PRESENT DAY :

TWIN FEATHERS STADIUM, 8:30 PM

DALLAS, TEXAS.

April 30th, 2024.

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THE EXCITEMENT IN THE STADIUM WAS PALPABLE,

Even from the greenroom, Oliver Alexander could hear the screams mixed with chants of Blood Oaths! Blood Oaths! Blood Oaths! Beating against his eardrums and reverberating in his chest as strobe lights flashed and flames from the center-stage pyrotechnics announced their impending appearance. All smiles and giddiness backstage as the five members of the up-and-coming metal-core band are checking their earpieces and preparing to take their places on stage. Finally, theres the cue, and then moments later, a confident stride carried Oli to the very front and center point of the three-tiered stage, where he took the microphone from the stand and then held his arms up to address the waiting, feverish crowd. 

“HOW ARE YOU TONIGHT DALLAS? PUT YOUR HANDS UP AND LET ME HEAR YOU MAKE SOME FUCKING NOISE!!” 

Smile luminous in response to their enthusiastic, thunderous reply of screams, wolf-whistles, and cheers. Hundreds of thousands of voices melding together.

“Thank you! Thank you! Alright, you know what to do. Don't make me fuckin’ ask! WHAT IS LOVE......?” 

“THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND.” 

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TWO YEARS EARLIER . . . 

“YOU WILL NEVER AMOUNT TO ANYTHING!”   his father’s voice seemed to resonate inside a cramped space. Millions of dollars had gone into the ultra-modern style Richmond estate but, still, Oliver Grace could only think about how the sterilely clean space around him resembled an institution more than a home. But, he thought, maybe, that is where I belong. It was the old threat. If he did not conform, did not fucking obey, that was where he would end up. locked up simply because he didn't fit the image that had been chosen for him at birth. Even now, standing there in Kade Marin Grace’s lavishly decorated home office. Hands behind his back like a good little soldier at attention. The bitterness swells like a balloon inside the twenty-six-year-old’s ink-stained ribcage. Damn this suit, he thinks.  Longing to rip the tie from his neck, which right about now feels more like a hangman’s noose. I cannot fucking breathe. Taking a deep breath. 

 “I was offered a record deal, yet you fucking act like it's some kind of crime because I don’t want what you planned.”  Even though his voice is quiet and for the most part, calm. Black-painted fingernails dig into the soft pad of flesh in his palm. Recently filed, or they might have left little pools of blood in their wake. Fitting, considering this feels like a fucking crucifixion. Ignoring his mother’s sharp intake of breath.

“How dare you!”   

 Coffee-colored irises met hers, chin lifted, a sculpted jawline set in defiance, and though the thought of how she'd be punished for his insolence occurred to him, he wouldn't be deterred, not tonight.  “You have Brian to take over the firm... you know it's not what I want.”   He begins again, trying to keep this civil, unable to bear another night of yelling over a future he was certain was not his.  “I’m going to call the agent back,” He almost whispered, approaching his father’s desk, fists balling up to rest against the pristinely polished wooden surface. the cool metal of each of his rings cutting into his fingers. “. . . I am going to accept the deal. I made enough money working for that bar. . . You can either accept it. Or you can fucking choke on your denial. I am not watering myself down for you because the version of me you pictured does not fit the reality. You can brainwash Brian but I refuse to play."    The sound of wood scraping against wood made him wince as his father rose forcefully to his feet, and while Oliver resembled his Kade in his looks, no father-son duo could have been more different. The older man, however, had to tilt his head back to meet the defiant darkness in his younger son's eyes. Still, even when the middle-aged lawyer’s hands slammed down on his desk. Oliver did not flinch. “If you call that agent ... if you leave... I will make sure you never get anywhere. No son of mine will ever become some Hollywood whore.”    But Oliver would not be intimidated, not this time. Stepping impossibly closer. Drawing himself up to his full height of six-foot-three. “Funny that you preach about whores, when. . .  Let's see. . . what was her name? Oh! Haley! That is her name right? Or at least that is who it is this week.”   He snarls back, ignoring his mother’s stifled gasp. Yeah, that’s right Mom, he is screwing the secretary, it is a goddamn cliché. 

Whatever he’d been expecting after that ... it wasn’t what happened. Kade drew back his hand and the impact of his fist connecting with Oliver’s jaw was enough to make the younger man stumble backward against his own will. A metallic taste fills his mouth as his incisors slice into his cheek and his lower lip is split. Barely aware of his mother’s scream when he was forcefully pushed back against the textured surface of the wall. His father’s hands were at his throat. Dress shoes crunching across a mess of shards of broken glass from a now shattered decanter of expensive Scotch whiskey.  His mother was pale as a ghost, though she moved forward to grab her husband's arm. "Kade, Kade stop it!" There is the resounding sound of a slap and her sharp cry. Though the stranglehold he'd had on Oliver is mercifully broken. Turning back, he leveled a malevolent glare at his son.

“Get the fuck out. You hear me, you degenerate little shit?! Do you want fame so badly? Go! Chase your delusions but don’t you fucking come back when it does not turn out the way you think.”

Shoved forward, hard.  Oliver stumbled but thankfully regained his footing. Sucking in another deep, steadying breath, coughing violently. A hand pressed against his rapidly bruising jaw while the other attempted to tear at the accursed tie around his neck. So, help him, he would never wear another expensive silk suit ever again.  “Oli!”  He hears his mother pleading with him not to do this. To make up with his father and keep their shit show of a family together. But he’s done. Wasting no time in digging for his phone to find the contact for the well-dressed man who had approached him after a gig in a friend’s uptown bar almost two weeks prior.  Rounding on her when he gets to his bedroom door. Mocha gaze hardened to an unsympathetic obsidian.  

“You should fucking leave him. You and Brian should get the fuck out before he drags us all down with him.”  But even as he says it, he knows his words are ignored. She wouldn’t. She could not. Their prenup was ironclad and airtight. If Arya Grace left. . . She’d get nothing. Not even the law firm which had been left to her by her father. 

“Oli! Oli-Bear, please.” 

“Stop fucking calling me that. I am not a five-year-old.”  He hisses sharply, his grip tightening on his phone.  “Fuck's sake, Mom, please just go.”  The lump in his throat threatens to choke him, he’s dangerously close to punching the wall. But he wouldn't, he wouldn't be like his father. His self-control, slipping away by the second.  “I can’t stay here. I need to go; I need to see this through. You will be all right.” 

Then he had dialed the number scrawled in ball point pen on the back of the now crumpled business card and the moment the smooth-talking agent answered he could only utter two words. 

“I’m in.”

That was the last time he spoke to his mother before he left.

He only made one stop on his way out of Richmond. The home of his childhood friend, Anna. Though not even she knew it was the last time she would see him.

Whether it was because it was truly his dream or purely out of spite, however, that night, Oliver Alexander Grace died, and OLIVER ALEXANDER, the charismatic, and yet, enigmatic lead vocalist of Blood Oaths forged.  Though Anna too, had begged him not to go, even though she had understood better than anyone how much Oliver’s music meant to him, and how he longed to be more than just another prim and poised lawyer’s son. 

But in the end, even her pleas went unheard. 

It broke his heart to steal away like a thief in the night. But it was not until he had gotten over the border of Virginia that the realization and gravity of the choice he had just made truly hit him. Pulling his old Chevelle over on the side of the road. The hazard lights flickered feebly against the backcountry darkness. He'd drawn up his knees to his chest in the backseat, and surrounded by only what could be thrown into duffle bags and the few suitcases he had to his name,  he'd truly cried. Not just a few silent tears but ugly, angry sobs that threatened to choke him. He was free now - - - but that freedom had come with a cost he paid not just with cash, but in 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅 as well, as his metaphorical shackles and everything he once knew faded away, and while he sat there in the nearly eerie silence, blanketed in darkness. Heartache and pain morphed into an altogether darker emotion.

Cold, calculated anger, and with it, the determination to prove his father wrong, whatever the cost. the fiery, fierce desire to make his sperm donor choke on his words was what gave him the stubbornness needed to survive.  What carried him over nearly four thousand miles to California and gave him the courage to continue, to fight, scream, and claw his way up.  To keep going even when he thought he was done, and that his twenty-six-year existence was at a close. all the while drowning his pain in Hennessy whiskey and then sex with countless one-night stands to feel anything but numb. Nameless faces he didn’t care for and who willingly threw themselves at his feet to taste the limelight for a moment. 

Yeah, fame is a fuckin’ trip. But she’s also a fickle mistress. There was no filling the void in his chest with alcohol, sex, or even . . . some of the more hardcore stuff.  And, while he might’ve felt the love of his fans in the heat of the moment at a show. There was no stopping the steady decline into what he could only name as darkness that always seemed to lurk two steps behind him, once the cameras were turned off and the stadium went quiet. Lured once more toward the gaping abyss waiting to swallow him whole. Staved off only with the desperate need to always be in motion and to give every part of himself to his art.  

Words splashed like his blood across countless sheets of paper. Sung until his throat burned like it was rubbed down with sandpaper. Pieces of himself sold to the highest-paying bidder.

Maybe in some ways Dad, you were right. 

I am a whore.