He takes a step back, and I feel it like a physical blow.
“I’ll deal with you on stage. I’ll put on a show. But other that than, I don’t want to keep pretending. Acting like…” His head shakes with disgust. “Like this is just some leftoverlustboiling over between exes… It dishonors everything we have.” He pauses brutally. “Everything wehad.”
Who would’ve thought something as simple as a change of verb tense could shatter my heart into pieces?
“Ryder, wait—” I call, taking three steps after him, watching the broad planes of his naked back disappear through the frame. The door shuts firmly, closing the path between our suites, and a heartbeat later I hear the sound of the dead-bolt being thrown shut.
Barring me from his room. Barring me from his life.
I sink to the floor in my pretty night-sky dress.
I don’t get up again.
Not when Carly finally comes back to the room at five in the morning and finds me lying there, eyes unblinking. Not when she curls up beside me on the carpet and strokes my hair. Not even when the sun starts to rise, announcing the arrival of a new day.
I blink against the pale shafts of light streaming through our windows.
Never in my life has a dawn felt so dark.
Chapter Twenty
ryder
I hatethe five-star hotels with their six-dollar cashews in the mini-fridges I never fail to raid at two in the morning after a show, when I’m too miserable to sleep.
I hate the arenas with their endless string of identical dressing rooms and backstage suites, where I meet VIPs with a grin they somehow believe to be genuine.
I hate the tour bus with its messy surfaces, every nook and cranny littered by someone’s toothbrush or dirty socks or crumpled candy wrappers.
I hate the dark nights when I see the girl writing in the moonlight as we roll toward a new city, her pen scribbling furiously against the pages of a worn notebook.
I hate Linc with his cheeky goddamned grin.
I hate Aiden with his steady, solid confidence.
I hate Carly with her ever-cheerful smile.
I hate the stars in the sky that mock me with memories.
I hate the ache inside my chest that won’t let me rest.
I hate.
I hate.
I hate.
Everyone and everything.
Because the only person I want to hate… is the only one I can’t.
Chapter Twenty-One
felicity
Lifeon the road settles into a bleary routine of toll booths and refueling stops, motion sickness and impromptu jam-sessions. We arrange ourselves into unfamiliar patterns — weary travelers in a transient new existence, bouncing from city to city like nomads, living out of suitcases, never staying anywhere long enough to feel settled. Not completely.
Las Vegas