he did. I went back to putting food on my plate. “Well, you know I would love it if you could manage that.”
He put a hand over mine, pulling my attention back to him. “I love you. You know that, right?”
“I know. And I love you too.” I threw a fortune cookie at him. “Even when you’re an idiot.”
He caught it and grinned at me as he cracked it open. Then he pulled the slip out and cleared his throat dramatically. “Fame and fortune are on the horizon,” he read out loud.
We looked at each other before bursting into laughter.
We dug into our dinner as I pumped him for info about Atlanta. He had gone to record a collaboration with a country singer who was making the transition to pop music. So far I liked her new stuff, but I was sure that whatever she recorded with Sean would be brilliant. Everything Sean touched musically turned to gold. He was like Rumpelstiltskin—maddening and manipulative, but boy could that man make gold.
Okay, that was unfair. He certainly wasn’t the villain that Rumpelstiltskin was. It just felt that way once in a while.
We finished our food and wandered over to the couch as he asked me what was going on in my life. I gave him a few details on work and other innocuous topics. I didn’t mention Jonas. I wasn’t ready to trust him with that yet.
“You’re only here for two days?” I asked, turning the conversation back to him.
“Yeah, we have a music video shoot lined up next.”
“Ooh, I do love a good Sean Amity music video. What’s it going to be this time?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered without looking at me.
“Oh no. Then it must be bad. I mean, they already did the open-white-shirt, riding-a-horse bit. They did the weird silent monk thing which, I’m sorry, made no sense since you were singing.”
He shrugged. “They’re music videos. Most of them don’t actually make sense.”
“Actually, most of yours do, it’s just those bizarre outliers that I haven’t been able to figure out the logic behind. And now you’re doing a new one and won’t even tell me about it, so of course I’m curious.”
He wrinkled his nose at me in displeasure. “Fine. It’s going to be some dark, end-of-the-world, dystopian thing.”
“Ooh! So are you the terminator character? Or the scrappy commoner in rags who rises up?”
“It’s actually a leather tunic, Robin Hood sort of thing.”
I laughed in his face. “No! That will be amazing! Tell me you have to wear tights!”
“It’s not funny,” he said as he dug his fingers into my side.
I squirmed away, even though he had already stopped. I hated being tickled.
He tried to look remorseful when I sent him a glare, but he couldn’t hold his laughter back. “I’m sorry,” he said as he chuckled. “I really am. And you’re right. The costume is going to be obnoxious.”
“The memes people make of it afterward will be even worse,” I mentioned with an evil grin.
He groaned and laughed again. “I still see the one of me as a monk every once in a while.” His laughter died and he became unnaturally quiet as he slumped back into the cushions. The silence stretched and tightened. “It’s today, you know.”
His heavy tone and swift mood change put me on alert and I reached for my mother’s necklace, which hung around my neck.
“Serena,” he said without any prompting from me.
So he did remember. Serena. Three years ago today, his twin sister had died. “Yeah,” I said, turning toward him and laying the side of my head on the cushion beside his shoulder. “It is.”
I’d been dreading this day all week, just like I did every year. Not because of what it did to Sean, but because of what it did to me. It was like my body remembered the trauma of this day and I got to relive it every year.
Because I had been driving the car.
It was one of Sean’s first big shows, and I’d convinced Serena that we needed to surprise him by showing up.
He’d certainly been surprised. Horribly, traumatically surprised. They said it wasn’t my fault. The other driver had crossed into our lane. Not my fault. I think that was supposed to make me feel better. It didn’t. Because I was the one driving the car that Serena died in. And I didn’t even remember her last moments. I wasn’t awake to hold her hand. I didn’t have a chance to lie