Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Adam
Dolly is not going to be adopted through Hope Acres.
I think I probably knew when I named the chocolate lab who was dumped at Laney’s office that she would end up being mine. Sarah picked her up and got her settled while I was in Silver Creek. But as soon as I found her in the barn, I brought her inside, and she’s been my shadow ever since.
Goldie took to her right away. She seems content to let the younger dog do the heavy lifting of keeping me company while she stretches out on the porch in the patches of fall sunshine filtering through the trees.
Dolly’s energy has been good for me. She’s always up for a walk to the ridgeline or a game of fetch—she’ll bring a ball back five hundred times if I’ll throw it for her.
But by Saturday night, a week after I walked out on Midnight Rush for the second time, five days after I last saw Laney, even Dolly can’t pull me out of my funk.
I realize that I am the problem here. I am the one who hasn’t texted Laney back. I’m the one who has thrown myself into work, ignored Freddie’s texts, ignored Jace’s apology.
If someone were to type in my story to one of those “Am I the Asshole” threads on Reddit, where strangers get to weigh in on your behavior, I have no doubt the answer would be yes: YTA .
I turned my back on my friends.
I’m ignoring my girlfriend.
I’m hiding from everyone.
But every time I think about responding, about texting, about reaching out myself, I feel sick. Like there’s something physically restraining me, filling me with this overwhelming sense of dread.
Somewhere in the logical part of my brain, I know that I need to move past this. That hiding from everyone who is important to me isn’t the answer.
I have also begun to doubt that hiding from music is the answer.
When Freddie sent over the final cut of “The Start of Forever,” I couldn’t believe how good it sounded. That is a song I would love to release.
I just don’t know how.
Probably therapy.
A knock sounds on my door, and Dolly stands, ears perking up as she looks at me, like she’s asking if this is something that should alarm her.
I don’t feel alarm—but I do feel hope. It feels shameful to admit it after how I’ve been acting, but I really want Laney to be standing on my porch.
It is Laney, and as soon as I open the door, it’s all I can do not to immediately pull her into my arms. I have no idea how I walked away from her on Tuesday night, but I never want to walk away from her again. This feeling—it’s not just a craving. It’s a need, deep in my bones.
For a long moment, I just stand there, taking her in. There’s an uncertainty to her posture, like she’s unsure of how I will respond to her being here. But there’s a determination in her eyes that makes up for it, like she has a purpose and she’s prepared to hold her ground.
“Hey,” I finally say.
“Hey. Can I come in?”
“Of course.” I step back, making room for her to pass me, then I close the door behind her and follow her into the living room.
She pauses when she sees Dolly stretched out next to Goldie in front of the fireplace. “You’re keeping her,” she says.
“Yeah.”
She smiles at Dolly as she crouches down to say hello. “That’s why you named her Dolly,” she says. “You already knew she’d wind up being yours.”
I narrow my eyes at Laney. It’s too early in our relationship for her to be reading my mind.
She sets a Lawson Cove Library tote bag on the coffee table and nudges it toward me. “These are for you. But I need to tell you about them first.”
I still have no idea what’s in the bag, but I let Laney tug me onto the couch anyway. We’re sitting side by side, knees angled in so we can still face each other.
Laney reaches over and takes both of my hands in hers.
“This is going to sound a little absurd, so brace yourself,” she says, “but this morning, Sarah and I figured out that I knew your mom.”
I frown. “You— what ? ”
“Not in person,” she quickly qualifies. “But I knew her online. She moderated a fan group that I was a part of, and we talked all the time. Weekly, at least, sometimes even daily. I didn’t know she was your mom, obviously, but I do remember how much she loved Midnight Rush.”
I don’t even know how to begin to process what she’s telling me. Laney knowing my mother is hard enough. But Mom moderating a fan group? I had no idea she ever did anything like that.
“Are you sure?” I ask, because how do you even figure out something like that?
“Absolutely sure,” Laney says. “Your mom’s username was @DollyDaeDreams. Dae, spelled D-A-E.”
“Her middle name,” I say, and Laney nods.
“And it was what? A fan group?”
I listen closely as Laney walks me through it. Explains the website. The concept of small group communities inside a larger fanbase. Then she details all the ways my mom followed my career and celebrated what I was doing with other fans.
It doesn’t add up. It’s not that Mom wasn’t supportive of Midnight Rush. She always encouraged Sarah and I to forge our own path and do what made us happy. But the year before her death, our relationship was strained. She wanted me home and grew frustrated when I didn’t seem to have the power or freedom to make that happen.
I could have. I should have. I should have walked sooner, made demands, put pressure on the label to pause the tour long enough for me to be with her when she passed.
How could Mom not be frustrated when my priorities were so far off what they should have been?
“Did you—” My voice breaks, and I clear my throat and try again. “Did you know when she died? Did the group know?”
Laney shakes her head, sadness filling her eyes. “Two or three months before the band broke up, she stepped down as moderator, said she was going through something personal and she needed to focus on her family. There were only twenty of us who were still active by that point, and she wrote personal notes to each of us as a goodbye. Then she signed off, and we never heard from her again.”
“You got a personal note from my mom,” I say.
“I did,” she says. “And lucky for you, I was a highly devoted, borderline creepy, extreme Midnight Rush fan. So I documented my years in your mom’s fan group by making a series of scrapbooks.” She tilts her head toward the bag on the coffee table. “The note from your mom is in the middle one with your second album cover on the front. And other comments she made are woven through all three. Please don’t judge me for how much glitter I used. Also don’t laugh at all the different MASH games. I saved every one that resulted in me marrying you.”
“I don’t understand. You saved her comments?”
“It’s more like I saved everyone’s comments. I’d print out screenshots of our conversations. Not all of them. Just the fun ones. Lists of our favorite songs, favorite lyrics. Stories we told about concerts we attended. There are also pictures and ticket stubs and magazine articles. All kinds of stuff. But if you look for your mom, you’ll find her in there.”
I reach for the bag and pull out the top album. It’s navy blue, with the Midnight Rush logo across the front in bright yellow.
“I can’t believe you made these. ”
“I know it’s a lot. But that group of fans—they were friends when I didn’t really have them anywhere else.”
“No, I’m not judging,” I say quickly. “This is amazing. And my mom is in here?”
Her expression softens. “Yeah. She is. And she was amazing.” She reaches over and squeezes my knee, then stands up.
“Wait, where are you going?”
“I left Percy at my house with Ringo. And Sarah will be here any minute. I thought you guys might like to read through them together.”
“Sarah knows about these?”
She nods. “She actually drove with me to Hendersonville to pick them up. She looked through a little, but then decided she wanted to wait for you.”
I hate to see Laney go, but I also understand why she wants to give this moment to Sarah.
I walk her out to her car, but Sarah is already pulling up, and she looks like she’s been crying, so Laney and I don’t have much time to say goodbye.
“Thanks for bringing them over,” I say. “I still can’t wrap my head around it.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty wild.”
I hold her gaze for a long moment. “Laney, I’m sorry about this week. That I’ve been so…absent.”
“You kinda do that,” she says. Her tone is gentle, but I still sense the censure in her words. “But you can talk to me about stuff. I know you like to process on your own, and I get that. But if we’re going to do this, you have to answer my texts. You have to let me in.”
She’s right. I know she’s right, but it still takes all my willpower to keep my feet planted, to stay right here with her. I don’t know why I always feel the impulse to flee. But if there was ever a good reason to break the habit, it’s Laney.
“I just get scared,” I say. “And then I think I don’t deserve you, and then the longer I wait, the worse that feeling gets, and then I just spiral.”
She steps forward and lifts her hands to my chest, and I wrap my arms around her waist. “You deserve to be happy,” she says. “You're telling yourself you can’t have a life when your mom is not here because of the choices you made when she was. But that isn’t how life works.”
I drop my eyes, shame washing over me, but Laney moves her hands to my face, her thumbs brushing over my beard. “Look at me,” she says gently.
I force a breath in through my nose and out through my mouth. I don’t want to look, but I want to ignore her even less, so I force my gaze to hers.
Her warm hazel eyes are full of love and compassion and understanding, and suddenly my heart is too big for my chest and emotion is climbing my throat with a ferocity that makes me want to punch something and cry at the same time.
“You deserve to be happy,” Laney repeats. “You deserve to have a music career if you want a music career. Or a dog rescue if you want a dog rescue. Or both if you want both. You deserve to love and have people who love you. That’s what your mom would want for you. I know that’s true.”
I pull her against me and bury my face in her hair, letting her words sink in. She smells so good. Familiar and safe and like everything I want in my life. I don’t want to let her go, but Sarah is waiting, and Laney is right. There’s a part of this my sister and I should do together.
And another part I have to figure out on my own.
Sarah and I are up for hours.
It’s weird seeing a catalog of my Midnight Rush years through the eyes of a fan. Even weirder to see Mom’s commentary. But it’s mostly just amazing. She’s funny and encouraging and interested in how the other group members feel about songs and concerts and music videos.
She doesn’t mention me by name very often, which was probably intentional on her part. But in the note she wrote to Laney, she does mention me.
@DollyDaeDreams: To @Laneyfeelstherush—you, my dear, are going places! I have loved catching glimpses of you growing up over the past three years. You have matured into a lovely, thoughtful young woman. You’ll be a great vet one day, and I appreciate all the advice about my Marigold! She’s a rotten puppy, but you’ve given me hope she won’t be forever. I know you probably won’t ever meet Deke for real, but I bet if you did, he’d love you just as much as I do.
“For real,” Sarah says as she reads the note over my shoulder. “It’s like she was predicting the freaking future.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t know she was doing any of this,” I say as I turn the page to find a two-page spread from Seventeen magazine featuring the four of us looking broody and serious and absolutely ridiculous.
There’s a message board exchange cut out and included at the bottom of the page.
@DollyDaeDreams: Honestly, couldn’t they just photograph these boys looking like boys? Smiling normally? Like they’re happy to be making music every day? Why so serious?
@laneyfeelstherush: FOR THE SMOLDER. WE NEED THE SMOLDERS!
“I did know,” Sarah says. “I just didn’t know it was such a big deal. She tried to get me to join, but I couldn’t think of anything worse than watching other teenagers fangirl over my brother.”
“Okay, that’s fair.”
It takes me a long time to work up the courage to ask Sarah my next question. In eight years, I’ve never asked. Because I believed I already knew the answer, and I didn’t want Sarah to prove me wrong. Staying angry at myself was easier because anger was better than sadness—than grief.
“Sarah, was Mom really mad when I didn’t come home?”
She takes a deep breath, studying my face. “It’s not like she knew when she was gonna die. Like you’d missed the deadline or something. She was just trying to hang on long enough for you to make it.”
I shake my head. “I’ve relived those last couple of months so many times. Gone over the conversations I had with Kevin, with the label. I just kept saying over and over that I needed to go, that she was sick, that she might not make it. And they all just kept reassuring me, telling me everything was going to be fine. That she would be fine. And I think I believed them because it was easier than believing I’d lose her.”
“I know,” Sarah says. “I was mad at you for a really long time. But I get it. We were both just kids, Adam. We weren’t supposed to navigate stuff like that by ourselves.” She nudges my knee with her toe from where she’s sitting on the opposite end of the couch. “You have to let it go now.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means stop beating yourself up. Forgive yourself, already. Go be in your stupid boyband and love your freaking amazing girlfriend and be happy. ”
Her words trigger a reaction deep in my gut, something swirling and light that lifts and pushes up, but then a familiar sense of panic quickly stomps it back down again. “I can’t, Sarah. I can’t let Kevin push me around like he did. I can’t go back to other people making choices for me.”
“Okay,” she says dryly, like I’m missing something incredibly obvious. “So get a different agent who represents your best interests. Or, I don’t know, just be a grownup and advocate for yourself. Set your terms. Tell them what you’re willing to do, and then don’t budge. It doesn’t have to be one extreme or the other. Be your own boss. Make your own destiny! Captain your own ship!”
“I got it. Stop with the metaphors.”
“Good. Cause I couldn’t really think of a fitting fourth one.” She tosses the throw pillow she’s been holding at my head and stands. “I’ve got to go home. This was fun. Please tell Laney you love her so she’ll stay with us forever.”
“I’ll get right on that,” I say.
“So, just in case you really might think about it,” Sarah says from the door where she’s slipping on her shoes. “Midnight Rush has not announced that you won’t be at the concert. As far as everyone knows, you’ll still be there.”
“But the schedule—they’ve already started doing press.”
“And so far, they’ve done it all individually.” She shrugs. “ You know Freddie. With his optimism, he’s probably holding out hope you’ll still change your mind.”
That does sound like Freddie.
The big idiot. He really does have a way of getting what he wants.
But maybe this time, it will be what I want too.