Chapter Twenty-Six
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
BONNIE
UNKNOWN
Are you okay, rockstar?
It’s the first text I’ve ever gotten from my stalker that felt genuine, and it catches me off guard.
At least the question is an easy one.
I’m not.
I’m not okay at all. I had nightmares every time I closed my eyes last night, and I ended up playing video games on my computer while binge-watching a paranormal television show instead of sleeping. I can’t even count the number of times I tapped over to Zeb’s messages to send a few memes back and forth or hope the conversation geared toward something unimportant and completely random.
Thankfully, Reed had been awake and online to game with me, and I’d clung to his company until he’d decided to go to the studio to work on some things.
I’m okay.
Don’t worry about them.
I have you.
I’ll take care of this.
If fucking only.
Something tells me this isn’t just going to go away, even if it’s what I’m really hoping happens. Evil goes away if you just ignore it… right?
Yeah fucking right.
Evil festers.
I’ve already called Darcy for another chat—my excuse is that I want them to meet Gemma. Though, in reality, I need a reminder. All I could think about last night was what time the liquor store opened this morning. And when nine A.M. rolled around, I knew where my keys were. I knew where my boots were. I had the excuses planned out if I was caught, had the hiding places ready, the mouthwash and body spray to mask the scent—
And then when my boots were on and my keys were in my hand, I stopped at the door.
One sip gives them back all the power.
One sip makes them right.
I almost jump when my phone vibrates again.
GEMMA
I’m on the way up.
Shit.
I can’t look like I’ve been crying for the last couple of hours.
I quickly push my sneakers on my feet and grab a thin plaid jacket to wrap around my waist—double-checking in the mirror that no one can see the bruise still lingering on my shoulder from my stalker.
I look so fucking sad.
Yesterday, I was bubbles. I was giddy. I was moving forward and thinking I might have a chance to be happy.
Today feels like I’m back at square one.
The knock on my door pulls me out of the trance. I grab my sunglasses from the bowl, swing my belt bag over my shoulder so that it braces across my chest, and open the door.
A sigh leaves me when I see Gemma, and somehow, I can practically feel the light seeming to reach my eyes.
“Hey.”
I don’t know why my voice sounds weird.
“Hey,” she says, gaze wandering over me. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” I say as I close the door behind me. “I was going to bring snacks, but then realized I don’t have any food except caffeine bars to help me sleep,” I tell her once we’re at the elevators.
Gemma’s brows narrow at me. “Help you sleep?” she asks.
The bell dings.
“Oh. Yeah. Some types of caffeine just mellow me out or put me to sleep,” I reply.
She chuckles. “Don’t you drink coffee in the mornings?”
“Yeah, I can’t function without it either. It helps slow things down,” I admit. “It’s like my mind is a big knot of more knots, and once the coffee hits, it just starts unwinding. There’s still a lot going on up there, but it’s easier to manage. The energy drinks Reed and I get before our shows have green tea caffeine in them, and that’s the only kind that actually works like it’s supposed to. It’s like I hit this threshold where the coffee stops making me sane and starts putting me to sleep. Reed is like that, too, and now, you think I’m weird,” I say when I notice her face. “It’s an odd symptom to have, I know. I know—fuck—that sounds so weird. Now, I’m fucking weird. Shit. I made myself the weird girl—”
Gemma’s laughter crowds the small elevator. “No, no, I’m laughing because it does the same thing to my dad,” she tells me.
“Really?” I ask, delighted that she’s talking about her family.
“Yeah. We could never do overnight travel because coffee would just knock him out.”
“Oh no,” I say when we’re in the lobby. “It doesn’t do that to you, though?”
She shakes her head. “Thankfully not. You are lucky today, though.”
We reach her SUV then, and she opens the door for me.
“Why’s that?” I ask.
“I came prepared with snacks.”
She closes the door, still staring at me with that same smile, and I let out another heavy breath.
For five minutes, I didn’t think about anything other than her.
For five minutes, I got to be myself.
Gemma gets into the driver’s seat then, and as she’s clicking her seatbelt, I lean across the console and kiss her cheek.
Her brows narrow my way. “What was that for?” she asks.
“For making my brain all hazy. And I really, really need hazy this morning.”
I swear her chest stops moving, her gaze darts to my lips. The way she’s staring…
“Come here,” she says, and my heart leaps into my throat.
Because when she leans across the console… when she pulls my face to hers… every inch of my body ignites. I feel like a human firecracker, and her lips landing upon mine are lighting the fuse.
Fucking hell .
My shoulders droop. I brace one hand on her cheek, the other on the console, steadying myself so that I don’t melt into this seat and end up on the floorboard. The soft way she’s kissing me… it’s like she needed this as much as me. I nearly groan when her tongue slips between her parted lips and meets mine.
My mind is blank to everything except her.
This feels so fucking good. It scratches every desperate inch of my mind and aching body.
And when we part, I’m baffled entirely.
Her eyes drift over my face, lingering on my temple, my hair, my jaw, my lips… She strokes my cheek with the tips of her short nails, and I’m still trying to figure out what the hell just happened when she eventually speaks.
“How was that?” she asks softly. “Good fuzzies?”
“All the fucking fuzzies,” I breathe.
I’m dumbfounded as she sits back in the seat, puts the SUV into drive, and then pulls away from the curb as if that kiss was only a distraction from my own mental suicide.
Holy shit.
“What?” Gemma asks, and I swear there’s a smile daring to curl her lips when I look over at her.
“Ah… I…. Music—” I all but lunge for the radio dial and turn the volume up as fire invades the back of my mind.
Because the last time I was kissed across a console like that, it didn’t end very well.
Fuck, go away .
“Hey,” Gemma says after a few minutes, turning the music down. “Are you okay?”
“After that kiss? No. No, especially when I know it doesn’t mean I get to have you anytime I want still.”
She chuckles. “Yeah, you’re right. But I meant… are you okay? You said you needed to clear your head.”
“Ah… it’s just… it’s this damn song,” I lie. “I couldn’t go to sleep last night.”
“How can I help?” she asks.
Stay with me tonight.
Shit. That’s a bad idea.
I shrug. “Kissing me again might cure everything, actually.”
Quiet laughter leaves her. “Tell me about the song. Do you need to talk it through?”
“You want to talk music?” I ask.
“Bonnie, I will talk about the life cycle of worms if that’s what you want to talk about. I may not understand everything like the guys, but I can listen.”
“Are you sure? I get very passionate about music.”
She glances my way. “I’m counting on it. I want to hear everything on the hike. I thought we’d just do a shorter trail today because it’s hot as fuck. Unless you want to go to the sign and back.”
“I don’t think I brought enough water for that. And Darcy said they would meet us at the observatory a little later.”
Gemma switches hands on the wheel. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I really didn’t mean to blow you off.”
I shake my head, even though I wish like hell she had been there.
I wish she had been with me.
I wish she had heard the guy on the phone.
I know I should be telling her about it. I should tell her everything.
Yet, I can’t bring myself to mention it.
“Hey—” Gemma says, getting my attention. “You zoned out on me.”
“Hm?” I blink out of the daze. “Oh. Maybe I was just trying to see if you’d kiss me again.”
Gemma snickers. “Don’t make me regret that.”
“I prefer the fantasy that it’s all you’ll be thinking about today,” I counter.
She shakes her head and switches hands on the wheel again. “Just talk to me about your music. What’s holding you up?”
I smile at her one more time, and as I begin to ramble, I fucking ramble .
I’m still talking when we park, when we get out of the SUV and grab our bags, when I follow her toward the trailhead. I don’t even know that my conversation stays on music as I think I deviate every few minutes at the sight of something that catches my attention, igniting yet another conversation that some how circles back to the music.
I am a hot mess express today.
And it is fucking hot .
Thank god I wore shorts.
We slow eventually and step off the trail a little so as to not be in anyone’s way, and Gemma hands me a water bottle from her backpack. She put on a baseball hat once we left the car that’s currently framing her eyes so perfectly that I’m having a hard time looking anywhere else.
“You’re staring again,” she says, smirking sideways at me.
“Hard to stare anywhere else,” I blurt.
“Flirt,” she mumbles. “Did you ever do any of these trails growing up?” she asks me.
“Nah. Dad only cared about surfing. You?”
“Oh yeah. My dad was really into helping me with track. He said the best way to get stronger and build my stamina was to run trails. So, that’s what I did in the summers. He’d wake me up before fucking dawn to drive us here or really any trail just so I could get a start on it before the heat became too much.”
“Your jogs in the mornings make more sense now,” I say.
“Old habits,” she shrugs.
“What about your mom?” I ask. “Was she into this kind of thing? I barely remember ever seeing her at graduation and everything.”
“Ah…” She hesitates, and I halfway regret bringing it up. “That’s because, at graduation, she was in rehab,” she finally says.
My stomach drops. “Oh.”
Gemma peers sideways at me and gives me a nervous smile. “Does that bother you?”
“That your mom was in rehab? No. No, I just… I think I just wish I had been the kind of friend to you that would have known that,” I say.
“I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want anyone to know anything different about me. Any little thing that might put a target on my back other than simply being the girl with glasses.”
“How is she now?” I ask as we start walking again.
“She’s… one day at a time, I think. Her vice was pills. She was in an accident when I was ten and back then, doctors were handing out pain medication like candy. She broke her leg and had a fractured pelvis from the accident. She just kept needing more and more to keep the pain away, and the withdrawal…”
She pauses to sigh as if replaying a tough memory behind her eyes, then smiles softly at me. “Now, I’m the one making our conversation sad.”
“How many times did she go to rehab?” I ask.
“Twice,” she replies.
“And now? How is she now?”
“She’s… she’s okay. After her first stay, she did really well for a while. Almost made it from freshman to senior year, or so I thought. We do a big family dinner with my mother’s side on Christmas Eve, always at my aunt’s because her place is the biggest. And my senior year, we figured out Mom had been using for the last few months. She’d been taking just enough to take the edge off and still function.”
“Shit,” I mumble.
Because I know how that is.
It’s exactly how I want to feel right now, exactly how I functioned for months.
“That night after dinner, I found her in the bathroom snorting whatever pill she’d brought with her,” Gemma goes on. “I remember yelling at her, crying. The whole family got involved to the point that she actually left and went home. And then, the next morning, I went into her room to apologize, and I found her passed out in the bed. There was vomit everywhere.”
This fucking hurts.
I can’t even count how many times I woke up covered in the dinner from the night before.
“My dad took her to rehab again, and by the time she got out, I had graduated, Dad had sold the house and sent her the divorce papers, and I was off to college. She went to live with my aunt after that,” she finishes.
“Damn,” I say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d gone through any of that.”
She waves me off. “Those fucking pills… they had a grip on her like nothing else.”
“Pills are fucking wild,” I agree. “When the alcohol wasn’t doing the job, add a pill. It was sure to fuck you completely over.”
“I went home to see her before I started this job. I was so nervous that I’d get there and see those eyes—the blown pupils and the wild, dissociated look. But she looked good. She was the mom I remembered growing up.”
“How long is she sober now?”
She looks up like she’s counting back the years. “I think eight years.”
“Wow,” I say, genuinely impressed.
A sheepish huff of amusement leaves her. “Sorry, you… This probably brings up shitty memories for you, doesn’t it?”
“No more than any other day,” I admit. “I think about the people who I hurt when I was bad a lot. The band. My dad… I don’t deserve their forgiveness for what I put them through. And the way they supported me after, how they brushed it off and said, hey, let’s just make some music, I’m happy you’re still here … That was everything.”
“Were they what saved your life?” she asks.
I smile at the ground. “No—I mean, yes, they were part of it. But at the core of everything? The thing that grounds me when I have the keys in my hand and purse over my shoulder ready to walk down the street to the liquor store? That’s music.”
“Always music,” she says as if she already knew.
“Always fucking music,” I say. “Music gave me something to dream of when I didn’t see a career path worth wanting a future for. Music was there for me when I was trying to figure out why I was more interested in Ellie’s attention versus Matthew’s in middle school. Music held me every day and night when the walls felt like they were closing in. It told me to hang on, to just make it through the day any way I had to—drunk, high… Because if I could reach sunset, if I could just get through one more day having to put on a strong face and pretend like I was okay, I could have the darkness all to myself.”
I pause to collect myself and blink back the tears burning my eyes.
“Music took me to that Young Decay concert,” I go on. “And it helped me have the confidence to jump on that stage. And without that fucking stage, without them… god. I’d be dead. After I got sober the last time, music somehow became even more meaningful. It was the savior I needed to get through the days and nights when I was most alone—when the bottle called me, and my mind told me no one would know if I took a sip in the dark. It’s fucking hard being the only person in a room who doesn’t have a choice in facing everything head-on. People don’t realize how lucky they are that these vices don’t become a crutch, that maybe they don’t have addictive personalities.”
“Do you hate people for that?” she asks.
I kick a rock. “I used to.”
“And now?”
“Now, I’m just glad to be alive. Everything is a little more beautiful when you’re on borrowed time.”
Gemma twists the cap back on her water bottle. “Remind me to send an offering to the god of music,” she says.
“Why?”
“Because I’m really glad you’re still here, too.”
My heart does a little somersault at the sincerity in her eyes. My fingertips begin to pulse. I need her to kiss me again, so I know I’m not making all of this shit up in my head. Her smile falters slightly when she seems to force herself to stop looking my way, and I quickly hug my arms around my chest and clear my throat.
“So…”
“So,” she says, seeming to get my joking drift.
I huff amusedly. “So.”
We glance at each other, and I swear if we weren’t walking on this fucking trail, I’d kiss that little smirk off her lips.
“Do you want to go inside the observatory while we wait on Darcy?” she asks.
I sigh, the exhale shaky. “Yeah.”
I’ve only been to the observatory a handful of times, and each time, it baffles me. The world seems so small beneath all of this, my life so meaningless in comparison. Gemma quietly walks at my side as I go on and on at each exhibit, pointing out little details and reading fact boards at each stop. When we eventually reach the dark room with the stars above us, I take advantage of us being the only ones in the room and spin a few times in the very center.
My head hangs back, arms out, and I slowly take in everything above me.
“I’ve always wanted to do this,” I tell her. “There are usually way too many people here.”
Gemma huffs from a few feet away, hands in the pockets of her joggers and staring at me from beneath her black baseball hat.
“Have you ever seen a sky like this?” I ask.
She takes a couple of steps towards me. “Yeah. Out at Joshua Tree,” she says.
“Do you camp?” I ask.
She snorts. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “I mean, I have, but I’m not serious about it by any means. Views like this, though… I might go camping again for this.”
“Zeb likes to camp,” I say.
Gemma smirks. “That doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“He’s always wanted us to go to Joshua Tree. Says we’ll have an out-of-body experience there. Aliens and shit,” I go on.
“Okay, I take it back. I’d go camping just to hear his take on all of that,” she says when she reaches me.
I snicker. “I’ll tell him to plan a trip. That could be a fun way to get out of our heads with the album, too.”
“Do they make national park horror movies?” Gemma asks.
“I feel like the answer to that should be yes. Especially the chasing part. Big open fields. Aliens. Wild animals.”
“Plenty of places to bury the bodies,” she adds, and I grin.
“How many people do you have to get rid of?” I ask.
She chuckles. “Ah… three,” she tells me, and I halfway wonder if it’s a joke or not.
Her smile widens upon seeing my obvious confusion. “Girl has to have enemies, right?”
I eye her. “Do they, though? Is that like a normal thing?”
“I think it’s hard to go through life without having at least one grudge,” she says.
“Like the people who make it all the way to adulthood without any kind of trauma,” I say.
“That is a special kind of life,” she agrees. “I wonder what it’s like to hold onto innocence for that long.”
“I feel like I was born guilty,” I say. “Like I never even stood a chance. There was always something that was going to fuck me up.”
“Life is shitty like that,” she says, smirking.
I beam. “I love finding other cynical people,” I say. “No grass is greener or toxic positivity. The world is a pile of shit. We’re just lucky enough to find the patches of wildflowers every now and then.”
“The occasional mushroom growing on top that gives you delusions,” she jokes.
A soft snicker leaves me. “You get it,” I say.
Gemma pauses when her chest brushes mine. The pull between us overwhelms all of my senses. It feels like she’s already holding me in her arms, already kissing me deeply as if the stars might rip me from her grasp if she doesn’t.
And yet, she remains centimeters away.
I pathetically lean toward her when she wraps my hair around her finger, gaze searching my face like she feels the same pull.
“One day, I’ll kiss you under the actual sky like this,” she says as she tips my chin back.
“I think I’d like it if you kissed me under this one,” I whisper.
Her lips quirk upward as she leans down, and just when I open my mouth in the most desperate way, hoping she’s going to take me up on the suggestion, she kisses my cheek.
“IOU, right?” she whispers in my ear.
A trembling breath leaves me. My chest sinks. And when she straightens over me, I open my eyes to hers.
“Right,” I breathe, lost in the swirling abyss of her dilated gaze.
“ Ahem ,” someone says nearby, clearing their throat.
I turn as I recognize the voice, and heat slaps my cheeks when I see Darcy standing by the door smirking.
“Am I interrupting?” they ask, head tilting.
I pull away from Gemma, chuckling and shaking my head at Darcy. “Just taking in this shit,” I say, approaching them. “Gemma says she’s seen a sky like this at Joshua Tree. Don’t you go up there a lot?”
“Ah, okay. Hell yeah,” Darcy says, stepping into the room. They hold their hand out to Gemma upon reaching us. “Darcy.”
Gemma smiles. “Gemma,” she says, taking Darcy’s hand. “Sorry about yesterday. Work gets a little… hectic sometimes. These four always seem to have trouble following them,” she adds with a nod at me.
“I don’t even know that trouble entirely defines the shit we have around us,” I say.
Gemma raises her brows in agreement. “Still, I hate that I had to blow you off. Any time I get to learn more about her, meet the people who make up her whole…” She looks over at me, and the fuzzies swarming not only my stomach but my head have me planting my feet firmly on the ground so that I don’t collapse into her arms—and the way her eyes skitter over me doesn’t help.
“Well, I want to know whatever she’ll give me,” Gemma adds.
Darcy is beaming at her in a way that I’ve never seen Darcy beam.
And I just want to kiss Gemma until my soul leaves my body and all that’s left is a decrepit pile of bones and dust and blood willing to sacrifice everything to be reunited.
“So… should I come back later and let you two finish whatever was happening here, or…” Darcy teases, beginning to back away from us.
“Oh, shut up,” I say as I take a step back from Gemma. “Did you say you were bringing food? I’m fucking starving.”
I exchange one more look with Gemma over my shoulder before sinking in step with Darcy, and the smile she peers at me with grabs my heart and pulls it out of my chest.
I think she’s still holding it when we settle at one of the picnic tables outside to eat.
I lose track of everything sitting between them. I lose myself in the laughter and the way Gemma continues to watch me. I fall deep into the discussions of life and the beyond. And after a while, it hits me that I haven’t thought about the previous night in hours.
Hours since I heard his voice changer in my ear.
Hours since I felt the devastation that phone call did to me.
Hours since I thought I would need a drink to get through the day.
The realization mellows me out, and I’m stuck staring at Gemma when her phone eventually rings.
“Oh shit,” she says, peering down at the name across the screen. “Work wife. I’ll be right back.” She stands and shows me Kade’s contact photo, and I nod.
“Okay.”
I watch Gemma press the phone to her ear and step away from us, one arm hugging over her chest. She’s talking so low, I can’t hear any of it. Darcy says something—standing to clean up the table, I realize—and I join them, numbly going through the motions as the voice from the phone call last night fills my mind.
I’ll make sure you remember it this time.
I’ll make sure we finish.
The memory stabs me in the chest. I should tell Gemma. I need to tell her. I need to tell her everything I remember about that night—which is honestly a load of bullshit glimpses that I’ve shoved so far in the back of my mind that the thought of digging them up feels like someone is slowly dragging a knife across the backs of my knees.
I don’t think I’m ready to tell her everything, and that somehow hurts even more.
“Tell me why again,” I say to Darcy after a few minutes, my gaze still on Gemma. “Tell me why I can’t numb this pain while everyone else can.”
My voice drifts with every word, to the point that I can barely stop my lips from curling downward.
Darcy toys with the elastic band on their wrist. “Did something happen?”
I bite the inside of my mouth, swallowing. “Something,” I say.
They sigh and nod, unwilling to push at my vagueness, and that’s one of the things I love about Darcy. They didn’t take me on to be someone who pries… but being there if I need a reminder or a nonjudgmental confidant… that, Darcy will do.
“You can,” Darcy says. “You can go to the store. You can get that bottle. And you can drink it. And then, an hour later, when the pain still feels the same, you’ll get another bottle delivered. And another. And another. At some point, you’ll probably hurt someone. Though… what does it matter, it’s just one more, right? And then, a year is going to pass by in front of your eyes, and you’re still going to think you’re on that couch asking for one more.”
“Just one more,” I say sadly. I meet their eyes when I blow out another audible breath. “Thank you,” I say.
Darcy nods. “You know all of this. You don’t give yourself enough credit. You know you’re actually a strong person, right?”
“Ha. Most days I’m fully aware that I’m a piece of shit,” I say, and Darcy chuckles.
“That makes two of us,” they say.
I exhale as I meet Gemma’s eyes, and she smiles at me before pivoting to pace again, phone still to her ear.
“And this?” I ask, staring longingly at her. “This is a bad idea, right?”
“Horrible,” Darcy says, and I know they’re joking. “Still… you’re asking the right questions. You’re taking it slow. I’d be more worried if you had jumped in headfirst without checking the depth of the water.”
“So fucking deep,” I say, though the words sound breathless.
For a moment, neither of us speaks. I’m so consumed watching Gemma that I barely notice Darcy moving, and it’s only when I see them hold something out at me that I look down.
It’s a coin—a sobriety chip.
God, it’s beautiful.
There’s an engraved ocean, a high wave, and skulls embedded in the sand the water is running over. The sun hangs on the horizon, the sunset behind it. And on the back is the number two hundred and sixty inside a triangle, along with the words One More Sunset curved along the bottom.
I blink back the tears stinging my eyes. “Darcy…”
“I know it’s a couple of weeks early—”
“Three,” I interject as I remember staring at the number two hundred fifty-seven on my bathroom mirror this morning. “Three weeks early.”
“—but I just wanted you to see it,” they go on. “I’m not giving it to you. I’m not jinxing the progress you’ve made. I just wanted you to see how fucking hard you’ve worked, Bonnie.”
I clench my jaw to keep myself from falling apart. “It’s that close,” I manage as my heart swells.
“You’re so close,” Darcy says.
The morning I had replays behind my eyes. The keys in my hands. The shoes on my feet. My hand on the knob.
I curl Darcy’s fingers back around the chip and nod when I meet their eyes. “Give it to me at two-sixty,” I say.
Darcy smiles softly. “It’ll be waiting for you.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Gemma coming toward us once again. I quickly wipe the tears from my cheeks—a poor attempt at looking like I’m not an emotional mess. However, despite the fact that I’m sure she can see my puffy eyes, she doesn’t say anything about it when she reaches us.
“Sorry about that,” she says, pausing beside me. “Everything good?”
“Yeah,” I manage.
“Oh, yeah. I actually have a thing I have to get to,” Darcy says, smiling at me. “I was just telling Bonnie I’d see her again after Radio Eleven.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say as if it’s the truth. “I’ll… I’ll see you then.”
“It was good to meet you,” Darcy says, and Gemma takes their outstretched hand again.
“Ah, yeah. Same to you,” Gemma replies.
Darcy looks between us as they back away. “Three weeks, Bon,” they say as they turn on their heel. “See you then.”
“Bye, Darcy,” I call out.
Darcy disappears into the parking lot, and I blow out another audible breath, letting my head hang back, the sun basking heavily on my skin.
“Are you okay?” Gemma asks.
No.
Someone called me.
Someone threatened me.
The people who hurt me that night are back.
I need help. I shouldn’t be alone.
These are all things I should be saying to her, words that I shouldn’t be ashamed to say out loud.
“I don’t want to stay here all week,” I eventually say.
“Okay,” she says, shifting on her feet.
“I just… I need my family,” I say as I turn toward her. “I don’t feel safe in my own head. And I realize how fucking weird that sounds—”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.” She reaches for my cheek and swipes away a tear that I hadn’t even realized fell. “We can do whatever you need. Do you want to go today? Tomorrow?”
“The next day,” I say. “My dad is driving up to meet me for lunch tomorrow. I don’t want him to have to drive so far out of the way. One more day is fine.”
Her jaw flinches like she’s swallowing. “Did something happen?” she asks.
I consider telling her. I need to. I want to.
But god, I don’t want to see the look on her face when I do.
I don’t want her to be one more person who looks at me like I’m fragile.
“No,” I lie. “No, I just… I think I need the guys,” I say.
“Do you want me to ask Kade and Liam to move your things?”
My eyes drop to the ground behind her, and I contemplate that decision.
I have you.
I’ll take care of this.
I don’t know why I want to give my stalker a chance to prove it.
“Not yet,” I say. “Maybe after Radio Eleven, I’ll be ready. Just not yet.”
Gemma nods. “Okay.”