Page 53 of Pretty Little Rocker

My knees went weak at the sound of her hoarse, tear-filled tone. “Sweetheart, are you sure you don’t want to see Ky?”

“No!” she cried. “Please don’t bring him down here. I can’t… I won’t deal with him right now, Aunt Emmie.”

“Hayat,” I rasped, stepping closer so she could hear me more clearly.

“Go home, Ky,” Hayat commanded in a voice that was suddenly hard and assured. “Call Atticus and ask him to be your drummer. I don’t want to see you.”

Taking the phone off speaker, Emmie spoke softly into the receiver before hanging up. “Jamie, Sparks, if you care for Hayat, please come with me. Ky, security will escort you out.”

Without waiting for us to comply, she turned on her heel and walked from the room. Sparks and Jamie snarled at me as they passed, Sparks pushing the bag with our band gear in it against my chest before jogging to catch up with Emmie and Jamie.

And I stood there, frozen, knowing I’d fucked up yet again.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Hayat

At some point, Uncle Shane left the studio, leaving Poppy and me sitting in the rolly chairs. All my crying, something I wasn’t used to doing, had left me with a stuffy nose and a pulsing sinus headache. Poppy sat with his chair rolled close enough to mine to hold my hand.

Sometimes, that was all I needed. Big, bald, scary Jesse Thornton to sit in silence and hold my hand for me to know that the world hadn’t ended—even if it felt like it had. We were still there. His warm fingers wrapped around mine. I could hear his even breathing. See the shift of the shades of brown in his eyes.

My uncles Luca and Lyric had that same gene. Both sets of Luca’s twins had it too, all of the boys. But Lyric had two sets of twins as well, and only one pair of them shared that same gene. To strangers, it could be a little creepy at first. Like watching a person’s eyes turn all demonic in an episode of Supernatural, depending on their mood.

But I loved the change. When I was a little girl, I would lie on his chest for hours, watching his eyes change shades of brown, trying to decipher what each one of them meant. It took a long time for me to figure it out, but now I was confident in what each color signified. Right then, they were telling me he was holding back his anger. He was sad for me, but he loved me.

I wished with all my heart he was my biological grandfather, so that I might have something of him living inside me. But he and Gammy had adopted my mom when they got married, so the only thing I had that belonged to him was a piece of his heart hidden safely inside my own.

“Is it wrong that I love all three of them?” I finally asked, not because I needed to fill the silence, but because I wanted his opinion.

Still holding my hand, he turned so he was facing me more. “Some people are going to tell you it’s wrong, Hayat. But those people aren’t anyone who matters. These boys, do they treat you well?”

“Sparks and Jamie are intense, but they make me feel like I’m the only person in the world good enough to belong to them. They can calm me with a smile or a simple brush of their fingers down my cheek. When I’m not with them, they worry nonstop.”

Poppy nodded as I spoke, his lips slightly tipping up at the edges. “And the other one, Ky?”

“He told me he loves me, Poppy,” I admitted. “But…I don’t think he understands what that word means. Because he hasn’t done anything to actually show me. Sparks and Jamie, they haven’t said the words yet, but I can feel it. Like an electrical current just beneath my skin.”

“But you love him, this Ky?”

My stomach did a somersault. “Yes. As much as I don’t want to, I love him.”

“That fast?”

Despite my swollen eyes and red, snotty nose, I smirked at my grandfather. “Really, Poppy? How many times have you told Evan and me about how you walked into Aunt Emmie’s office, saw Gammy sitting across from her, and were gone for her?”

“True,” he agreed. “And then I saw Lana and Lucy, and I knew those girls were meant to be my family too. Lana was too old to adopt, but Lucy became my baby the moment I put that ring on Layla’s hand.”

“And then you had to have the demon twins?” I lightly teased.

My uncles had given my grandparents ulcers, I was sure of it, but when they weren’t causing mayhem, they were great guys. Just like Poppy, the man who didn’t care what I did—as long as it didn’t get me thrown in jail or dead, and even then, the jail part was negotiable. All he wanted was for me to be happy.

For a hot minute, I had been.

Maybe I could be with Jamie and Sparks, but would something always feel like it was missing?

I thought I’d found my band, something that had always seemed to be absent inside me, like an organ that hadn’t been strong enough to fully develop yet. Auditioning for Autumn’s Slumber had been the Miracle-Gro that I’d needed, and I’d finally found the place I’d thought I was meant to be.

Then came Jamie and Sparks—and Ky.

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