Page 98 of Once Upon a Boyband
“Freddie, huh?”
It’s mean and spiteful to even imply she’s texting Freddie for anything but the most benign reasons. I don’t mean it at all, but the only part of my brain that’s functioning right now is the part that wants this conversation to end.
Laney’s jaw clenches the slightest bit, but then her gaze softens. “Don’t do that,” she says gently.Toogently. “Don’t sabotage this conversation by accusing me of something you know full well would never be true. Freddie only textsmebecause he’s concerned aboutyou.He sent me the song because he knows how I feel aboutyou.”
“I’m not sabotaging anything.”
“You are,” she snaps back. “And I think you’re doing it because you don’t want to be honest with me.”
“Honest about what? What do you want to know? You asked me where I put my guitars. I told you I put them up. I told you I’m not going to sing anymore. I’m being honest about that.”
“But you aren’t being honest about why.”
“Why doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” she says.
She doesn’t get it. Shecan’tget it.
“Adam, I want you to answer one question…not unlike the one you asked me.”
I lift my eyes to meet hers, hands propped on my hips.
“If you took away everything else. Kevin. Your mom’s death. All of it. All the conditions and circumstances and crappy things that have happened in your life. Take it all away.”
She pauses and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Her hand is trembling, and I have to clench my hands into fists to keep from going to her, pulling her against my chest.
“What would you do with your life?” she finishes. “Would you sing?”
Yes.
I don’t even have to think about the answer. It’s just there, solid and certain in my mind. Not that it matters. There’s no point in even asking the question because Ican’tchange what happened. I can’t fix what I screwed up. I can’t bring my mom back.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say.
“What you want always matters,” she says.
I grip the edge of the counter. “WhatIwant? The last three months of my mother’s life, she called and called and begged for me to come home. That’s what she wanted. And I didn’t do it. There was too much at stake. I couldn’t risk the tour. My contract wouldn’t allow it. And a dozen other BS reasons Kevin gave me. I hadn’t seen my mother in over a year. And then she died.”
Laney’s eyes close, her voice quivering as she asks, “You didn’t get to see her?”
My shoulders drop, some of the fire draining out of me. There’s been an ache in my chest for eight years, right between my ribs. Sometimes it dulls to the point that I canforget it’s there, but it only takes a word, a look, a random thought for it to flare to life, reminding me all over again what I’ve lost.
The ache is more like a volcano right now, hot pulsing pain, but it eases the slightest bit for having been spoken out loud. For having admitted things—feelings—that I’ve never admitted to anyone else. “I was on stage in London when she died.”
Laney holds my gaze for a long moment before she crosses the kitchen and wraps her arms around my waist, squeezing until I lift my arms and let them fall around her shoulders. Her hands slide up and down my back for a solid minute, maybe two, while we just stand there.
I breathe in the scent of her hair, savor the feel of her pressed against me. But even this feels like too much. She shouldn’t be here with me. I thought I could compartmentalize, build a life apart from my past.
But then I let Freddie in, and it ruined everything.
Maybe it’s going to ruin this, too.
“Laney, I can’t sing anymore because I stood on my mother’s grave and promised her I wouldn’t. I can’t because after what I did, after the way I disappointed her, I don’t deserve the chance. I don’t deserve any of it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Laney
