Page 57 of High Note

“What’s wrong with me? My granny texted to ask me if I was a lesbian!” Skyla’s expression was absolutely devastated, shattered.

Ouch.

“Okay. I don’t know what you want me to say.” She was a lesbian. No question, no comments, no profound statements. She was queer. Into women. A carpet muncher. Definitely one of those sapphic chicks on the butchy side.

“I don’t know what I want you to say either.” Skyla swallowed hard, fingers drumming on the counter. “I thought I’d be totally cool with it. I thought I’d just be, like completely okay.” She looked stunned, almost bruised. “I don’t think I’m okay.”

Kirsten reminded herself that this is what happens when you hook up with somebody in the public eye. This is what happens when you hook up with somebody who was not out of the closet.

There was a possibility that Skyla didn’t even know that she was going to have a closet to come out of. Maybe this is what happened when you just were experimenting, and you were the person who was the experimentee. Kirsten also knew that.

She deserved a little bit better than that, right? She sure thought so.

“All right, honey.” She took a deep breath. “Tell me what it is you want. Do you want to stay here? Do you want to get an Uber?Do you want me to take you back to the house with the band? Do you want breakfast?” Kirsten just didn’t know what the right thing was.

“Do you want to just go back up to bed and go to sleep? It’s only been a couple of hours.”

God knew things would be easier with a couple more hours of sleep.

They had to be easier with a couple more hours of sleep.

“I’m scared. Kirsten. I don’t want everybody to be mad at me, but I ain’t no coward.”

“I don’t want anybody to be mad at you either.” Kirsten did, however, want to be somebody who was worth being mad for.

Slobbery Reba jumped up on her leg, and Kirsten reached down to scratch her ears. “It’s okay, little girl. No big deal. We got this.”

Skyla blinked at her. “You sound sure.”

Kirsten grinned at Skyla. “You don’t, but that’s okay. You’ve got more to lose.”

When it came right down to it. Kirsten had lost everything that there had been to lose. She’d been there, done that, had the T-shirt. And it was ripped up and wholly in see-through these days.

“Take me back to bed?” Skyla took her hand, the tears falling again.

“You know it. You just need to breathe.”

She didn’t know what else to say. So she simply gave Reba one of her chew bones, and then carefully led Skyla back upstairs to the loft.

It was easy to tuck her in. It was a little harder to slide in next to her.

“Are you mad at me?” Skyla asked.

Kirsten shook her head. “Nope. Nothing to be mad about. Everything’s fine. It was a gig. At a pizza joint. Remember?”

Skyla nodded and curled into her tight, holding on. She cried for a little while, and then she fell asleep like she was a worn-out child.

Kirsten sat there and breathed in and out, staring up at the ceiling, trying to convince herself not to think because god knew her racing thoughts were going to keep her wide awake.

To be perfectly honest, she didn’t think there was any sleeping in her future.

Not this morning.

Chapter Seventeen

Her phone started ringing way later than Kirsten’s, which was good. That meant she got to have that little second sleep, coffee, and food, before she had to start dealing with the band and the publicists.

God, she hated publicists.