Page 10 of Second to None

“Yeah. Right.” A strange note of uncertainty entered Mason’s voice. “So the idea is—uh. What if we bring the band back? One song only.”

“The… band?” It didn’t compute.

“Neon Circuit,” he said as if that might be what had me confused.

“Well, yeah. I didn’t think you meant Oasis.” Look at that—my brain hadn’t shut down entirely. I closed my eyes for a beat. “Mason…”

“Cass is performing this year.” Mason’s words came more quickly now, almost urgent. “It’s his idea. One song, make it a surprise. Get people talking and donating.”

“Cass’s idea?” I hated how my voice caught on the name. Five fuckingyears. I wasn’t who I used to be, but somehow, my heart was still hung up on him even if the ache wasn’t quite the same anymore. No longer my first thought in the morning and my last at night, more of a dull kind of tenderness that lingered in the back of my mind.

“Yeah.” Mason didn’t add more than that. I watched the elegant swooping of swallows against the sky’s expanse as I worked through the implications.

“Does he…” Fuck. I exhaled, inhaled, and tried again. “Does he know about Jess? That it was a brain tumour?”

Cass had adored my sister, and it had gone both ways. When she’d died, I’d come so fucking close to breaking our silence—close enough that I’d pulled up his name in my contacts only to stare at it for minutes, my stomach turned inside out. We hadn’t spoken in three years. He was flying high, his solo career eclipsing what we’d done as a band. Even though I didn’t seek them out anymore, I’d seen the headlines and pictures linking him to this model or that singer. He’d moved on. So, calling him? Pathetic.

I’d put my phone away.

Except now he wanted to get us back together. Forcharity.

“No,” Mason said softly, and—uh? Oh.Jess. “It wasn’t our story to tell. If he knew, he’d have dropped everything to be with you. You know that, right?”

“Do I?” I’d aimed for sarcasm and missed by a mile. My ribs hurt, the scent of grass and wildflowers suddenly too sweet, weighing on my senses.

“Maybe you don’t. But the rest of us do. Beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

“Mason.” I had no idea how to continue.Please don’t. This isn’t helping.

“Levi.” Mason drew a breath. “I know he hurt you. We were all so damn young, and no one taught us how to grow up, what matters and what doesn’t, when it’s worth holding on. Think Cass has learned a thing or two since then.”

“He told you that?”

“Not in those exact words. But, yeah.”

Dammit. I propped both elbows on the railing and dropped my head, trying to will down the pressure behind my eyes. I’d long since stopped hoping for a better past.

‘Closure, sort of. Or the opposite?’

Thanks, Jace. A proper warning would have been nice.

“One song?” I asked around the hole in my chest. Sunlight slanted through and illuminated the dark, lonely spots on my soul in stark detail.

Christ, I needed to stop it with the melodrama.

“Yeah,” Mason said. “Pre-recorded, no audience—them’s Jace’s rules. And we’d need to rehearse, of course.”

One song. See Cass again after all this time—after I’d shed my old life and built something new for myself, no longer relying on alcohol to silence the voices in my head.

It should have been an easy no. But… God. Jace was in, and he hated the spotlight in a way I didn’t. While I’d been desperate for a break back then, it had been more about the relentless pace and the pressure to be someone I wasn’t than it had been about the stage, the crowds, the fans. I’d never stopped loving the rush of a great performance, only I lived it through my artists now.

One song and a trip to California?

Mason sounded excited. And Cass—well, it had been his idea apparently, designed to boost donations for cancer research. Of allthings.

Could this mean something to Emily? She might not get it now, not yet—but in three years’ time, or in five?

“What about Ellis?” I asked.

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