Page 88 of The Chance

All of my muscles go taut when I attempt to force out the words I’ve been preparing myself to say, the same ones I told Ian two nights ago.

The same two words that would set us both free, finally, to move on.

I quit.

Yet I can’t say them to his inbox.

My eyes wander around the room, desperate to find the answer hiding somewhere among the solitude, only to land on the cabinet that houses those damn glasses and their colored swirl.

To the barely used dresser and the lumpy cushion beside me.

Then they drop to the designs inked into the skin of my arm, the geometric style bleeding from bold at my shoulder to nearly faded and hiding the line of a gradient soundwave around my wrist.

Foundation and balance.

Stability through music.

My fingers curl into a fist when the voicemail prompts me to end the call.

Instead, I delete the message and hang up.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Mac

The black X onmy palm smears all over my drumstick, smudging it until there’s nothing but a blob left as it does every night that As Above plays on stage.

Tonight, I added eye black above my cheekbones because I was feeling particularly dark just before we took the stage.

Not even my twin’s spiel to the masses about lifting yourself out of the darkness is getting me anywhere near the light and when the set ends, all I can think isfinally.

I do my duty by running to the front of the stage, pose with my brothers, and toss my sticks into the grabby hands of fans.

Ignoring the way I want to linger, to watch security pull the final confetti speckled bodies down from the wave in hopes that maybe,maybeJordan’s hidden in the line that protects us from the mob, I pluck the final pick from Fin’s mic stand. I run it over my fingers, then toss it, pinging it off Peach’s head on accident, and nearly grin when a fan all but bulldozes over the bodyguard to get to it.

He scowls back at me.

I flip him off and saunter backstage.

“Take me for a drink, Thompson.”

Scrunching my nose up at Dare like his statement smells as bad as it sounds, I shake my head. “The fuck would I do that for?”

“Because you’ve been avoiding me since the other night.”

“I’ve always avoided you,” I mutter and push passed him in search of a water.

“Not like this.”

“Bull shit,” I snap back and take a pull from the cold bottle placed into my hand. “Just because we had that one conversation does not make us pals.”

No, he thinksI’mthe runaway.

Fuck him.

And he thinks I didn’t see him running comments about Jordan online, but I did.

So double fuck him.

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