Page 32 of Rockstars, Babies & Happily Ever Afters: Vol. 1

“You didn’t have to come in,” Nick said finally. “I know she called you, but you could’ve just dropped her off and gone.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. It didn’t work when we were seventeen, and it isn’t working now.”

“Oh, believe me, I know exactly how little weight you give me or my opinions. I’m just saying that if some misplaced sense of propriety brought you in here, you’ve done your duty. You helped Lila, and you helped me.” The next two words were harder to force past the knot in his throat. “Thank you.”Now leave.

“It wasn’t anything. I drove my car.” Simon came over to sit beside him, aiming right for the cushion with the spring that had torn through the middle. He didn’t even blink when it stuck him in the ass. “It’s a lot less than I should’ve done these past months.”

Nick stared at the wall with its peeling and chipped paint. Robin’s egg blue, the color had been once. He remembered his mother picking it out and applying it so carefully to the walls. She’d been so proud of this place back then.

Until she’d turned her back and walked away from all of it. All of them.

She wasn’t the only one who’d turned her back. Maybe one of these days he’d get used to the feeling of being gut punched by people he loved, but that day wasn’t today.

Or yesterday.

“He never got over her,” Nick said, balling his hands and stuffing them between his knees. “No matter how many years passed, he always held that torch. She was it for him. The sunrise and the sunset, his life and his death.”

“He didn’t want to let go,” Simon said, his voice just as rough. Sitting shoulder to shoulder, it was as if the years had melted away. Except in the past, their hands weren’t in fists, but gripping their guitars. They weren’t striving for a normalcy that no longer existed for them.

“Maybe I’m like him.” Nick pressed the blunt edges of his nails into his palms. “Never knowing when to quit. Looking back instead of ahead.”

“You’d never drop your pride enough to devote your life to someone like your old man did.”

“No. But there are all kinds of ways to let the past eat you up.”

“Being tenacious isn’t the same as living for something that’s over.”

“Yeah, but how the fuck do you know the difference?”

“You know.” Simon rose and turned, looking down on him. Nick wouldn’t meet his gaze. “We’re not over. Oblivion’s not over.”

Relief poured through him, soaking through limbs sodden with grief. He felt as if he’d been underwater for days—months, years—and only now had bobbed to the surface. “Because of the contract.”

“No.” Simon let out a short laugh. “I could break it. There’s lawyers. I have money. I’m sticking, Nicky, because I want to. Because I’m not ready to walk away.”

Nick nodded and swallowed all the retorts that nearly choked him. He couldn’t do that now. Not on the day his father had died. Not when his girl was down the hall with his sister.

“Thank you for coming,” he said instead, and Simon nodded.

“He was a good man, once. He just got lost.” Simon rubbed a hand over his face and stared off in the distance at a place Nick couldn’t see. “It’s so fucking easy, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Nick smiled at his hands, locked together between his knees. “That’s why I stick close to home.”

Simon smiled back for a moment, then he reached down and clasped Nick’s shoulder. Nick rose and his best friend pulled him into a hug, so quickly that it was almost as if it never happened. Then he was gone.

But it fucking had, and it was hope on a day he’d thought he had none left.

Rather than sit back down on the sofa, he went down the hall to check on Lila and Ricki. It was too quiet. Not that he’d been paying much attention while he was dealing with Simon, but he hadn’t heard a peep out of the room since Lila had been gone and the walls were paper-thin.

At the doorway, he stopped. And stared.

Ricki was curled up similarly to how she’d been when he left her. Lila sat near her feet, sitting guard while she slept. She never looked away.

The hand he’d braced on the doorjamb gathered into a fist.

All at once, he understood how his father had lived and died for the love of one woman. How he’d never been able to forget, or move on. Some things weren’t able to be processed, only endured.

He nearly said her name, his need for her was so strong. But she wasn’t the only one he loved, and his sister needed her too.

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