He popped open the case and handed me his guitar. His black Fender was nearly identical to mine in weight and shape and felt almost as natural on my shoulder as my own guitar did. Plus, I’d already played it twice before.

“Thank you.” I placed my hand over his for a brief moment, and when he gave me his real smile, it hit me: I was in love with him. And not like before, when I’d loved the idea of Jared, the tattooed rock star who could have any woman he wanted. Now I was in love with the real Jared, who sang to me in public, raced through supermarkets with his brother, and had a different villain T-shirt for every day of the week. Somehow that made everything worse because I had no idea if he felt the same for me, and either way, I still couldn’t be with him. One more week, I reminded myself.

“Good thinking,” Dan said, bringing me back to the moment. “Now get out there and win this thing.”

The four of us looked a bit ragged, our hair and clothes messy like we’d just had sex (for good reason), but that worked perfectly for “Locked Out of Heaven.” Jared made every girl in the audience swoon with his sultry vocals, and I stalked across the stage, my feelings for him making it all too easy to connect with the emotion in the song. It wasn’t our best performance, but it was still pretty damn good. I just prayed it was good enough to get us into the finals.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The results show was the longest hour of my life. In between performances from some of the previous seasons’ winners (minus the band that had caused so much trouble, Addicted to Chaos, of course), the different teams were called up for eliminations. Team Angel was first, and everyone was shocked when The Static Klingons were sent home. I wasn’t that sad to see Sean go, though The Static Klingons were a lot more talented than the remaining band on Angel’s team, Not Too Calm. The show hadn’t aired our kiss last night, thank god, so I’d never know if it would have helped Sean’s band get more votes or not. And frankly, I didn’t care.