Page 112 of Worlds Collide

Wolf told me?—

All my thoughts stop when the live interview begins.

“Welcome back to our lovely listeners, and to two amazing men who have been so kind to the station for a long time now. Is it twenty years?” the radio host asks.

“About to be eighteen,” Hawk corrects. “I know Wolf looks like he’s fifty, but come on. My skin is pristine.” I hear Wolf’s quiet chuckle mixed in with the host’s and smile just picturing it.

“My apologies, Hawk, you’re right. You’re still the same little kid as always.”

“You’re forgiven of course,” Hawk says with mock seriousness.

“So this song, I mean, it’s some of the best work you two have ever done, and I can see in the writing credits your mom is there.”

“That’s right.”

“So, how was the process of getting to this final version?”

I hear Rich suck in a sharp breath. He knows as well as I that the process was painful, but in the end Wolf wasn’t going to be deterred from making this song the first single of their next album,Shell.

“Well, I wrote most of the song with Mom when she was too sick to write,” Wolf starts out. “Then I shelved it and honestly never wanted to look at it again.”

“Why’s that?” the host asks.

“It’s the story of our parents, you see, and for me it was always mostly a cautionary tale more than a heartbreak song. But then I went and fell in love with someone who you could say is from another world—at the very least his day-to-day is very different from mine—so I had to revise it, and see what I could learn from Mom.”

Wolf has said this to me before, of course, I already know all of it and more, but it’s still hard to hear him talk about it. It chokes me up.

“What did you learn?”

“That the answer is right in the song. Keep your person close, in your orbit, and don’t forget to look around and appreciate what you’ve built. Remember what you created.”

“That’s amazing, that she’s still teaching you lessons, isn’t it?”

“It’s a blessing,” Hawk pipes up and I know Wolf is probably not going to say another word for the rest of the interview so I relax against the back of the passenger seat.

“He did good,” Rich mumbles.

“He did,” I agree.

“I can’t believe they really are going to release all those songs.” He shakes his head as he keeps driving down the busy highway to downtown. Rich was kind enough to pick me up from the hospital while the guys are at the station with Tate, and now we’re on our way back to pick them up.

“And this is only the first single,” I think aloud. “It already went to number one. Can you imagine what it’s going to be like whenthey put out the song they wrote about her called ‘Crazy Old Lady?’”

“That’ll be nothing compared to when they release ‘Barely A Second.’ You know their fans are going to go crazy for yourlove song,” he teases me. I just shake my head and throw out the more outrageous ones.

“How about all the ones Shell wrote about the music industry? About them? Aboutcheating?” I whisper the last word.

Rich snorts and shakes his head. “Have I told you about the day Wolf found that song?”

“No,” I say and lean in. I’m beyond intrigued. Wolf gossip is the best kind of gossip, especially coming from his best friend—well, one of them anyway.

“It was in March, I think, when we were in New York. Hawk was set to fly in so they could actually work on the songs together, and I was just watching TV, minding my business, and then Wolf started laughing. Like I’d never heard before. He laughed and laughed and laughed. It’s the moment I realized he’d healed because he actually said ‘good for her,’ and I could tell he meant it.”

I shake my head but before I can say anything Rich keeps going.

“Then he got all serious and started muttering about you, and when did she start to cheat, and why did she cheat and all of that. That wasn’t as fun. He was obsessed for a few months, watching videos on how to make sure your spouse doesn’t cheat. Seriously, it was intense.”

I can only stare with my jaw practically touching the middle console of the SUV.

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