“Please don’t walk on eggshells around me. That’s not why I told you.”
“Why exactly did you?”
“Because it was time, and I wanted you to know. I can’t explain it, but everything about today was, I don’t know … cathartic.”
I smile. “I’m glad, and I’m happy you went to see Dr. Evans, but I’m still not going tonight.”
“You’re not going tonight, or you’re not going ever?”
I try to picture Crew singing with someone else. A wave of nausea comes over me. But jealousy is not a reason to give in. “I can’t answer that right now. I have a lot of thinking to do.”
He comes close and takes my hand. “There’s a reason I never told anyone until now. I know you don’t trust me after what I’ve done, but I swear to you I’m going to change. Give me a chance to prove it to you.”
I gesture to the door. “You should go. You’ll be late.”
He opens it. “I really hope you’ll give me a chance, Bria. Give us a chance. This is the honest truth. Even if you can’t take me back, there’s nobody else I want onstage with me. You’re the only woman I want to sing with. Our songs belong to us, no one else. I’m willing to have you there any way I can get you.”
His words resonate in my head long after he’s gone.
I love him. He might love me. That also means he might not. Am I willing to risk it all again? What happens if nothing gets better? What happens if we end up right back where we were? Wouldn’t it be easier to make the break now?
But my truth is the same as his. He’s the only man I want to sing with, and maybe that can be enough.
Chapter Forty-two
Crew
Seven years ago
A week after Abby’s eighteenth birthday, they finally let us put them in the ground. A week of seconds dragging on like hours. Of every torturous minute being a reminder of how alone I am. Of each day feeling like an eternity without them.
I didn’t hear a word at the service. All I could do was stare blindly at the caskets, one of them so tiny it’s hard to believe they make them that small. Abby’s parents asked if I wanted the baby to be buried with Abby, but she was already a person to me. She deserves to have her own place in the world, as she did in my heart. I picked the words for her tombstone. ‘Baby Girl Rewey – gone too soon – loved forever’
I was asked if I wanted to speak at the service, but I couldn’t. Anything I wanted to say was written in a song that is about to be lowered into the ground, along with her body. I didn’t need to stand up and tell everyone what a great person she was or how much I loved her. Everyone knows it. The words belong solely to Abby, and the song dies with her. No one will ever see it. Nobody will ever sing it.
Music is the only thing that’s kept me going. I eat when I’m forced to. I sleep when exhaustion claims me. But music is the constant in my life, though I’ll never be able to sing again.
But I can write. I want to kill Rob Vargas—I wrote a song about it. I contemplate killing myself—I wrote a song about that too. I can’t sing—yup, another song. My notebook fills with lyrics pouring from my heart and soul.
After putting a single rose on each casket, I sit in the front row of chairs at the gravesite. Mom holds my hand while the minister says something about ashes and dust and returning to where we came from. Someone behind me puts a hand on my shoulder. I think it’s Liam. He’s all too familiar with burying a loved one. The circumstances were different, but he might be one of the only people who understands the hell I’m going through.
On the other side of the caskets are Abby’s parents. They look as devastated as I feel. I’m sure they think it’s worse for them, losing their only child. They think I’m young and can go on to love someone else. Have another baby even. Replace what I’ve lost, unlike them. They think that at eighteen, maybe we didn’t know what love really is. But they’d be wrong. I loved her. I love her. I promised her I’d