When a fresh round of tears springs to my eyes, Leti stands up, wipes off his jeans, and holds a hand down for me. “Are you ready to go back now?”
“What do I do?” I stare up into his golden eyes, set into a soft face illuminated by the sun’s golden rays. He smiles warmly at me when I give him my hand.
“You chase him.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
ON THE HIGHWAY, my foot weighs heavy on the gas pedal of the beat-up Chrysler convertible that Mason and I fixed up my junior year of high school. I’m so distracted, I haven’t even turned the music on. My thoughts are as blurred as the cars I pass, and all I can do is stare out the dusty windshield as I make my way toward the same city where Shawn lives, the same place where we tuned guitars together on my roof.
I’m not chasing him.
There are still too many questions left unanswered. And part of me is afraid to ask—to even wonder. I know why I lied, but I don’t know why he did. I was the one he crushed six years ago. I was the one with everything to lose. But still, he lied just the same as I did, and I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what we are. I don’t know what I ever meant to him, if I meant anything at all.
I only know what a mess I made last night.
My brothers could have killed him, and maybe that’s what I wanted when I was screaming at him at the top of my lungs. I was furious—over a thousand lies he told, over a thousand lies I told, and over a thousand lies I believed even though no one ever told them. I thought he wanted to keep me a secret. I thought he was playing me for an idiot. I thought a lot of things, but after everything Leti said this morning . . . now I can’t think at all.
All I can do is drive.
Because even if I wanted to chase him, no one knows where he is. Rowan was the one who drove Leti to my parents’ house this morning, and before I left, she told me that no one has seen him since last night. He took off as soon as the guys got back to his apartment building, and now he’s not answering his phone.
I thought about calling him to see if he’d answer for me, but something kept my fingers away from his number. Maybe it was embarrassment. Maybe it was pride. Maybe it was fear. Or maybe it was all of those—six years and three months of bottled-up emotions that made me feel more vulnerable than I ever had.
Had he really been chasing after me, just like my mom said? Did he mean what he said on the roof the night of Van’s party? With my shades down and the wind in my hair, I want to believe it.
But it isn’t until I see his car parked in my driveway that a little part of me starts to.
I coast into the driveway and park the silver Chrysler next to Shawn’s black Mitsubishi Galant, hope flaring in my chest like a flame threatening to burn me alive. I clamp down on the fire, reminding myself that it’s just an empty car. He could be here to chew me out for humiliating him. He could be here to kick me out of the band.
With my nerves bunched tight in my shoulders, I gather my things from the backseat of the car and carry them up to my apartment, half expecting to find him in my unlocked room. When I don’t find him there, I dump my things in a corner and venture into the old lady’s house, entertaining her warm welcome home and casually asking if a boy stopped by to see me today. But apparently, the only boy she saw today was the neighbor boy, Jimmy, who crashed his bike into her mailbox because he was trying to hold his Labrador’s leash while he was riding, and thank God Jimmy was wearing a helmet, because he could’ve died on her lawn, and he broke her mailbox post, but his parents made him come over to apologize and fix it, and she wishes she knew if anyone did find that damn dog—
With my toes twitching in my boots, I back out of the room and eventually out of the house, with the old woman’s voice still talking to herself somewhere in the living room. I slip back into the garage, back up the stairs, and back into my loft, with only one place left to check.
At my window, I stare out at Shawn sitting on my roof, his long legs stretched over the shingles as he gazes off into nowhere. He’s in the same clothes he was in last night—a nice black button-down and an untattered pair of black jeans—and it’s like the night stuck to him, preserving his dark form from the golden sunlight stretching across the rest of the roof.
He’s untouchable, and even when I slide the window open, his concentration remains unbroken. I sit near him in the silence, having no idea what to say or feel or do. He could have gone anywhere last night—there have to be at least a dozen groupies within a one-mile radius of his apartment—but he’s on my roof, outside of my room, where no one would find him but me.