Page 152 of Dirty Rock

“Why?”

“Because it’s always been easy for her.” She sighed heavily, her chest stuttering on the inhale. “Even the hard stuff. She’s always been so composed, so in control.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s been easy. It just means she’s good in a crisis. Everyone’s different.”

“But when you look the same, those differences seem unfair.”

“Everyone’s in control of their own lives, sweetheart.”

“As someone who went off track so easily, I thought you’d be a little more understanding. I thought you’d relate to someone like me. Someone who finds it easy to fuck up and then blame everyone else for their mistakes.”

I couldn’t blame her for that one. My brows rose as I took the hit of her truths, and I gave myself a moment to do this right. “I do understand. That doesn’t mean it’s right.”

“I just want…”

“What do you want?”

“Everything she has. Even some of it would do.”

“Have you always felt like that about her? That envy?”

Sarah swallowed her shame and offered me a small nod of confirmation.

I took a step closer. “I know you’re going through hell right now, Sarah. Jules knows it, too. We can’t do anything to change that. But her happiness shouldn’t upset you in the long run. It just means you’re missing something within yourself if it does. Believe me, I know. I’ve been there—where another person’s fortune made me angry. Like I was the only one allowed to breathe, feel, hurt, lose, and live. Before Julia, I wanted everyone to feel as empty and as lonely as I did.”

“You have me all figured out, don’t you?”

“I don’t even have myself figured out yet.” I rested a hand on her shoulder. “All I know is that there comes a time when someone wakes you up. I hope it happens for you soon, and when it does, I hope you let your big sister shine the way she’s always been scared to.”

Sarah looked up into my eyes and searched them. “I always thought you’d be a real arsehole.”

“I am.” I smiled.

She laughed softly, despite her pain, and she looked back out to sea. “Life is fucking scary, Rhett,” she whispered, as though the thought shouldn’t have been shared or may get lost in the wind.

I squeezed her shoulder and followed her gaze. “Not when you have the right people around you. Then, despite what you think, it can be pretty fucking great.”

Chapter Fifty-Two

Here’s the thing:

You only have to give up control once and survive it to recognise how freeing it can be.

A week later, Jules and I were in a hotel suite in the middle of London again. We’d decided to stay in the city for the night instead of driving back to the cottage on Mersea Island after a full day of recording.

We’d had a special visit from averyexpensive doctor in our hotel suite to confirm that the eleventy-billion tests she’d peed on weren’t wrong, and that Jules was pregnant.

She couldn’t stop pacing the room, her hands gesticulating everywhere as she went through scenario after scenario with the band and how they were going to take the news. She talked about Dicky and how she was going to deliver the news to him. She talked about meeting my parents properly, which I couldn’twaitto happen at the weekend, and she panicked about how best to announce all this to the media.

Okay, so maybe giving up control wasn’t that freeing for her.

For me, it was fucking beautiful.

I feared nothing as I laid back on the bed with my hands behind my head and my legs crossed at the ankle, with nothing but a white sheet over my groin. She was in black lacy underwear—which she’d already mentioned wouldn’t fit her soon, so I had to stop giving her ‘that’ look apparently—and I couldn’t take my eyes off the way her tight arse moved around with every stride, or the way her swollen breasts pushed against the material, begging for me to set them free.

Mostly, I couldn’t stop my gaze from drifting to that goddamn stomach that now carried my everything inside of it.

“And then next week, if I survive the meeting with your parents—”

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