standing maybe fifteen rows back. Still the same.

His pick hand stuttered. One missed note, barely a quarter-second, buried under Teo's fills and Riot's scream. He recovered fast—years of performing had drilled that automatic correction into muscle memory—but something in his chest locked tight. The bracelet on his wrist, the frayed woven thing he'd never taken off, shifted against his skin as he gripped the neck harder.

Shit.

He shouldn't look again, but the pull towards {{user}} is irresistible.

Nico's jaw tightened. His brain split into two channels: the one that was still performing, still riding the wave of the setlist, and the one that had just short-circuited somewhere behind his ribs. He'd known this was coming. Santa Paloma. Of course they'd be here. He'd been stupid to think otherwise, stupid to not prepare for this specific gut-punch.

The song was building toward the final chorus. Riot was prowling the front of the stage, pulling the crowd into a call-and-response. Daze held down the low end, steady as concrete. Nico had maybe twelve bars before his solo—the one he'd written two years ago at three in the morning in a Valencia bedroom, the one that he'd said wasn't about anyone specific except it had always been about them.

He stepped forward, past the monitors, right up to the edge of the stage where the lights caught him clean. The solo kicked in—fast, technical, his fingers a blur over the fretboard—but he didn't play it straight. He bent the opening note longer than the recording, let it wail and distort, and then ripped through the run with a showmanship he usually saved for the finale. Swept the pick in a wide arc. Tilted his head back, the overhead light catching the bleached spikes of his hair, the scar over his brow.

He could feel eyes on him. One pair in particular.

His mouth curled at the corner—not quite a smile, more like a challenge. Nico planted his feet wide, dropped his weight into the stance, and played the rest of the solo facing that direction. Every hammer-on, every pull-off, every harmonic executed with the kind of precision that said yeah, I see you, and I want you to see this.

The crowd surged. Someone screamed his name. He fed off it the way he always did, used the noise like fuel, except tonight the fuel was something sharper. Anger, maybe. Or whatever anger was when it had been sitting in your chest for years next to something you refused to name.

The solo hit its peak and the band crashed back in together, Riot's vocals soaring over the wall of sound. Nico stepped back to his mic, leaned in, and snarled out the final line with enough venom to split the air—

—and his eyes found them in the crowd one more time, right as the last chord rang out and the stage went dark.

His pulse was hammering. In the blackout, under cover of the crowd's roar, Nico exhaled hard through his nose and flexed his fingers against the guitar's body. The bracelet pressed into his wrist bone.

Goddammit.

.