your shit together.
“Hi,” she announced, leaning against the wall in the living room where we were standing. “I’m Journey. Nice to meet you guys.”
My bandmates were just as taken aback as I was that she wasn’t losing her shit over meeting them.
No screaming.
No fangirling.
No nothing.
Treating them like they weren’t the biggest rock stars in the world. This never happened to us. Which only fucked further with my head.
“I couldn’t help but overhear what you’re arguing about.”
“Junie, stay outta it.”
“Junie?” Beck echoed, hearing that name before. “Holy fuck.”
“Beck...”
“You’re the little girl who gave him his guitar pick.”
Her eyes widened.
“Holy shite! This is brilliant!” He patted me on my back. “Why didn’t you just say so, mate?”
“You still have it?” she questioned, her eyes wide as saucers. Aimed directly at me.
Jude chuckled, “Does he still have it? He’s a fucking dick about it. He calls it his good luck charm. He’s as possessive about that pick as he seems to be about you. But now with meeting you”—his heady glare traveled up and down her body—“I can see why. He said you were a little girl, except I don’t see anything little on you.”
“Jude,” I warned, my tone on edge.
“Relax.” His eyes shifted back to mine. “She’s your muse. We won’t fuck with that.”
My muse?
Was she?
Had she been all these years?
From across the room, my stare locked with hers. I couldn’t explain or put into words what was happening between us. It was a paradox of contradictions. There was something I’d never felt before when I looked into her eyes.
This spark.
This light.
This intensity.
Each time seemed to be worse than the last.
Heart speeding up.
Throat seizing.
Chest weighing heavy.
I swallowed hard, silently wishing I knew what she was thinking. Feeling. Wanting...
Truth was, I didn’t know this woman standing in front of me. The last time I saw her, she was crying for me. Pouring her heart out to me. Falling apart in my arms. Telling me she loved me. Wearing pigtails and a pink dress, she gave me a guitar pick. It was the only thing I’d kept from my past.
She was the only thing I’d kept from my past.
I thought about her often, specifically when I was drunk and high. Remembering the baby girl who always had the power to calm me. The one who loved and understood music the same way I had.
Our connection.
Our friendship.
Her love for me...
Was based around music.
Now there she was, a few feet away from me. And all those emotions came spiraling down on me in a much different way. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was a breathtakingly beautiful woman with familiar crystal blue eyes luring me in without even trying.
What did I do?
Everything in my body was screaming at me to let her go. To send her home. To not allow this to happen.
Right or wrong.
Black or white.
It wasn’t that simple.
In my world of colored chaos, she’d suddenly become my gray area.
For the first time in I didn’t know how long, I prayed to God...
I wouldn’t fuck her up.
’Cuz there was no way, I could let her go.
<>Journey<>
His muse?
The way he was staring at me made me question what I remembered about him. Cash had never looked at me the way he did right now. There was something agonizing and desperate in his dark, dilated eyes. He looked the same but somehow different from when I was a child.
Tired.
Older.
Sadder.
There were so many fond memories of him I held dear to my heart. His music. His laugh. His smile. The way he lit up when he was on stage. His talent. His voice. His guitar. Cash McGraw was my first crush. My first hero. The first guy to ever truly break my heart.
I cried and cried and cried for months after he left. Losing him made me lose a huge part of myself which took me years to find again. No one understood the pedestal I had him on.
Every birthday.
Holiday.
Moment in time.
He wasn’t there like he pinky promised me. To a six-year-old girl, his words had meant everything. Through his songs, our conversations, the way he was with me. He’d touched my soul on a higher level, but he’d also let me down. Lied to me. Pained me in ways I had only read about in books.
I never forgot about him.
It hurt me too much when I tried, similar to the agonizing way he was currently gazing at me. I always wondered what it would feel like to be standing in a room with him again. Knowing