Page 47 of Where Happiness Begins

“Nothing,” Carter says, voice low.

“Nothing? Dude. Please.” Emmett’s eyes meet mine. “Your husband was the guitarist for Fickle.”

“Fickle?” I ask.

“Just a Grammy-nominated band that earned more recognition in its three years of existence than most musicians ever will in a lifetime.”

I turn to Carter, expecting him to be rolling his eyes or telling Emmett to stop messing with me, but the only thing I find when I look at him is perfect neutrality, only hindered by a light flare of his nostrils.

“Is that true?” I ask.

“It’s been a long time,” is his dumb answer.

“So?” I can’t believe I didn’t know something so important about the man I’ve been living with for the past two months.

“So it doesn’t matter anymore.”

I huff. Only a guy would say something like that.

As if realizing he spoke too fast, Emmett changes the subject, bringing up the next few venues we’ll be going to. Everyone joins in, save for me. Instead, I pull out my phone and begin my research. And while Carter sits right next to me and has his gaze turned down toward my screen, he doesn’t try to keep me from doing it.

I spend the next fifteen minutes scrolling through articles on Google and then videos of the band playing on YouTube. At some point, I undo the band’s name and type Carter’s instead, and when I land on a scratchy phone video showing a man I barely recognize partying in a hotel room, with longer hair and a blazed out look as he holds a forty-ounce bottle in one hand and a joint in the other while slurring the lyrics to a song, Carter says, “Can you close that?”

I barely recognize his voice, and when I notice the begging look on his face, I oblige.

He might not have told me about that time in his life, but I have a feeling he doesn’t tell anyone.

My mind is reeling when we get back into the car and start our drive home.

Searching the band online should’ve enlightened me, but it only brought forth more questions. There is so much online about the band, their rise to fame about six years ago, and then the sudden breakup three years later, but there’s nothing about why they parted ways or what the members are doing now.

Well, I know the answer about at least one of the members.

“I can’t believe you kept all this from me,” I say after fifteen minutes of silence.

He doesn’t need to ask what I’m referring to. “I didn’t actively keep anything from you. I just never talk about it.”

“Why?”

He sighs, rubbing his hand down the steering wheel. “It wasn’t a great time in my life.”

Probably referring to the video I landed on earlier.

“I still think you should’ve told me,” I say, not wanting to bring up something he clearly didn’t want me to find.

“Why? So you’re ready for your FBI interviews?”

“Stop messing with me. It’s important.”

“No, it really isn’t.”

“To me, it is.” I swallow. “I want to know you.”

I don’t bother being embarrassed at how true my words are. At this point, he probably knows it all.

His knuckles blanch for a moment. “You do. More than you think.”

As much as I want to say that I’ve only scratched the surface of who he is, I have a feeling he’s telling the truth. For him, what he’s told meisa lot.

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