I just couldn’t do it.
“He’s dead, Nolan,” Brandon said after a long silence. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”
Tell me something I don’t already know. “That doesn’t matter.”
“You really want to be in the dark about what happened?” I could hear the frown in his voice, along with When did you become such a *?
Or maybe that was just the voice in my own head. “What’s the point of me remembering? It won’t bring back the dead.”
He sighed heavily, the sound reverberating through the phone. “You’re right. It won’t.”
Since I had him on the phone and he would find out soon enough, I filled him in on what had happened earlier. I also filled him in on what the label wanted me to do about the situation.
“What exactly is going on with you and Hailey?” His words were slow, questioning. He wasn’t asking me about what she and I were doing together. He was questioning my motives and where I thought this would all end up.
“You mean other than I still love her?”
“Shit, you had sex with her, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.” I cringed at his groan.
“You sure know how to complicate things.” Epic understatement of the year. “Have you told her how you feel about her?”
I squirmed on the couch. “Kind of.”
“I take that as a no. You need to tell her the truth, Nolan. With all the other lies circulating about you, you need to tell her the truth.”
“And then what? We have a long-distance relationship? It would never work.”
“Why not? You’ll never know if you don’t give it a chance.”
I swore aliens had abducted my best friend. Since when did the king of going-nowhere relationships dole out relationship advice? “It doesn’t matter, not with the label pushing for this fictitious romance between me and Alyssa. I can’t do that to Hailey. She deserves better than to be hidden away like some dirty secret. But that’s exactly what will happen.”
Brandon released a defeated sigh but didn’t say more on the topic. We ended the call and I went back to fiddling around with a new song I’d been working on.
But as much as I tried to block it from my mind, the image of my parents’ home sneaked into my thoughts. And with it came the promise of a new memory of that night.
Chapter 33
Nolan
FIVE YEARS AGO
I entered my house and flipped the light on. Instead of the usual warm glow, the light was cold and harsh. But that wasn’t what filled my body with icy dread.
Blood drops on the beige carpet formed a trail to the kitchen.
I strained to hear a sound, but my ears were met with nothing but silence. Darkness seeped from the room, and I walked toward it, my gaze glued to the bloody trail. A strong, unpleasant odor sat heavy in the air, and my stomach turned.
Ignoring the five alarms in my head telling me to get out of the house, I stepped into the kitchen and turned on the light. My hand recoiled at the sticky wetness on the light switch and I glanced down to see what it was.
And wished I hadn’t.
Smeared bloody handprints stained the walls.
Chapter 34
Nolan
I snapped out of the memory and rested my head on the back of the couch, body trembling. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on other things. Like Hailey. Naked.
It took several minutes for the trembling to finally subside. With a hard breath, I pushed myself off the couch and grabbed a beer from the fridge. I opened it and downed half of the cold beverage. Maybe this was the answer to surviving this town while I was here.
I returned to my room, grabbed my guitar from the case by my bed, and played the melody for the ballad I’d been working on. The music soaked into every part of my body, reminding me just how important it was to me. Like oxygen to fire.
But as much as I wanted it, I couldn’t have everything. I couldn’t have the music and Hailey and the oblivion from my memories. I had to choose.
The apartment door clicked open. I continued playing the guitar. When it became obvious that Hailey wasn’t going to check on me, I placed the guitar against the bed and went to find her.
Full grocery bags littered the floor in the hallway outside her bedroom door. It wasn’t like her to just dump her groceries there and go off to do something else.
I walked into the living room. Hailey was on the couch, laptop on her lap. She looked nothing like the woman I’d made love to earlier in the shower. She didn’t even look like the woman who’d left to go shopping. She looked hollow. Broken.
I joined her on the couch. “What happened?”
“The pictures of us are all over the Internet.”
“Already?” Not that this surprised me.
“And it would seem people aren’t too impressed with me. I’m the bitch who’s trying to steal you from Alyssa.”