Page 80 of The Sound of Us

Later that night, I put on my headphones and tuned in to Dante’s show. I knew right away it was recorded, but I didn’t care. I needed to hear the strong, deep, resonant timbre of his voice like I needed to breathe. I needed his music like the blood in my veins. I needed to remember how it felt to hold him in my arms.

You are listening to DJ Dante on WJPK, the independent voice of Chicago radio. Next up is a song sure to make you forget all about winter for a while—“Born to be Wild.”

I snuggled up in bed remembering the last time we were together. I closed my eyes and felt the soft press of his lips, the slow sensual knowing of my body, and the feeling of his arms around me when I shared the soundtrack of my life. I sank into memories of our secret forays, Dante holding me against his hips as we had sex against walls and doors, on dusty tables and rusty chairs. My fingertips trailed over my belly until they brushed the waistband of my pants.

We’re going to spend the next hour diving deep into some metal rock mix that’s perfect for late nights and broken hearts, taped Dante crooned over the radio before the first notes of Danzig’s“She Rides” filled my headphones. Slow and sexy, it is a song about a dangerous, powerful woman who embraces her wild side and is ready to take on anything despite the burden she carries.

Perfect for a little self-love. Not so perfect when I needed to get Dante off my mind. I still couldn’t forgive him—not just for the betrayal or the secrets, but for not having faith in me, for making me feel that I wasn’t good enough all over again.

I closed my eyes and imagined he was with me.

“Touch yourself.”

My heart fluttered and I did as my imaginary Dante asked, brushing my finger over the sensitive bundle of nerves. Nice. But not as nice as his fingers, or even better, his tongue.

“Now your fingers.”

DJ Dante was tormenting me now with Nine Inch Nails’s “Closer,” telling me through the lyrics how he wanted to feel me and drink me down. I felt like I was inside his head. I was him and I was me and we were pain and anger and longing and love.

I pushed two fingers inside me and brushed my thumb over my clit.

“Fuck yourself,”imaginary Dante ordered me, his voice vibrating deep in my chest.

I teased myself the way he teased me through “I Hate Everything About You” and finally reached my peak when he played “Stairway to Heaven.” And he was there with me, whispering,“Good girl,”as I went over.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO“The Chain” by Fleetwood MacDante

I hadn’t been at the station for over two weeks when Siobhan finally tracked me down outside one of the lecture halls. I’d cut everything out of my life except class and visits to the hospital. Somehow, over the last few months, I’d lost sight of my goal and the lessons I’d learned over the years—that the people you love will abandon you, and if you let them in, they will hurt you in ways you could never imagine.

I couldn’t get over how Skye and Noah had both betrayed me by keeping secrets. I couldn’t stay angry with a dying man, but Skye had broken me. How could she be angry with me for not having faith in her when she’d done the exact same thing to me?

And yet I missed her. Her scent lingered on my pillow. Her laughter echoed in my ears. My arms ached with emptiness. I felt like someone had ripped my heart out of my body and replaced it with lead.

“Where have you been?” Siobhan accosted me in the hallway as Nick and I walked out of class. She’d clearly been waiting for me, and one glance at Nick’s guilty face told me how she’d found me. Nick shot me an apologetic look and made a quick escape. “You’ve left me unread for two weeks.”

“I’m done with the station. I need to focus on my grades.”

“I’m running the station bymyself,” she spat out. “I got theboard to agree to make you and me joint interim managers until Noah is back, and you haven’t even bothered to show up.”

“I’ve got a meeting with my father’s lawyer in an hour, Shiv. I can’t do this right now.” Bob had left me a message about some paperwork that needed to be signed to close out my grandmother’s estate and had insisted it couldn’t be handled by the lawyer I’d hired to manage the scholarship.

I brushed past her and made my way toward the exit, but she quickly caught up to me and continued her tirade. “We all have stuff to do. This is my last year, too, and on top of keeping up with my coursework, I’m trying to run an entire radio station so they don’t shut us down.”

I couldn’t understand why she was so upset. Siobhan had always wanted to be in charge. She wasn’t a music person like Noah, but she loved the station. I loved it, too, but there was no way I could even walk through the door knowing Noah wasn’t at his desk. “This is your dream come true,” I said. “You’ve always wanted to run things. You’re more than capable—”

“Shut it,” she said, cutting me off. “I get that you’re upset about Noah. We’re all upset about Noah. But you don’t get to hide away and pretend the station can run itself in his absence. Things are falling apart. There are thousands of emails in his inbox. I’m in engineering, not finance. I can fix a sound board but I can’t tell the difference between a financial statement and a balance sheet.”

I pushed open the door, hoping she’d take the hint, but she followed me outside into the cold. “Our ratings are falling,” she continued. “Your show was our biggest draw, and now we’re sinking in the charts. People are complaining about a lack of programming, the sound boards need to be replaced in both studios, and as far as I can tell there isn’t enough money. It’s a shitshow, Dante. I need you. The station needs you.”

“I’ve never been a team player. You know that. If you need help, ask someone else.”

Siobhan zipped up her jacket and pulled on her gloves. It was gray and bitterly cold outside, the ground covered in snow and ice,a cold wind blowing in from the lake making the minus-fifteen-degree temperature feel like minus-twenty-five.

“I thought you’d put your lonely vampire ways behind you after you started hanging out with everyone,” she said. “You were helping with the interns. You took on a new show and even started a new band. I even saw you smile a few times. It scared me.”

“It was all a big mistake. I lost focus, but it won’t happen again.” The icy wind blew through my shirt, making the hair on my arms stand up on end, but I didn’t bother with my jacket. After feeling numb for the last few weeks, I welcomed the pain.

“You’ve got friends at the station who care, Dante. Even me.” Siobhan’s voice softened. “If you want a shoulder to cry on or you want to go for a drink and talk about how Noah is stuck in the eighties and how he needs to realize no one wants to see a fifty-five-year-old man in skintight black jeans, I’ll be there, albeit with a string of garlic around my neck. You don’t have to deal with this alone.”

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