Page 89 of The Chance

“Don’t forget,” he murmurs with too much mirth for my sour mood and points in my face. “We also swapped spit.”

I make a show of guzzling some of my water, swishing it around in my mouth, then spitting the shit right at his Vans-clad feet.

“Dude.”

Shrugging, I brush passed the other drummer once again, but before I let the growing crowd of roadies swallow me up, I throw a middle finger over my shoulder.

Smoking the same joint does not constitute swapping spit.

“Bro, hey, we’re gonna—”

“Nope,” I pop out to my twin and pat his shoulder as I pass. “Not losing to you again tonight. Ask Toby.”

I don’t stop moving until I catch the flash of orange hair and the new barbell through the bridge of Peach’s nose.

“Can we go?”

“Let me check in with Ian.” His green eyes bounce between mine for only a moment before his gaze drops to my chest. “You plan on taking that shit home?”

I want to tell him that home doesn’t exist. That there is no place left for me to belong, in peace, without this mind of mine wandering. This heart of mine aching. And though I don’t really want to go back to an empty hotel bed … I also don’t have it in me to be around all this …happy. These feelings. The giddiness of the after-show energy that my brothers all get. This weird sense of comradery andlet’s spend even more time together.

Instead, I follow his line of sight and sigh at the earpiece and wires hanging down the front of my shirt.

He’s already waving down an audio tech when I look back up.

Once I’m less a battery pack and earpiece, Peach and I swiftly make our way through the crowd and out into the night air.

He radios our departure to the rest of security before we pull away in a blacked-out sedan.

“Hell of a show, Mac.”

I grumble a thankful response and slide farther into the seat.

“You wanna talk about it?”

My teeth clamp together as I watch the city pass by.

“No,” I finally mumble to the fogging glass.

There’s a rumble of understanding and a stretch of silence that falls over the car so long that I’m tapping out a beat against my thighs with stiff thumbs when he finally speaks again.

“He called you earlier.”

I sink farther under the weight of the reminder. “I know.”

More silence stretches, yet it does nothing to quiet my spiraling mind.

“Can I ask why you’re avoiding him now?”

I love him and it hurts too much to bear.

My exhale is shaky, my chest too tight.

Yet every morning I wake up without him in my bed is like a knife to my already bleeding heart.

“He’s annoying.” It’s what I settle on, but what I really mean is that Jordan Kauffman is a confused man with nowhere to put his curiosities except on me and I can’t carry them anymore.

But have I?

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