Page 76 of Reverb
Mish rolled her head around her shoulders. “Couple months later, my mom dated this guy who played bass. I kinda wish he’d stuck around because he was nice—nicer than the rest of them. But he was chasing fame.” She stopped. “I get that now. Didn’t then, though. I was ten.”
“I remember ten.” He’d been so torn, wanting the jeans, shirts, and shoes all the guys had. Wanting to be accepted as one of them. Instead, he was “cute” for emulating the boys and shoved back into the dresses he hated.
Mish had a smile now, thin, but there. “When I saw Danny the bassist’s guitar, I asked if I could play it. He thought I was joking, but when I started to get chords and notes out of it, he realized I wasn’t—and spent time teaching me.” Another huff. “Sometimes I wonder what happened to him. I mean, he was something like twenty-five, so he’d be around fifty now. Not too old. Maybe still out there, playing.” She paused. “Before he left, he got a new bass, so he gave me his old one.”
There were tears in Mish’s eyes again. David’s throat was tight. “That was kind of him.”
Those eyes—green now in the summer light—trained on him. “It changed my life.”
He let the silence settle between them. After a while, Mish kicked at a stone. “I miss my mom so much. It’s been years, but the pain never leaves.”
He could only nod. “My parents are alive, but we—drifted apart.” Joining the army. His transition. All those internal scars that never seemed to go away.
Mish raised her face to the sky and drew in a breath. “She called me her little smish. That’s why. That’s...” More tears traced down her face. “I took a name that was all her. Because she was everything to me.”
Her pain was so raw, so intense, David couldn’t move. Didn’t have the right to interrupt. To speak.
She took another breath. “Can I ask you why you chose David?”
“Because he defeated Goliath.” So had he, in his own way.
Maybe Mish understood that, because she met his gaze. “It’s you.”
It was. And Mish Sullivan was her. Every inch.
Mish kicked another stone across the lot. “I think you’re right. This shithead is from my past, somewhere. There’s something about his voice that’s familiar, but I can’t place it.” She pursed her lips. “Why couldn’t someone like Danny drift back into my world instead of this creep?”
So, his instincts had been right. David took no pleasure at all in that. Instead, he focused on Mish’s happy memories. “I don’t know, baby,” he murmured. “Maybe when this is done we can try to find Danny? I bet he’d be thrilled to see how far you’ve come.”
“Yeah, I’d like that.” There was brightness in her words again. An ease in the way she moved. “David?”
“Yeah?”
Mish opened her arms. “Thank you.”
Of course he went. For this woman, he’d always step into her arms.
He expected the hug. What he hadn’t anticipated was her kissing him. Wasn’t the passion of the night before, but her mouth still threatened to take David to his knees. There was affection in that kiss. A homecoming. And a need so deep and profound answered in him that it shook him to his marrow.
This wasn’t a job anymore. Hadn’t been for some time. This was—if he let it be—a road to the future. One he could walk along with others. With Mish. A path he’d never ventured down before with any thought that it might actually work. He wasn’t built for company. He’d been a loner all his life.
But this woman—with her fingers in his hair, with softness, pain, and hope in her lips—with this person, there was a glimmer that the path might be different. Be shared. Be true.
David was frightened and angry for Mish, yes. But in that moment, he was also terrified for himself. Because hope opened doors, but it also shattered lives.
Silence. That had been Mish’s life since Marcella had found David and her in the back lot of the radio station. In fact, they pulled the van around to the loading dock and they’d all boarded there.
The drive to the hotel, where the bus waited to take them to the concert venue, was quiet but for the road noises and the occasional shifting of bodies on seats, shoes on the floor.
Mish’s fingers were twined with David’s. That touch kept her grounded and present even as she replayed the stalker’s words in her head, listening to the memory of that voice. Examining the timber.
The words hurt—the whole damn thing cut her—especially that voice. Something stirred in her mind, but she couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t match the sounds to anything she knew.
Each one of her bandmates was caught in a silence of their own. Ray looked sad. Not hopeless—probably because he knew something could be done. Something had been done. Still, he sat with his eyes downcast. Zavier had his hand resting lightly on Ray’s thigh, as if to remind Ray that he was there.
Dom’s eyes were closed, arms crossed, and Adrian was thumbing and typing on his phone, as was Marcella. Probably dealing with the inevitable social media—and every other media—storm.
All she’d ever wanted to do was play. Play songs and sing and be heard. Lose herself in the music, both in her heart and in the hearts of others. Ray had plucked her out of a bar and offered her a path to that dream, one that he shared with such fierce passion, she’d believed in him even that first night.
