Chapter Twenty-Five #2
The thread severs half a step into my foyer. Dax is waiting for me on the couch. I don’t need to check the kitchen counter—the letter is lying in front of him on my coffee table. I want to be mad, but I can’t—I left it sitting out. Of course he looked, the Rolling Stone header like a beacon.
I toe off my shoes, drop my bag, lock the door, and drop my keys into the bowl—all the autopilot habits my body can’t not do even when my heart is across the room.
I perch sideways on the couch, close to Dax but not touching him.
I want to wrap him in my arms and explain, but the distance between us right now is more than the centimeters between my knee and his hip.
It feels a lot like three years ago. Me, him, a bench in Boston, the last night of tour—for me but not for him.
I was going back to school to finish my degree and then to San Francisco for the Offbeat internship I hoped would catapult me to Rolling Stone.
He had another tour lined up right after.
And then another after that. He had to go live his dream and I had to chase mine, so we let each other go, let the dream of us remain perfectly preserved in the amber of that summer.
Three years later, on a couch in Cleveland instead of a bench in Boston, we’ve found our way back to each other, back to the same dilemma: him leaving for tour, me leaving for Rolling Stone.
Somewhere on the drive from the office to here, the reality of my situation sank in. I get it now, how Robb’s Rolling Stone offer went from a bargaining chip to a lifeline. Similarly, her offer to me went from something to consider to a Hail Mary.
“When do you leave?” he asks, staring a hole into the wall, rhythmically running his finger along the chain at his neck.
I can feel the push like a physical force. “I have to give them an answer before the article comes out.”
“So, next week.” He turns his attention to me, but he’s a million miles away, he’s three years ago, he’s now, he’s here, he’s already gone. “Stay.”
Pull.
“Did you talk to John?” he asks, fishing for hope.
This morning’s optimism feels like another lifetime. I nod.
He raises his brows. “And?”
“And he hired a legacy instead of me.”
Dax sits up straighter, regarding me beneath pinched brows, searching for some sign that I’m joking. “What?”
I blink, and tears fall, and I’m shaking like a leaf as I allow myself to feel it all fully for the first time, to mourn how close I was to having it all.
I feel both numb and like my insides are vibrating.
“Don’t worry—it gets worse,” I say around a humorless laugh.
I tell him how the internet discovered our history, how it prompted John to review my transcripts.
“He wanted me to add in so much stuff about you, and your family, and Reverie Fest—”
“Do it.”
“What?” I pull back to look him in the face, my eyes stinging with every blink.
“Do it. I don’t give a fuck anymore.”
I shake my head. “No. I’m not compromising my integrity as reparations for… for what? Being twenty-one and into someone?” Being twenty-one and in love I almost say but don’t. I take a steadying breath. “I told John no and to take my name off the article if he adds it in.”
Dax sinks back against the couch, running his hands over his face forcefully, knocking his septum piercing askew.
“You are so good, you know that?” The way he says it doesn’t exactly sound like a compliment.
Push. Then, more softly, “You are good in a way I cannot fathom, in a way I don’t deserve, but fuck, I wish you could just—” He exhales heavily.
My spine stiffens. “You think I should have folded? This is my name at stake, Dax. I thought… I thought we were in this together, taking it back—our names, our integrity. I’ve compromised mine before, trying to impress a boss that was never going to hire me. I’m not doing that again.”
“And you think Rolling Stone won’t ask that of you? They’re all the same, Sloane.”
I push off the couch, needing to move. I’ve never done this before—fight with a partner.
I don’t know how to do this. This is too big a thing to tackle without training wheels.
We were supposed to fight over something inconsequential first, like types of peanut butter or which way to face the toilet paper.
“No,” I insist. “I’d be working with Robb. ”
He frowns, opening his mouth to say something before shaking his head, seeming to think better of it. “Don’t leave.”
Pull.
“And do what?” I ask helplessly. “What’s here for me? And don’t say you, because you’re going to be gone on tour a lot the next two years.”
Don’t leave. I’m gonna fight, he promised me. I hold my breath waiting for him to make good on his promise. He stares at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable, and my heart is turning blue waiting for him to give me the key to the cipher.
“Fine. I’ll go with you.”
It’s what I wanted him to say, but never in my hopeful imaginings did he say it so reluctantly, so baldly confirming my biggest fear. “I can’t ask that of you.”
He leans forward, bracing his forearms on his knees. “You can.”
“This is your home, Dax. You think you won’t miss it, but you will. Ask me how I know.”
“Sloane,” he says gently. “I’ve been on the road the past ten years. I’m used to it.”
“And you’re quitting Final because it’s not what you want anymore!
So don’t pretend like it’s not a big deal when it is.
” I force my tone to remain soft even as fear threatens to throttle my vocal cords.
“Don’t say what you think I want to hear and then quietly resent me.
” I pace back and forth, a numbness prickling my fingertips and spreading slowly, leaving a hollow tingling in its wake.
Dax cocks his head. “Okay. You’re right. I don’t want to leave Cleveland. But I don’t think you do either. Do you even want to go to Rolling Stone, or are you just running scared?” The unsaid again hangs heavy in the air between us.
Push.
We’re not yelling, but he’s fighting me, at least, and hope sparks feebly in my chest. Pull.
I rub the scar on my finger, the taut smoothness comforting.
My heart is jumping ahead of my body, already back in Boston.
On the rooftop outside my bedroom window, where I made a pact to never give up on my dreams for a boy.
A promise I’ve only ever questioned twice, a promise that’s guided my choices for the past few years, only to put me right back in front of the only person I’ve ever considered breaking it for.
“I can’t stay here for you when you’ll barely even be here.
I have to do something. I can’t… I can’t just sit and wait. ”
“That’s not what I asked,” he says quietly.
I shake my head, because I honestly don’t know how to answer him. I’m scared to go and I’m scared to stay, paralyzed with indecision.
“How long have you been talking to Rolling Stone?”
I take a deep breath, trying to keep my cool as all my plans, my hopes for the future spiral out of my grasp. We’re two mature adults. He’s trying. I’m trying. Surely we can figure this out. “I haven’t. Robb made the offer before she left.”
He drags his hand over his face roughly. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask: Did you know she was the leak?”
I stagger back a step. “What?”
“The leak,” he repeats, as if I didn’t hear him the first time. “Did you know it was her?”
“She couldn’t be,” I breathe. “She signed the same NDA I did.”
He shrugs like that’s an inconsequential detail.
I stare at him in disbelief, unsure what to focus on first. Betrayal wins out, but not Robb’s—his. “Do you actually think I’d know and not tell you, that I’d sabotage my own article?”
He rubs the stubble on his chin, staring at the offer on my coffee table like it offends him. “The two of you getting big offers from the parent magazine of where it was all leaked to—doesn’t look like sabotage to me.”
I inhale sharply. Push.
I’m ambitious, yes, but I’m not that ambitious.
The fact that he could suspect me feels like a slap in the face.
I stop myself before I start pointing out all the motives for his bandmates to have been the leak.
I don’t know much about fighting with a partner, but I know there are some things you can’t unsay.
If Dax is wrong and I’m right… I could never live with myself if Final ended sooner than scheduled because of it.
I wouldn’t do that to him. If he needs to believe it’s me, fine.
I cross my arms to hide the way my hands are shaking. I feel hollowed out, gutted.
His expression shutters. “I’m sorry. I… I don’t actually think it’s you. I don’t know why I said that.”
I nod like it’s okay, but I don’t feel okay, because we are not okay.
He lets out a frustrated growl. “I just want to be with you.”
Pull.
“I know,” I say emphatically. We’re still fighting, but I allow a trickle of hope that we’re fighting for us now. “I want this, too. I just… I thought we had a plan, and it was all going to be okay, and now… I don’t know how we do this without hurting each other.”
Dax shakes his head. “No—I want this. Full stop. Fuck the plans. Fuck it if we hurt each other. I want this—you, us. Unconditionally. Long-distance, here, there, when it’s hard and when it’s easy.
I don’t need some perfect plan where everything works out to know this is what I want.
I want you even when it’s inconvenient.”