Page 92 of Tight End

I catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. My hair sticks up in a million different directions from me constantly tugging on it. I don’t bother to smooth it back. It’s wild and chaotic and right now, that’s exactly how I feel.

I get out of the car and walk toward the entrance. It’s mid-morning, so the breakfast rush is over and it should be pretty quiet inside. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the flash of a camera and grit my teeth.

I’m so not in the mood for paparazzi right now.

Ignoring it, I duck inside and scout the small space until I see Lane in a far corner booth at the back. It’s not until I get close that I see he’s not alone.

I stop in front of the table.

Dak and Aidan look up at me from under the brims of their baseball caps.

Lane clears his throat. “I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the future of the band. Together.”

“You guys flew in just for breakfast?” I ask.

Dak flashes a smirk. “Well, breakfast and to potentially audition new front men.”

“Oh, yeah? And how’s that going?” I bite out.

“B, sit,” Lane orders.

I drop into the booth next to him. “So this is an ambush? You brought me here to lay the news on me before I find out in the tabloids?”

“No, dick,” Aidan says. “There aren’t going to be any auditions.”

Dak chuckles. “There never were going to be. You’re the heart and soul of Sin City. Nobody could replace your arrogant ass.”

“But,” Aidan says. “That doesn’t mean shit between us is fixed and forgiven.”

“No,” I say. “It’s not. So let’s start with that, yeah?”

“You pulled away after Davis died. You skipped practices, were fucking pickled for the better part of two years because of all the booze, you didn’t engage, you didn’t show up for events.” Aidan takes a sip of his coffee. “You weren’t in it anymore. Didn’t seem like anything could pull you back.”

“And what about you?” I shoot back to Aidan. “Did you even bother to talk to me? To ask me how I was?”

“It’s a little hard to be sympathetic when your lead singer is bombed off his ass all the time and doesn’t remember shit from one night to the next. We were always there for you. You were just too out of your mind to realize it. And we dealt with it because Sin City got so big so fast and we had that as a distraction,” Dak says. “But when the dust settles, it’s gotta be us. It can’t be us and you. We’re a team or we’re not.”

I lean forward into my hands. “I fucked up, guys. And I got chewed out by the label, too. But I want to make things better. I’ve realized a lot over the past couple of weeks. I don’t want to cut myself off anymore. Yeah, it took me a long time to deal with Davis’s death, and I had a hard time with it for a lot of reasons. But I can finally see things clearly. I own my mistakes and I’m making up for them. And I’m sorry for what happened at the press conference. That was probably the peak of my dickheadedness.”

“Arguable,” Aidan says. “I can think of a few other times that could rival it.”

I give him a punch in the shoulder.

“We built this thing together and we all want to see it through,” Lane says. “That’s why we’re all here right now. I talked to Aidan and Dak and told them we talked. Nobodywants to break up the band. And everyone is willing to overlook the fact that you were a selfish, self-centered pain in the ass over the past couple of years.”

“I like how you slipped that dig in,” I mutter with a smile.

“Yeah, well, we were all thinking it.” Lane laughs. “We had a rough patch. The important thing is that we bury it and move forward.”

As I watch the guys joke, laugh, and dig into their breakfasts, I am consumed with a sense of belonging that I resisted for a long time. Maybe I pulled away because I felt like without Davis, the guys would end up rejecting me, too. So subconsciously I was pushing them away and driving them to that end to convince myself I was right about the need to self-protect.

As it happened, all I was doing was self-sabotaging.

Family is the most important thing.

Doesn’t need to be blood to be considered family, either.

I realize that now.

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