“This isn’t about you!” She slammed her fist on the steering wheel.
“It should be!” I shouted back, startled by her shift in demeanor. “It should be about us, Ember, and not you running from your fears or me running from mine. I swear to you, November. I will never, not for a second, break your heart. I’ve promised you that a million times, and I’ll do it a million more. But, what I won’t do is marry you because you’re scared.” She opened her mouth to speak, but I continued, lowering my voice. “When I ask you to marry me, I want you to say yes because you feel like any other answer would be horrifically wrong. I want you to say yes because that’s the only rational thing to say. I want you to say yes because you want a life with me. An eternity. I don’t want you to say yes because you’re scared I’ll hurt you if you don’t.”
I let go of her hand, grabbed my coffee, and opened my door.
“Where are you going?” she snapped.
“Air,” I snapped back, slamming the door.
As soon as her door opened, a sinking feeling grew in the pit of my stomach. I never raised my voice to her, and in the span of a few days I’d done it twice. Once because I was afraid, and once because she was. What kind of a husband would that make me?
Ember crossed to my side of the car and held out the keys.
“What’s this for?” I asked, barely a grunt coming from my mouth.
“You’re driving.” She released the keys from her fingers, and I caught them before they tumbled to the ground.
“Fine.” I stepped away from the car and got in the driver’s side, sliding the seat all the way back and adjusting the mirror as Ember climbed in and buckled her seatbelt.
As I started the car, Ember reached for her cellphone and began texting. That was her signal to me that we were done talking. I wasn’t even sure what the hell had just happened between us, but I knew the couple of hours we had left to go till San Francisco were going to be the longest I’d had in a long time.
***
We arrived at Bay Park three hours before our scheduled show. It was enough time to set up the stage, rehearse, and pray like hell we’d be able to pull it off. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure there was enough time for that prayer.
Ember and I arrived only a few minutes before The Six caravan did, allowing us to pull our bags from the back of the car and walk to the “shed” that looked like a medium-sized cabin, which sat behind the stage.
When Ember saw the RVs pull in, she walked dutifully to the lead one, which held most of our equipment. And the Shaw family. I watched from a distance as she worked silently to pull mic stands and speakers from below the vehicle and move them to the side of the stage. After a minute, or so, Regan spotted me and jogged over to the shed.
“How was the ride? Is she okay? I texted both of you and no one answered.” He fiddled with his hands as he spoke.
“I ended up driving, so I wasn’t looking at my phone. She was texting, but if it wasn’t to you it must have been to Monica, or someone.” I started walking to the second RV, which held the instruments, and he followed.
“So … what’d she say?” He asked, sounding nervous.
I shrugged. “You were driving with Ash and Raven, did they say anything?”
Regan shook his head. “Silence has never been so loud, dude.”
“Tell me about it. All I know is that they’re half sisters and,” I lowered my voice to a whisper, “Ashby is their biological dad.”
“Daaaamn. Is she okay? Ember.”
“No. We kind of had a fight during the beginning of the drive. She wasn’t really telling me anything that made sense, then she freaked out like I was going to cheat on her, or something. We’ll talk about it more later, okay?” I nodded behind Regan, where I saw the rest of the band approaching. Including Willow.
While the band shifted awkwardly around each other, I made eye contact with Ashby, silently begging him for guidance in this situation. He seemed to understand, and nodded toward the shed, asking me to follow him. Ember had her head down as she worked to unravel cord and do sound checks, so she didn’t seem to notice my departure.
I shut the door to the shed behind me while Ashby paced the floor for a moment. Finally, he sat in a chair against the wall, motioning for me to take the one next to him.
“How is she?” He spoke with the same heartbreaking vulnerability Ember did. The similarities between the two made this even harder somehow.
I sighed as I sat, rubbing my forehead with my sweaty palm. “Jesus, Ash … not good. Can you tell me what the hell happened?”
“She didn’t tell you?”