Page 118 of Reverb
“You two were so good together.”
They had been. Mish wiped at her eyes. “I know. And maybe you’re right. But I can’t live in between maybe, you know? Gotta move on.”
“I get it, I do.” Dom bumped her with his shoulder. “We’re here for you, you know. You carried us for so long. Let us carry you a bit?”
Mish bumped him back. “Let’s carry each other. We’re a family, right?”
He laughed and rose. “Yup. And the fam says you gotta come and play this new game Zavier discovered at the last stop. He’s trying to find something Marcella isn’t good at.”
“Oh, good luck there. Poor Zavier. He’s found his match.”
Dom offered her a hand up. She took it, because yes, sometimes she needed to let them carry her, too. So she went up and learned to play the game Zav had found.
As Mish expected, Marcella won. Every single time. But by the end of the night, Mish was laughing and grinning as much as Zavier. Ray crowned Marcella Queen of the Games, and they all crawled into their bunks happy, even Mish.
She still held Marly tight. Still missed David, but the ache was a little less harsh. She whispered into that plush fur words that barely made sound: “I still love your dad.”
But life flowed onward. Tomorrow, there’d be more fans. Another show. One more day to heal as best she could, and grow. She’d make it through this. They all would.
David hadn’t expected the loneliness, not while he recovered from his stab wound. There was enough to occupy his time with all the insurance shit and the rehab and exercise he did to heal and keep himself in shape until he could get back to more strenuous workouts. Plus there were all the things he’d put on hold when he’d taken the Twisted Wishes job. Shows he wanted to watch. Books he intended to read. Exhibits he wanted to go see before they left the city.
Plenty to occupy his brain and keep him busy. He should have been fine. That growing sense of isolation was just a reaction to being back in his element, that’s all. He’d been off on his own most of his life, ever since high school, really. Sure, he’d been surrounded by people, but mentally, he’d relied on no one. No more than a stranger afloat in a sea of humanity, not fitting in. Everything was back to normal, or should have been.
He didn’tneedanyone. He’d had buddies on deployments and got along with people in general, but those connections had mostly drifted away. Lovers came and went. He’d had several in the army, but those had been on the downlow due to DADT—those women had moved on quickly, too.
He’d never developed feelingssostrong and deep that they tied him up in knots about his duty versus his desires. Everything had fit neatly in his mind.
Until Twisted Wishes. Until Mish Sullivan.
He wanted to hate them all, but that was impossible. Instead, as the chaos of lawyers and physical therapy wound down, as he fell back into the life he had before he’d met that amazing group of humans, he found that hemissedthem. Mish most of all.
Life was—empty. Devoid of color and vibrancy. He ached for the sound of Mish’s voice and their conversations. Her laugh and touch. The way she understood him. How she moved in bed and on stage. Her fear and anger. All of it. He wanted more time. Wanted to reach back into the past and stretch out what he’d had. Somehow make all of this better. Be the kind of person she could date and have. Who’d appreciate her and her life and not be so—selfish.
Didn’t know how. Couldn’t figure out a way to shake off the terror of relying on another, of not being self-sufficient. Of being useless.
Fuck if he didn’t catch himself thinking about the other members of Twisted Wishes, too—of that family who’d nearly adopted him. He’d get breakfast, and Adrian’s morning runs, his coffee, and his friendship burst into David’s head. He’d pay bills, and Marcella’s quiet, organized presence was there. Zavier’s devilish grins and quips flitted through his mind when he overheard something amusing. The way Dom switched between bookworm and rock god came to David as he walked between the shelves at the bookstore.
And Ray. God, Ray, whose last words once all the paperwork had been completed still echoed in David’s brain. “You know, there will always be a place for you here.”
As David scrambled to find another job, Ray was there in his head. After everything that had happened, after David had broken Mish’s heart. As if Ray cared about him.
They didn’t need him, though. There’d been no security incidents on the latest leg of the Twisted Wishes tour. No reports of stalkers. All the photos he’d seen showed Twisted Wishes happy and smiling and whole. The show reviews were exuberant. Mish and Ray’s duets were the highlight of most nights.
Maybe Ray’d been nice in saying what he’d said, but David didn’t want to be shoehorned into a group out of pity. Or so he told himself over and over.
But in the months that followed the stabbing, as David tried his damnedest to ignore the ache in his heart and soul, he found himself turning everything over in his head. His unjustified frustration slid into sadness, and he couldn’t help realize that maybe...maybe Ray had meant what he’d said. Maybe there could have been a place for him in the Twisted Wishes family.
He’d been a fucking fool for running out on Mish Sullivan.
Oh, he’d lie awake at night and turn that over in his head. The thought lodged itself in his brain like a hook with a barb, so deep that the more he rooted it out, the more he tugged and pulled, shit he didn’t want to deal with surged to the top of his psyche. His sense of self. His pride. His unwillingness to listen when he knew what was best.
His goddamned martyr complex.
Once the doctors cleared him for it, he threw himself back into running, despite the heat in the city. Even that didn’t numb away the shame that wormed up from the depths of his brain. Turned out hewasthe kind of asshole dick he hated—someone who didn’t compromise. Someone who put their own fears ahead of others, without so much as a thought to working through them.
God, he wished he had someone to talk to. Not a therapist—he had one of those—but a friend.
There wasn’t anyone he was close enough to. The few people from the army that still talked to him weren’t the type to listen to relationship troubles. The one person David could talk to, the one whose number he still had—was one he couldn’t even reach out to. He figured Adrian would have blocked his number, anyway.
