She knew him.

She knew him?

Of course she knew him. Everyone knew him. He was famous.

But she knew him. The familiarity wasn’t just because he was one of the most admired, celebrated, talented musicians to ever grace a public stage and had been for longer than she’d been taking up space on planet Earth. It was more than that. It was an intimate knowledge. As she stared at the picture on the screen, she was paralyzed. A crippling fear gripped her like a vice, holding her in place as she stared at the handsome, weathered face. Was it a fear for him? Or was she afraid of him?

What was it about this man that had her so freaked out? And why did it matter all of a su...?

…

Sasha Simons stared at the tv on the living room wall, mouth slack, eyes glazed. She was no longer seeing the man on the tv. She wasn’t seeing the tv or even the wall it had hung on just a microsecond before.

Her living room wall was gone and had been replaced by a wall of glass. Day had become night and rain had replaced the snow that had been falling all morning. The curved, floor-to-ceiling windows, were suddenly lit by white-hot light that spiderwebbed across the panoramic view. On cue, the skies opened. The deluge was deafening as it drowned out the rolling thunder. The shockwave of thunder rattled through the hills around her and vibrated the rivulets that ran down the outside of the glass.

…

She looked from the window to her surroundings. There was a drink in her hand.

…

She didn’t drink.

…

Sasha brought the glass toward her face and sniffed the dark amber liquid. The smell, reminiscent of rich tobacco and old, dark wood, while not unpleasant, made her cough. This made the contents of her cup slosh around and caused a few small drops to splash out and land on the webbing between her thumb and index finger. Without thinking about it, she licked the beads of whiskey from her hand and slammed the rest of what was in the glass in one graceful motion. Her throat burned and she coughed again. Another flash of lightening and…

…

The pretty reporter stood in the middle of the parking lot outside the arena as snow fell around her but did not dare to touch her. Sasha noticed the bodiless arm stage left that held a large, black umbrella high over the woman’s immaculately quaffed hair and flawless face.

“The show starts tomorrow at 7pm. Tickets are sold out but Miranda and Steve will be giving away a pair of front row tickets and VIP All Access passes on our morning show, Wake Up, Denver! Be sure to wake up early for your chance to win. This is Amber Johnson, reporting from the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver. Back to you in the warm studio, Jay.”

The screen split and a middle-aged, man with neat, salt and pepper hair, in a smart, blue suit tried to show Amber and Sasha how far he could stretch his lips across his face before a fissure opened up and revealed all of his teeth at once.

“I sure am glad I got my tickets, Amber. And I know I’ll be seeing you there.”

Amber, like her counterpart in the studio, had begun to explain just how glad she was she had gotten her tickets but Sasha no longer heard either of them.

I’ll be seeing you there

I’ll see you there

I see you…

…

The lights of the sprawling city below looked alive. Sasha leaned her cheek against the thick, cool glass, took a deep breath and exhaled. The window fogged and she quickly wrote three words: I see you

She felt a heavy arm encircle her waist

“Hi.”

His breath tickled her ear, sending a delicious shiver down her spine.

Without prompting, he took her glass and headed for the bar on the other side of the room.

“I’ve got a bottle on the table over there,” her head tilted in the direction of a handful of couches clustered around a large square table. A bottle, right at a the point that would start a half full/half empty debate with the right crowd, sat precariously close to the nearest edge.

Sasha could see his reflection in the glass as he about-faced and headed to the table. So handsome. So not her type. But this worked, this collaboration. The song was good, really good. She felt it in every fiber of her being.

“I think it’s going to be huge, babe!” He handed her glass back to her with a generous amount of booze now in it. “And the whole collaboration thing? We’re gonna hit them out of nowhere with this.” He poured two fingers into his own glass and set the bottle on the floor beside the window. “People are gonna lose their shit.” He reached around her and clinked his glass into hers. “I’m gonna make you famous, babe.” He chuckled and chugged half of his drink in one gulp. “Drink up! We’re gonna celebrate tonight!” He tapped his glass into hers again and downed its contents.

With his hand on her hip she tilted her head back and rested against his chest. “Or maybe I’ll make you famous.” Sasha put the glass to her lips, closed her eyes and drank, draining the entire glass in three large swallows, her breath caught in her lungs, unable to inhale or exhale. She held her eyes shut for another moment as she relished the heat of the liquor, the heat of his hand on her hip, the heat of his breath on her neck as leaned down and pressed his lips and hips tight to her body. The heat between her thighs. So much heat. “Let’s go,” she whispered and took his hand. She turned and walked with him up the stairs that led to the upper level and the bedrooms.

Sasha opened the French doors to the bedroom at the end of the hallway. She reached in to flip the light on and…

…

Dim light came through the curtains on the far side of Sasha’s bedroom. One word, migraine, she thought as she crawled into bed and pulled the covers over her head. How long had it been since she had had a migraine? Two years? Three? A long time by migraine sufferer’s standards. And this one promised to be a bad one if the hallucinations were any indication.

When was the last time she hallucinated before a migraine? Not since she was a kid. God, the hallucinations, though.

Just need to sleep. Need to stop over-thinking.

Need sleep. No over-thinking.

Sleep. No…

…

…”thinking about,” he asked. “You seem really far away.” He had lit them both a cigarette and she took the one he handed her.

Dragging deeply, the excitement of creation, of making something that people might actually love, something that might carry on had her head spinning. He had her head spinning. She exhaled in a rush and turned to her lover.

“It really is good, isn't it?”

He grabbed the edge of the sheet, flipped it off his legs as he swiveled and planted his feet on the floor in one graceful, fluid motion.

“Yes!” He jumped up, “I’m starving.” He stood, nearly perfect. The sheet fell back to the rumpled bed. “You?” He was a rock god in the making. “I think I’ve got some left-over Thai in the fridge.” He had turned to face her, a shit-eating-side-grin, one of the things he was already becoming known for, on his face; his left eyebrow cocked to a point. “Or, I could just eat you?”

And there was that naughty-boy charm she’d been hearing about. Sasha, used to having to be the aggressor in and out of the bedroom, felt an unfamiliar flush in her face.

“Oh! Wait!” His grin widened. The charm turned up to ten just made him that much sexier. “Did I make the bad girl of the pop world actually blush?” He leaned down, moving across the bed toward her, his fist pushing into the mattress. Gravity drew her close to him.

He smelled of cologne and sex and booze. He kissed the tip of her nose.

“I’ll be right back.”

Sasha closed her eyes and let her body fall back on the bed as soon she heard his footsteps on the stairs. Exhaustion like she hadn’t felt in years hugged her body the moment it hit the oversized pillows stacked around her. The late night sessions in his recording studio all week had been one thing, but trying to keep up with the drinking and the now the sex? There are some the might still call her by the moniker she had earned when she had first gotten the attention of the people who mattered in this shit show that they called the music business, but she sure as hell hadn’t felt much like the bad girl of the pop world in longer than she cared to think about. They joked with each other about making the other famous but for her, it was more about being relevant again.

And what would that be like? It had been more than a year since she had made any meaningful public appearances. And three times that since the last tour had ended.

Her body relaxed and she tried to remember the exhilaration she would feel again, being on the stage. She slipped into sleep as the crowd chanted. Chanted her name.

Wait. No.

Not her. Not her name. His name. The crowd chanted his name. They had forgotten all about her. It was his name on their lips. It was him that they wanted.

Now she was in the crowd. Right in front. And he was standing over her on the stage. Larger than life. He was looking directly at her. As if she was the only one in the entire stadium. Just the two of them. Her below and him above, he looked at her and her only.

But the people around her didn’t seem to know she was even there. They began to push at her, crush her. Sasha couldn’t breath. The crowd moved in closing off her airways. She tried to struggle but her arms were pinned to her sides as the bodies pushed in tighter around her. She looked up and tried to find him. Tiny white dots floated and swam around her vision. Fear boiled over and she tried to scream.

Sasha’s eyes flew open and she opened her mouth wide to inhale the air that had been deprived of her in the dream-turned-nightmare that her insecurities had mustered out of her subconscious.

Nothing. No air.

A face floated above her. Where she had expected to see a warm, inviting, mischievous and just a bit sexy grin, instead, a cruel, twisted mocking grimace carved into a black hole of hate. And hands were around her throat.

Confused, Sasha brought her eyes to her attacker. They pounded with the beat of her heart until she thought they would explode. She tried to plead. Her mouth moved.

Why?

The thumping slowed and a blackness had begun to creep in around the edges of her vision.

She never heard her killer utter a word.

The darkness swallowed her.

…

It was close to dawn before Sasha finally gave up on sleep. She turned the tv on as she passed it headed toward the kitchen and coffee.

Fifteen minutes later, Sasha was sitting at the kitchen bar, her second cup of barely-coffee flavored creamer and sugar held in one hand, her phone in the other. A cheerfully bright bleach blond in an equally bright pink and white skirt and jacket ensemble was standing in front of a map covered in large snowflakes.

“That’s going to do it for the local forecast.” She turned just as the cameras switched to a close up shot of a salt and pepper haired anchor, nearly indistinguishable from the gentleman that sat in the same chair for the evening news.

“Thank you, Gina.” The man said as he spoke into the camera in front of him. “A winter weather warning will be in effect starting at midnight tonight. Keep your tv tuned to Channel 11 overnight and Wake Up, Denver! starting at 5 am tomorrow morning for road conditions and any closures as this storm moves though the city. Miranda?”

A dark haired beauty with too much makeup sat up a bit straighter in her chair as the crew cut to the wide shot.

“Thank you, Gina. Steve.” She glanced down at the desktop, switched her view to her close up camera and segued into the the part that Sasha had been waiting for since she had clawed her way from the horrors of her dreams a few hours prior. The woman at the desk became a bit more animated.

“It’s almost as if the weather gods themselves have rolled into town for tonight’s sold out performance at the Pepsi Center.” The camera switched back to the wide shot of both anchors.

“And when we come back, Steve and I will be giving away two tickets to tonight’s historic event as we say goodby to a rock legend as he winds up his final performance right here in the place his fans say he got his real start.” She paused for just the right amount of time and continued, “I’m Miranda Stevenson.” She looked to her right.

“And I’m Steve Knight. This is Wake Up! Denver and we’ll be right back.”

Sasha picked up her phone. She had punched in the ten digits without seeing them. Her thumb hit the green send button and the phone began to ring.

…

Thumping beats assaulted and seemed to change the rhythm of her heart as guitars screeched and screamed. The anxiety she felt in her nightmare returned as the crowd pressed around her. She pushed her shoulders and elbows out as she tried to make herself bigger. After a few seconds that felt like a few minutes, the crowd seemed to collectively exhale which allowed her room to move. The reprieve didn’t last as the man they had come to see made his way to her side of the stage and stopped in front of her. The crowd swelled and threatened to swallow her, to drown her, to choke her.

Sasha barely noticed as she made eye contact with him.

For just a moment, he faltered. It was just a split second. Sasha doubted anyone else had even noticed. But she had. And so had he.

…

The green room, which wasn’t actually green at all, was full of people, alcohol and food. Everywhere, people were talking, mouths full of food or drink or both. Sasha made her way to the bar to the left.

“Did you enjoy the show?” Hot breath on her neck. A warm hand on her waist.

She took a sip of the drink she had just been handed and leaned her head back against his chest. “Best performance of your career.” His grip on her waist tightened and he pulled her to him; his hips pressing to her, the erection instantaneous. She shivered as his lips brushed the back of her neck.

“I knew it was you. The moment I saw you.” He didn’t seem surprised. “I guess an explanation is warranted.” She turned in arms to face him.

“The explanation won’t be necessary. Up and coming rockstar records decades biggest with the on-her-way-to-obscurity pop star hours before she dies in a tragic fiery crash leaving the mountain recording studio.”

He looked her in the eyes. “Wow. You really do look amazing, Sasha. Like it never happened.” His eyes were glassy with drink and nostalgia. “Would it make a difference if I said I was sorry?”

“Tragedy sells. And playing the grieving friend and lover who was only trying to help me revive my career? Brilliant. Martyrdom really suits you. Don’t apologize for being shrewder than I gave you credit for.”

She took him by the hand, “Let’s go.” Sasha led him through the crowded room and out the door.

…

“The weekend weather should hit the three S’s. Shorts, sunglasses and sunscreen. Stay tuned for more on this warming trend at ten past the hour. Steve?” Gina turned to the anchor desk as the camera cut to a close up of a much more somber reporter this morning.

“In other news, tragedy has struck the rock and roll community as news rock legend Devon Smithfield was found dead just hours after his final performance her in Denver. He rose to fame with the song, I See You, recorded with pop icon Sasha Sin just ours before the crash that took her life. Preliminary reports from the police and the coroner’s office have indicated he may have committed suicide by hanging. We’ll update with more details as they come in. Miranda?”

Sasha hit the red button at the top of the remote and the screen on the wall went black.