“Holy fuck is right.” Ash just got louder. “You over there corrupting my girl, man? Beautiful Shea,” he hollered, “I’m coming, baby. I’ll save you.”
If I didn’t know my punk-ass friend was completely full of shit, I would’ve knocked him a week from Sunday. But that’s just the way we were. Giving each other crap every chance we got, acting like we were tearing each other down when we were just building each other up.
Shea played right along, yelling toward the speaker I tried with no avail to cover. “Save me, Ash. I’ve been taken against my will, by a sex fiend who won’t let me out of bed, no less.”
She was gonna be tied to it if she kept that shit up.
“On my way, baby girl!” Ash was shouting again, and there was a scuffle, muffled words shouted between Lyrik and Ash, and the faint inclination of Zee coming in on the conversation on the back end.
Knew without a shadow of a doubt my entire crew would have my back. That they’d support this decision I’d made to permanently make Shea a part of my life, because I no longer knew how to go on living without her in it.
Would it affect them? Yeah. You can’t make life-altering changes without it altering your life.
A door slammed and the line went quiet before Lyrik spoke again, this time subdued and without any of the prior mocking in his tone. “What are you gonna do, man?”
“Don’t know yet.”
More silence.
“I get it, Baz. Totally get it. Do what you feel you have to do. Do what makes you happy.”
“I am,” I said, completely honest.
I glanced at Shea who reflected empowering light back at me.
Happy.
For once, I felt it above anything else.
“We’ll figure this shit out.”
It was all encouragement mixed up with his own worry. For so long, it’d just been us, the band and me and my baby brother. Nothing else in this fucked-up world had mattered.
Not until now.
“Talk soon,” he said, before the line went dead and I rolled to my side, Lyrik’s questions raising my own.
A tiny frown bridged Shea’s brow, like she caught onto it, too.
Needing the connection, I wove my fingers through hers. “What are we going to do, Shea?”
Unease slithered through her, before she quietly offered an answer that had no solution. “We kind of rushed into this, didn’t we?”
Soft, admissive laughter fumbled from my mouth. “Yeah.”
No use in lying to ourselves.
We’d rushed.
The reality was we’d been rushing since the moment I’d looked up and found her standing in front of me at that horseshoe booth at Charlie’s. She’d arrived like a flood to a parched desert, quenching a thirst I’d never realized I felt, my life barren until she’d breathed across it with her life.
My voice went soft with sincerity. “But I don’t regret it. Not for a second.”
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, held it there while she gave the slightest shake of her head. “Me, neither. Not at all.”
I swallowed over the lump forming in my throat. “You know, you and Kallie were planning on coming to California to stay for a few days after we wrap up this tour.”
She nodded like she was following my mixed-up train of thought.
“Right after, we have to hit the studio.”
Another nod.
The words grew rough. “I can’t stand the idea of you and Kallie not being there. Of not coming home to my wife every night. Want you falling asleep in my arms and waking up there, too. Come. Stay with me for a while. I’ve got an extra room we can set up for Kallie.”
Mark’s room. Hadn’t touched it since he’d died. The four of us had done nothing more than figuratively board it up, yellow tape and hazard signs posted all around it, because none of us had been ready to deal with the heartbreak we knew would be waiting behind it. Once I’d asked Zee if he wanted to go in and clear out his brother’s stuff, but he’d resisted, saying he wasn’t ready to go there yet.