My chest squeezed, heart slamming in its confines.
Ash caught it. His face pinched in slow disbelief, and he huffed out a breath. “You can’t even say her fucking name, can you? All this fucking time, and you can’t even say her name.”
“Stop,” I warned. Fighting. Fighting the anger. Just didn’t know who I was most angry with.
He kept right on, coming close, digging it in like a razor-sharp prod staked into my spirit. “You really think Kenzie is somewhere across town, jabbing needles in a black-haired Voodoo doll? Cursing your name? Hoping you’re rotting in hell?”
My laughter was brittle. Breaking like everything else inside me. “After what I did? You really think she’s not?”
He scoffed. “The only hell you’re in, man? It’s the one you created. You sentenced yourself, Lyrik, and that’s exactly where you’re gonna rot if you don’t wake the fuck up and look at what’s right in front of you. Look at what you’ve been given…”
He flung his arm out to the side. “Because you just let the best damned thing that’s ever happened to you walk out the front door.”
Fucking Ash and the way he saw shit.
I shook my head, voice cold like a slow chill. “You know I can’t keep her.”
He sobered. “When are you gonna stop blaming yourself?”
I swallowed around the lump sitting like a rock in my throat.
He took another step forward, a move that seemed both pleading and predatory. “What about me, man? You still blamin’ me? You think it doesn’t kill me to know I had a part in it? Kill me to remember I was the one who’d convinced you to go that night?”
Emphatic and hard, his words were strained where he spat them close to my face. “Kenzie was a nice girl. And yeah, you fucked up. You fucked up bad. We were all so messed up then, doing everything wrong, making mistake after mistake. And I know it cost you the most. But I’m so fucking done with this. So done with you thinking you don’t deserve to live. You lost, too, man. She wasn’t the only one who got hurt by that whole mess.”
I turned my head to the side, tone like grit. “I promised.”
He took a step back. “Yeah? Tell me what difference that promise has made? Who’s it benefited? Not her and sure as hell not you.”
“I promised. Not gonna go back on it now.”
Not ever.
He laughed, though there was nothing amused about it. “You and your fucked up sense of loyalty. You think I didn’t see that bastard Eric at the after show tonight? And you know what, Lyrik? I’m glad you turn your back. That you won’t let him fill it with all his bullshit. But you do it for the wrong damned reasons. You do it out of obligation. You might as well sign with them…because we don’t need that kind of loyalty. Only thing you’re really loyal to is your misery.”
I pushed him out of my way, swiping the back of my hand across my mouth like it could wipe away some of the bitterness, forcing down the hatred boiling out. Needing air, I headed for the huge sliding doors that led to the pool.
Yanking the sliding door open wide, I didn’t slow, not even when Ash’s voice pelted me from behind, “Tell me, Lyrik! What fucking good is that promise? Who’s it helping? You here with us because you care about us? About the band? Or are you doin’ it because you think you owe us?”
As soon as I was outside, I gripped my head while the sounds of the night shouted around me, the rustle of the cool breeze rolling with the remnants of a party happening below, the dull hum of bugs held fast to the trees. All of it hit me like an echo of the loneliness I felt crawling over me like a disease. That gaping hole just getting larger and larger.
In the distance, thunder rolled.
My chest felt so damned tight. So tight I was sure I couldn’t breathe.
I could almost see their faces, flickers of memories sent to test and taunt.
I could almost hear her name on my tongue.
But when I screamed, the name on my tongue was Blue.
Six Years Earlier
IT WAS 11:47 ON a Saturday night. Didn’t know when life had become one endless party. Maybe it’d been gradual. Maybe overnight. Really, the last year was nothin’ but a blur of highs and lows, moving into the small house with the guys, writing music, begging venues to take us, and feeling like we were living the all-American dream at the same damned time.
Music blared from the speakers, and I sat on the dingy, worn-down couch with my baby cradled on my lap, stroking her strings and caressing her body. Feeling that stir inside me, something powerful, like it was my soul bleeding the song.
Ash was all hyped up, the guy spouting off about how big Sunder was going to be as soon as we got our break to a handful of strays who’d made their way in. Kinda the way everyone did. No home. Lost. Feeling abandoned and looking for a purpose to claim.