Page 30 of A Love Song for Dreamers

“This place is pretty epic,” Tyler notes, lookingaround.

“Right? It’s so new. Haley told me they stripped it down to almost nothing beforerebuilding.”

“Not nothing.” Tyler nods toward theceiling.

I crane my neck to look up, spotting the same thing he has. “Therafter.”

One of the beams from the original pool house is still visible, painted to match the white ceiling and spanning this office and the nextone.

“You can always start over, but you can never erase the past,” Imurmur.

“Do you wantto?”

I look back at Tyler, one brow lifted under a fall of darkhair.

Those words have me thinking of us again. How we might have grown up and moved on with our lives, but we can’t forget what wewere.

“No,” I say at last. “Idon’t.”

Tyler tugs at a drawer, which glides open to reveal nothing except a container of paper clips. He pulls out a paper clip and unbends the end of it. “This Ian of yours. He meet your dad andHaley?”

I frown at the sudden change in subject. “No.”

Tyler moves the chair toward me an inch, two, then hooks the end of the paper clip in the belt loop of my jeans. “A real man meets his girl’sparents.”

He’s close enough his scent invades my senses. It’s the sunshine and cedar I remember, with a smokyedge.

“Does a real man sneak out her window so her parents don’t find out he spent the night?” I counter, thinking of prom, when he took Carly to the dance—when I slept in his arms after and made him promise not toleave.

Tyler’s gazenarrows.

If I didn’t know it was crazy, I’d think he was worked up aboutIan.

I don’t need to tell him we’re broken up, because that’ll only invite more questions when it’s none of his business and I really don’t want to talk about it withTyler.

He rises from his chair, leaning in to murmur at my ear. “The next time I visit your room at night, I promise I’ll use the doorafter.”

He walks out, leaving the paperclip dangling from myshorts.

8

“Your pinch harmonics are sloppy,”Istate.

From his seat on the stool across the studio, the kid Jax recruited stares at me with dead eyes. “Can’t you fix it with theboard?”

“I could. But you’re playing it wrong. Play it right, no one’s gotta fixit.”

It’s my first day of babysitting, and the analogy’s not far off. I figured I’d help the kid get the guitar and vocals for a track, but everything’s either wrong or a pain in theass.

When he gets up from his stool, I demand, “Where are yougoing?”

He holds up his hands. “Need a smokebreak.”

Was this what I was like working withJax?

No. Noway.

Could be I’m pissier than usual. Probably because my hand’s been hurting more in the months since I left the tour—or maybe I have more time to think about it—and Zeke called and left a belligerent voicemail to say he hadn’t heard back from me about thesongs.

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