28. Colton
Chapter 28
Colton
T he house was too quiet. Even with the game rerun humming low on the television and the fridge humming louder as Xavi shoved another case of beer into it, it was still too quiet. Like a whole person was missing.
I hated it.
Cole was on the couch with his head tilted back on the cushions, his eyes closed, but I knew he wasn’t sleeping. He hadn’t been sleeping well at all since Annie had told me about what was happening with her dad and disappeared. He was just… quieter about it all than Xavi.
The sound of another can cracking open made me wince as I sat at the breakfast bar. “Dude, please, slow down,” I said, nodding toward the half-drained bottle on the counter beside the fridge he’d abandoned a few seconds ago. “Do you really need two on the go at once?”
“Shut up, Colton,” Xavi muttered, not bothering to look across at me.
“Please don’t tell me he’s double-fisting now,” Cole groaned from the couch.
“He is.”
“Christ,” Cole said. “It’s not even midnight. We’ve got a flight tomorrow morning, Xav. Boston, remember? You’re gonna screw yourself over.”
“Thanks, old man.” Xavi chugged the last of the bottle and tossed it into the trash.
We’d never been this much of a mess. Never. We’d all had our own rough patches in the last few years of living together, but this was worse than any of that combined. There was no one who wasn’t feeling the effects of this who could try to help the others. We were all losing patience with each other.
I sighed and ran a hand through my air, untangling the bottom from its hair tie. “We should be excited for Boston,” I tried to say, tapping into the draining energy reserve to be the fun one, the happy one, the one that brought the mood up when we needed it. All those years of doing it for my parents after Melody’s death had hardwired it into my brain. “It’s always a good crowd there. The fans are nuts, the hotel’s sick, and there’ll be plenty of?—”
“Girls?” Cole said, the word curling out of his mouth like it disgusted him. “Yeah. Great. Have fun with them. I can guarantee you none of them will be like her.”
The silence that followed hurt more than his words. I pushed off the barstool and moved to the recliner, staring vaguely in the direction of the muted television.
“I know that,” I said quietly. “But it’s been weeks. She hasn’t reached out since Xavi went to see her. She’s done, and we’ve got to at least try to move on?—”
Xavi slammed his can of beer down on the counter behind me. I flinched. “You don’t know she’s done,” he snapped, his voice cutting through the room like a whip.
“Xav, she told you it’s over?—”
“You don’t know what she’s thinking, you don’t know what she’s feeling,” Xavi continued, his voice rising, his words starting to blur together. “You didn’t see the way she fucking cried when she said it, you didn’t feel her clinging to you like she didn’t want to let go. You don’t know shit and you’re just guessing ‘cause it makes it easier to forget her.”
“No one’s trying to forget her, Xav,” I said, my head tipping back onto the cushion. I was trying to stay calm, but I knew Xavi, knew there was a chance his anger would bleed and make him want to fight. “We’re all trying not to fall apart.”
Xavi’s laugh was hollow. “How’s that working out for you?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he grabbed his jacket, his beer in hand, and headed for the front door. I stood, but he was already opening the front door, and I couldn’t find it in me to chase him down the driveway when I wasn’t even wearing a shirt or shoes.
Cole looked at me, his jaw tense, his gaze flicking toward the hall as the front door slammed shut hard enough to make the walls rattle. “You think he’s gonna drive like that?”
I shook my head and slowly lowered myself back into the recliner. “No. His keys are on the counter. He’s just blowing off steam.”
Cole sighed, rubbing his hands with his face, his legs flexing like he was preparing to run after Xavi himself. But I was pretty sure we both knew that would just end in shouting.
I stared at the TV again, watching the way the lights from above reflected in it. No matter what I did in this house, I couldn’t shake the ghost of Annie in here, even though it had only been one night and she hadn’t been here in well over a month and a half. It still felt like she was everywhere.
“You can’t just keep pretending like everything’s fine,” Cole said, his voice cutting through the uncomfortable silence.
I turned to him, blinking in confusion. “I’m not.”
“You are.” His hands dropped to his sides, his lips pursing. “You keep cracking jokes, acting like we’ll all just find someone else. You think that helps? You think that’s what we need right now?”
I swallowed.
“Because I can tell you upfront that it’s not helping Xavi. That’s making things worse,” he said, his tone clipped, like this was uncomfortable for him. “And it’s putting me on edge. So for the love of god, stop trying to help like that.”
I loosed a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, rubbing my face with my hands. “Jesus, man. I’m not just trying to help, I’m trying to survive . I don’t… I don’t know how else to do that.”
Cole stared at me as I rubbed my jaw, his gaze a little hard, his eyes unwavering.
“I’m not fine,” I said, my voice a little hoarse from the rawness of my words. “Do you think I am? You think this isn’t killing me, too?”
“I know you’re not. Just like you know I’m not,” he said. “It’s the way you’re acting?—”
“Fucks sake, Cole, she was in my bed one night and gone the next,” I went on, cutting him off, the worlds tumbling fast now without a filter. “She looked at me like I was hers, looked at all of us like that, like I meant something, like we meant something, and then one threat from her dad and she’s gone. No calls. No texts. Nothing. I’ve been checking her socials like a psychopath, but she’s not posted a damn thing. She’s just… gone.”
Cole didn’t say a word.
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fix it,” I said, my voice a little quiet. “I understand the why. I do. If I had a single thing left of Melody’s, I’d fucking cling to it. But she won’t even let us in to try to help.”
I fought off the threat of memories of Melody, burying my head in my hands and instead sinking into thoughts of Annie, the way she grinned at me when she was teasing me, the way she broke apart in my hands when I touched her, the way she tucked herself into my chest in bed like she never wanted to be anywhere else. For once, I felt like Xavi, like I fell too hard and too fast all at once.
Cole sighed and stood up, his footsteps moving about the living room, but I didn’t look up when he sat down on the arm of the recliner.
“Xav said that she told him it couldn’t work,” I rasped. “But I don’t think she thinks that’s true for a goddamn second. She wanted it.”
“I know,” he sighed. “Maybe… shit, I don’t know, maybe we can figure out a way to help her. She’s twenty-five, she shouldn’t be having a trust controlled by her father. There’s got to be something there.”
I stilled. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I’ll do some research. Maybe if we give her options, she’ll want to come back,” he said, his voice a little gruff.
I looked up at him over my shoulder. “And if she doesn’t want to come back?”
He hesitated, his mouth turning to a flat line. “Then we figure out how to truly let her go without falling apart.”
Silence fell again, heavy and still.
I hated the quiet.
I hated all of this.