His voice coats my insides like spiced honey, and I finally turn around to face him. My heart hiccups and trips over itself when I take in his shaggy brown hair, his ripped-up jeans, his mountain of bracelets and wristbands. He tugs the disheveled hair from his eyes, his black fingernails combing it back until it falls thick on one side. In a fitted black button-down rolled to his elbows, he looks utterly irresistible, and I squirm in my seat remembering everything he did to me last night.
Adam waits until the guys have finished strapping their guitars around their necks and the crowd has quieted down before he smiles and says, “I’m going to start the show a little differently tonight . . . See, I met this girl.”
All of the blood drains from my face, and I swear I can hear Dee gasp even over the girls screaming their heads off in the front row.
“Her name’s Rowan, but I call her Peach, and this morning she broke my heart.”
Dee’s grip bites into my arm, but I’m pretty sure my body would require blood flow to actually feel it—which would require my heart to beat which it is definitely not doing. I broke his heart? He’s got to be joking . . .
Adam smiles that smile that kicks my useless heart into overdrive. “I fell asleep with her in my bed last night, but this morning, she was gone.”
I’m pretty sure the girls in the front row are yelling at him to forget me, but Adam ignores them and continues. “Ever since I met this girl, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her.”
Joel puts his hand to his forehead and swoons down to his knees, cooing into his microphone, and Adam laughs.
“Last night, I wanted to tell her all sorts of things I’ve never wanted to tell anyone, but I was an idiot. I thought she just wanted to be friends.”
“What’d ya want to tell her?” Shawn prompts, leaning into his microphone with his head turned toward Adam.
Adam stammers, “Uh . . . stuff.” He chuckles and continues, “Right now, I want to ask her something.”
Joel strums a random chord on his guitar. “What are you waiting for, man?”
Adam takes a deep, shuddering breath and says, “Peach . . . you know I never make promises, but I’m going to make you one right now. I promise I would never, ever hurt you like your asshole ex-boyfriend did.”
Shawn’s smile is bigger than anyone’s. “That’s not a question, man.”
“I’m getting to it,” Adam scoffs, nervously raking his hand through his hair again. “God, this feels so middle school . . .”
The crowd laughs, and Shawn chides, “That’s not a question either.”
“I’m nervous!” Adam shouts, earning high-pitched declarations of love from at least five girls in front of the stage.
Dee whirls on me with her mouth gaping wide. Her hands are in her hair, and I’m pretty sure I’d be freaking out just as much as her if I wasn’t in total, utter, mind-numbing shock.
“Peach, I want to be with you.”
My breath hitches in my throat.
“We were never friends, and I’m tired of trying to be.”
My heart pounds in my chest.
“I want you to be my girlfriend . . . So I guess my question is, can I be your boyfriend?”
A blanket of shock wraps itself around me, and Joel motions like he’s cracking a whip. Shawn teases, “I think you should say ‘please,’ man.”
Adam flicks him off, but then he scratches his hand adorably through his hair and says, “Please?” I swoon along with every other girl in the building. “Think about it,” he adds, “and tell me after the show.”
“Ya ready?” Shawn asks, and Adam nods. They cue the lights-guy and the lights cut a second before spotlights cast the band in a blue glow. When the band starts performing its first song, Dee grabs my arm and hauls me toward the bathrooms, where we can talk without needing to shout.
She apparently didn’t get the memo, because without warning, she turns and screams, “OH MY FUCKING GOD! ROWAN!” She latches onto my shoulders. “ROWAN! OH MY GOD!”
“Did Adam seriously just ask me out?” I ask, still too shocked to comprehend what just happened.
“IN FRONT OF EVERYONE!”
My knees are suddenly Jell-O, so I kneel down right where we’re standing. “Oh my God.”
With me out of grabbing range, Dee latches onto Leti, and they jump around squealing like lunatics.
“Oh my God,” I say again, and then my eyes start to sting and I don’t know what to do with myself.
When Dee and Leti drop down to my level, waves of confusion wash over their faces. “Why are you crying?” Dee asks me, brushing her thumb across my cheek and then staring at her wet skin like it’s a foreign substance instead of real tears.
“Adam just asked me out.”
“I know! Aren’t you happy?”
I lift my gaze from the floor and tell her, “I’m in love with him, Dee.”
“Uh, DUH!” She starts laughing and pulls me in for a big hug. “I told you, babe! A blind person could see the way you are together. You two are perfect for each other.”
“What if he changes his mind?”
“Didn’t you hear a word he said?” Leti asks me, rubbing a hand over my shoulder. “That boy just told the whole world that he is your man.”
A smile breaks through my cloud of tears when I realize he’s right. Adam isn’t Brady. He made me a promise, and he made it in front of everyone, and he wouldn’t have done either of those things if he didn’t really mean it. Adam Everest never does anything he doesn’t want to—he told me that himself.