Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
MICAH
My worst nightmare had come true, but it hadn’t happened the way I’d thought it would.
I had been worried, we had all been worried, that my relationship with Kay would impact the band. That the two of us would fight and it would break us up like so many other groups before us. But it hadn’t been our relationship that had come between us band members.
I’d really thought they’d come around. I’d really thought I could convince them. Anya and Finn both saw the truth, but Zain, Chris and Kaylee just didn’t understand.
Kaylee.
I should have expected it, but it had still blind-sided me. I knew that, for Kay, the music had always been the most important thing in her life, but I thought she’d see reason. I thought she’d agree with me. But she hadn’t.
And Kay was stubborn. I knew that nothing I said would convince her to change her mind.
I felt sick, bile in my throat and gut on fire like acid was burning through my stomach walls.
“Is this it?” I heard Kay whisper.
I turned away from the stairs, where I’d watched the rest of my bandmates file out of the room, and looked at Kay. There were gleaming unshed tears in her green eyes. My own eyes were stinging and I had to wonder if I had that same gleam.
“You know, I thought…” she started to say with a liquid laugh as she swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, “I thought that if something was going to tear the band apart, it would be our relationship,” she said, echoing my own thoughts. “Guess I was worried about the wrong thing.”
“I thought you’d back me up.” I tried not to sound accusing, but instead it only came out sounding like despair. “None of this needed to happen. If everyone would just think about what’s best for the band and stop being so stubborn—”
Kay glared at me through red eyes.
“You should know me better than that,” she said. “You should have known how I feel.”
“I did,” I said, torn between weariness and frustration. “I do. But you have to be realistic.”
“What you think is realistic is vastly different from what I think is realistic,” she snapped.
“You know as well as I do, the label—”
“Stop,” Kaylee cut in, lifting a hand. “We already had this fight. We’re not going to do it again.”
“But—“
“Is anything I say right now going to change your mind?” she said, her voice shaky. There were droplets of tears along her bottom lashes. “I already know the answer is no.”
My breath hitched, knowing that I’d just been thinking that the same was true of her.
“We’ve all already said things we shouldn’t have,” she continued with a sniffle. “I don’t want to keep doing that. I don’t want us to keep hurting each other.”
“Neither do I.” The acid in my gut turned into a heavy lump, weighing me down.
We both went silent for long minutes.
“So.” Kay finally said, sighing heavily and rubbing at her eyes again. “The question is, what do we do?”
“We get the band together again,” I said, clinging to hope. “We talk it out again. We can’t just let everyone walk away.”
“No,” Kay shook her head. “I mean, what do we do? The two of us? What does this mean for our relationship?”
I inhaled sharply. As horrible as it was, I hadn’t yet really given thought to what would happen between us. I was so focused on the band.
“We promised we wouldn’t let our relationship get in the way of our work,” she said. “But now our work is what’s in trouble. So,” she repeated. “What does that mean for us?”
“I love you,” I said automatically, my heart in my throat. “None of this changes that.”
“And I love you,” she replied, her lips twitching as if trying to smile and failing. “But if this debate breaks up the band, will you be able to forgive me? Will I be able to forgive you?”
I went still. It was as if those words pierced my heart through my chest and lodged in my spine, making me hunch over in anguish.
“So that’s it?” I asked, swallowing hard. “One disagreement and we’re over?”
“This isn’t just a disagreement,” Kaylee said, her tone almost resigned. “This is a fundamental difference in our philosophies. In our core values. Don’t they say that couples should share the same values?” she continued rhetorically, her voice distant as she looked toward the stairs.
She wasn’t wrong. If the two of us didn’t agree on something so important, something so fundamental to each of us, could we move past that?
Most couples fought over finances, or children, or religion.
I supposed that was true of us, in a way.
The music was our religion. Our songs were Kaylee’s babies.
And the art vs. business debate was all about finances, when you got down to it.
We were just the same as any other couple in those regards.
Unfortunately, many other couples couldn’t get past those issues.
Panic shot through my chest.
“We can’t let this ruin what we have together.” I stepped forward and took Kaylee into my arms. She was so small, so slight, it felt like she might turn to dust in my embrace if I held her too tightly.
Kay rested her cheek against my chest, but didn’t put her arms around me, keeping them at her side. The heat of her skin burned into me through my shirt as my heart clenched.
“If the band can’t come to an agreement and breaks up for good…” she began. “If my ‘stubbornness’ ruins everything we worked so hard for, for so long, will you still be able to look me in the eye every morning and tell me you love me?”
I opened my mouth to immediately say yes, but something inside me made the words die on my tongue.
I wanted to shout of course I would, I love you now and I always will, nothing could ever change that.
But… a part of me thought Kay might be right. If she clung to her idealistic notions, her illogical convictions, and the band broke up because of it, would I still look at her the same way? I loved her, yes, but was love enough?
Kay sighed, her breasts heaving against me as I clutched her desperately, as if she were at risk of slipping out of my arms, like grains of sand in an hourglass.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. “All I know is that I want to be with you.”
“I want to be with you, too,” I said urgently. “Forever. I don’t want anything to come between us. Not even this.”
“Can we really make it through this?” she asked. “Even if the band breaks up?”
“I—” My voice faltered.
Imagines of rings and me down on one knee and Kay in a white dress flitted through my head. I straightened my back.
“Yes,” I said, trying to sound as firm as I could. Many relationships broke up over differences in values, but not all of them. Some always survived. “We can make it through this. It will be hard, but all relationships are hard. We need to try. Okay?”
Kay was quiet in my arms. Then she spoke up.
“Okay,” she said. I could tell she was trying to firm up her voice as much as I had. “I want to try.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, but that relief only lasted for a brief second before the anguish and panic set in again.
Kay and I were going to try and work through this.
But could the same be said of the band?