Page 54 of Drum Me Away
“Your fans are freaking out,” Lacey said. “It was bad enough when you went AWOL while you were on break—that’s almost expected, I suppose. But in the middle of a national tour? You wouldn’t believe the theories being thrown out there.”
“I don’t even want to know.” I hadn’t looked at my social media or my email. I had no idea of the album or the latest single’s rankings. I knew Gabe had rescheduled all the dates up to the upcoming Madison, Wisconsin, show, but beyond that, no clue what was going on.
And I didn’t care.
Right now, in this moment, I just needed to chill with my sister and pretend none of the outside bullshit even existed.
“Whoa,” Lacey said, with her gaze on her phone. “She’s going live.”
“Who?”
“Faith.”
My body jerked like I’d been hit with jumper cables. But I ruthlessly shook it off. I didn’t care what Faith was doing.
I didn’t.
“Everywhere,” Lacey said, her gaze still glued to her phone. “Insta, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube; Jesus, what is she doing?” She paused and canted her head. “She looks different. Less made up, I guess. Her hair is spectacular, though. I love all those colors.”
Fuck me, I wanted to look. Except every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was her. She was in my dreams, in my thoughts, in my fucking head.
“Like a goddamn parasite,” I muttered with a scowl.
“Huh?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Oh wait, she’s talking,” Lacey said, and she increased the volume.
Faith’s voice swept over me, so clearly she might as well have been standing there next to me, and God help me, I wanted to throw this bottle at the porch rail just to focus on the sound of it breaking and the splash of the liquid that would hit me, in order to cut through that voice I did not want to hear yet craved like it was fucking crack.
“Wrong. Everything I did was wrong,” I heard her say, and I tuned in, despite myself.
“I handled our relationship wrong from the very beginning. I have a million reasons why—okay, really, I just have one reason, but it isn’t important, because, ultimately, I should have realized what was going on. I should have been open to what was happening between us.”
What the hell was she talking about? If she was streaming live on all those various channels, I could only imagine how many people were listening to her right now, and she wasn’t making a lick of sense.
“Because that relationship is—wasthe single most important relationship of my entire life.”
Was she talking about her grandmother? To her fans? I thought she wanted to keep that part of her life under wraps. After what I witnessed at the visitation, I couldn’t imagine that had changed.
“No one is more important to me than him.”
“Him who?” I blurted, now fully invested in whatever the hell she was talking about.
Lacey laughed. “Who do you think?” She turned the phone so I could see the screen.
There was Faith, her hair in that topknot like it had been during the first concert of this tour, the rainbow of colors on full display. But Lacey was right, she looked different. Her makeup was less gawdy, more natural.
She was wearing a Darkheaven tank, and—I squinted—were those pearls around her neck?
I couldn’t see below her chest, so I had no idea what else she’d combined with this bizarre mix of her former life and her current one.
She appeared to be walking, and someone else was obviously holding the video camera trained on her. It was dark, so I couldn’t tell where she was, although it looked like she was outside somewhere.
“But here’s the deal,” she continued. “He left me. He’s gone. Disappeared like smoke.” She lifted her finger. “To be clear, it was all my fault. I pushed him away. Over and over, I pushed him away, and he finally, finally gave up on me.”
She shook her head. “Which is scary as hell, because I don’t know how to exist without him.”
