Chapter 6 #2
“Bring them to a beginning,” I said gently. “Or an end.”
“I don’t know if I want ends,” she said, even quieter.
“Try a chorus, then.” I was dying to reach out and brush a loose strand of her hair back, so I put a hand on the box to keep from touching her. “You taught me how to finish things, you know.”
“I taught you how to finish things you liked,” she amended. “I wouldn’t take credit for your tax filings.”
“Too soon,” I said, holding my hands to my gut like I was wounded, and the joke did the job of turning us back toward light.
“I’m sorry,” I said, because the quiet had settled into a shape that could hold it.
“For what?” she asked, meeting my eyes, her chin lifted.
“For making the past a song and leaving you to live in the echo.”
Skye sucked in her breath and stilled.
“Thank you,” Skye finally said, and a weight I’d carried for years lessened slightly. “I needed to hear that. You hurt me, Noah. It was my choice to leave, and I take responsibility for that, but the song … och. That was tough to stomach.”
“I’m sorry for it,” I said, meaning it.
“You shouldn’t be.” Skye surprised me with her words, and from the look on her face, had surprised herself as well. “It’s a damn good song. Music should be honest. Yours was. It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, but it was still a great song.”
“I hate that I hurt you,” I whispered.
Skye swallowed and looked away. “Cocoa?” she asked, surprising me. “Rosie sent me home with extra cinnamon sticks.”
“I have never said no to cocoa,” I said, taking the olive branch.
Without thinking about it, I followed her to the kitchen. We moved around each other like muscle memory—she rummaged for mugs, I found the good cocoa tin behind the box of tea. While the milk warmed, she hummed again, and I crept into the harmony like a thief who only steals back what he gave away.
Skye caught herself, and stopped, glancing shyly at me.
“You should sing more,” I encouraged, not wanting to break the mood that strung between us.
“I do,” she said, defensive. “In my kitchen. To my kettle.”
“Your kettle is very lucky.”
When I handed her the mug, our fingers touched, and I jolted, her nearness having me on edge.
“Careful,” she said softly. “It’s hot.”
“It always has been,” I said and Skye slanted me a look.
We took our drinks back to the lounge, sat on the rug with our backs against the sofa so we could admire the tree. Silence stretched out between us, but it wasn’t uncompanionable.
It was nice, in fact. To just sit together.
My phone buzzed.
Just once. Just a small, mosquito hum against my thigh.
I ignored it.
It buzzed again, insistent, then again, and then it started the full-on vibration that says you’ll want to pretend you didn’t see this, but you will, and it will make everything harder.
Skye didn’t look at me, but the line of her spine changed. I pulled the phone out.
The screen was a wall of messages.
Texts from bandmates—two words, my name, a curse.
Mate, turn on the news.
They raided his office.
Call me NOW.
You’re screwed.
My thumb found a link in my agent’s message before my brain could read it. The video loaded, the volume down, captions scuddling across the bottom.
brEAKING: Manager of chart-topping band under investigation for fraud, embezzlement; HMRC and police execute warrants; assets frozen; sources say millions missing; artists blindsided. Developing story.
The thumbnail was Glen’s face. The man I’d put between me and good sense for over a decade. Walking fast under a gray sky, coat too thin for winter. Behind him, someone held a box of folders. A hand reached into the frame with a mic and his eyes flashed something mean and small.
My skin went cold and hot at the same time.
“Don’t,” Skye said beside me, and I realized that I didn’t know what to do.
It was the first time in a really long time that I didn’t know my way forward.
Panic tightened my throat. Anger burned my core.
“I need to—” What? I didn’t know what came after need.
She set her cocoa down carefully.
“Look at me,” she said.
I looked.
“You didn’t do this,” she said, her voice direct. “You didn’t. You were stupid, and loyal, and terrified to admit you’d hitched yourself to someone who would throw you to the wolves. But you didn’t do this.”
“I signed the papers,” I said. “I played by his rules.”
“You trusted the wrong person,” she said. “That’s not a crime. It’s a bruise.”
“I’m going to be dragged into it.”
“Aye, you will.”
“It’ll crawl over everything. Over you. I’m doing this to you. Again.”
That might have been the worst thing of it all. Once more, Skye would get her name dragged into the spotlight because of me. Why had I come here, bringing this to her doorstep? What had I been thinking?
“So we deal.” Skye looked up at me, a determined glint in her eyes.
“Gran always told me to just crack on with things when life got tough. And I’ll take her advice here.
With you. There’s not a thing to be done about the fact that you’re here, now, and scandal is breaking over your head. So we deal with it.”
“How?” I sounded more childish than I wanted to admit, but not for the first time, I was staring at the consequences of my fame.
“New house rules,” she said immediately.
“Curtains down. You don’t open the front door.
You don’t answer numbers you don’t know.
You don’t go anywhere alone. If the paps come here, we call Esther and the Book Bitches, and they’ll do that thing where they become a wall made of ridiculous Christmas jumpers and moral outrage. ”
“I don’t want to put you in it. Or any of them in it.” Though the Book Bitches were terrifying, they didn’t know what the paparazzi could be like.
“You don’t get to decide whether I’m in it,” she said, and my breath caught. There was my girl. My wildfire. “You brought the storm, but I own a roof. That’s how this works.”
I laughed, surprised, but beyond grateful. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Correct,” she said, because even Skye could be merciful in odd ways. “But you have me for the moment.”
My heart shifted in my chest. Hearing those words … “you have me” made my entire body heat with longing.
My phone buzzed again.
“Drink your hot chocolate,” she said. “Then go upstairs and pack a bag in case we need to move you to the flat above the pub for a day or two. It has good locks. I’ll text Harper just in case.
Esther will put the pensioners on the lookout.
We’ll draw the curtains here and you’ll wear your hat pulled low. ”
“You’re good at this,” I said, surprised. I’d had years of ducking from cameras, but she hadn’t. Not like this.
Skye smiled, my compliment warming her face.
We sat a long minute with the awful news glow lighting my palm.
She leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes. “For what it’s worth,” she murmured. “I never wanted to be right about him.”
“I know you didn’t. I should have known that. Back then,” I said, and put my hand, palm up, on the floor between us like you hold out a treat to a stray, scared dog. After a heartbeat, she set her fingers in mine. Light. Not a promise. But, enough. For now.
“Up,” she said, after our palms had warmed against each other. “Pack. Then sleep if you can. Tomorrow you’ll need your voice to say the right things or nothing at all.”
“What if I don’t know the right things to say?”
“Then say nothing,” she said. “And let the people who love you be loud.”
My heart hiccupped at the word love, but I couldn’t bring myself to comment on it. The olive branch between us was too new, too frail, to test its weight on something heavier.
Instead, I did something I’d been wanting to for years. I hugged her, briefly, but when she leaned into me and looped her arms around my waist, it felt like, for a moment, that nothing else in the world mattered but us. And that I could face the coming storm … because I wasn’t alone.