Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Chase
We get into a good rhythm, and practice goes smoothly for the rest of the afternoon.
Bayleigh has been acting a bit distant since her encounter with her mother, but I don’t blame her.
I can only imagine what it must be like for her to be back here.
Especially now I know more about why she left.
I want her to tell me the whole story, but I don’t want her to feel pressured into telling me. If she wants to she can.
The days after the accident were rough. Everyone was in shock. Bayleigh and I both had bruises from our seat belts and a few minor scrapes. We owe our lives to those safety devices.
I don’t remember when Harper took hers off.
She had been fiddling with the radio, leaning over from the backseat and accidentally elbowing me and Bayleigh in her attempt to adjust it.
We were all on such a high after winning the battle of the bands, and we’d thought our careers were about to take off after such an amazing performance.
We were exhausted. We had left early that morning to drive to the event, then practiced and prepared all day, and we were less than half an hour away from home. The roads were dark and unfamiliar and winding.
If I could go back in time and insist on driving the car home, I would. I had driven us that route earlier in the day so I was more familiar with the road than Bayleigh was. But it was her car, and she felt responsible for it.
Maybe if I had been driving, Bayleigh would have been the one turning up the volume, and Harper would have stayed safely in the backseat with her seat belt on.
The day of the funeral was the last time I saw Bayleigh.
Her face was swollen from crying and her hair was pulled back carelessly.
As we stood together at the cemetery, watching as they lowered the casket into the ground, I reached for her hand.
She didn’t pull away, but she also didn’t respond.
Her hand felt cold and lifeless in mine as she stared ahead with a blank expression.
While everyone else began to leave, Bayleigh stayed rooted in place.
Finally, after a long time staring at the freshly dug mound, she allowed me to gently guide her to the car where her parents were waiting to help her inside.
She didn’t even acknowledge my presence as I shut the door behind her.
I had no idea that would be the last time I saw her.
I always assumed that Bayleigh made the choice to leave because she couldn’t bear it any longer. I was there with her in the hospital when her parents were told about Harper’s death. Her mother had turned to Bayleigh with venom in her eyes and said, “You did this.”
I’d thought that was just a momentary outburst, something she’d said in grief. I believed that they would come together as a family and heal from this tragedy. They’d always been so close before. But without Harper, everything fell apart.
My heart aches for Bayleigh. I can’t imagine what she’s still going through.
Losing Harper felt like losing a sister to me too. She always had a bright smile on her face and never failed to make us all laugh at her jokes. Just like her sister, she could light up any room she walked into. It was devastating that someone so young and full of potential was taken away.
“Chase.” Bayleigh’s voice breaks me out of my thoughts, and I turn to look at her.
“Cam and I were going to do an acoustic set of ‘Summer Rain’ here. Do you want to give it a try?”
I look between the other members, waiting to hear their thoughts. Do they want me to step up and do it with her? Do they think I should? Am I good enough?
“Go on,” Andy says. “It’s not any harder than anything else you’ve done.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say and flip the sheet music on the floor until I find the right page. I look through it quickly, refreshing my memory. I haven’t played this song in a long time.
“Stand over here next to me,” Bayleigh says as she removes the mic from the stand.
She counts me in, and I strum the opening chords before she joins me. It feels like old times, just the two of us making music together. I steal a glance at her, and my heart skips a beat. We finish the song and our bandmates clap in approval.
“I messed up a few times. Can we run it again?” I ask, wanting to make it perfect for her.
“Sure.” She turns to our bandmates. “Y’all can call it a night. We’ll practice this some more. See you tomorrow.”
They all say goodnight and leave and then it’s just the two of us on stage.
“I think we should sit on stools for this one. What do you think?” she suggests.
“Whatever you want,” I reply, grabbing two stools from side stage and bringing them over.
Sitting so closely next to each other on stage feels intimate. We play through the song a few more times, growing better with each rendition until she finally smiles at me. “That was really good.”
“It was, yeah.” I smile back at her, seeing a glimpse of the young Bayleigh peeking out from behind her solidly built up walls.
“This has always been one of my favorites,” she says. “It was written just for me.”
“It’s perfect for you. It really showcases your voice,” I agree. “Do you still write?”
I immediately regret asking because her eyes darken and it’s as though her walls go right back up.
She shakes her head. “I don’t do that anymore.”
“What about that song we wrote? What was it called?” I scratch my chin, lost in the memory of us sitting on her front porch, making up lyrics.
“I can’t remember. It was a long time ago.” She stands and puts her microphone back in its stand.
I can tell I’ve hit a nerve, and I don’t want to upset her. Glancing at my phone, I say, “It’s almost eight. Are you hungry? Want to grab some dinner?”
She looks at me, perhaps thinking for a moment. “Kelly usually takes care of meals. I don’t know where she is.”
“Probably off with Frankie.” I chuckle. “Looks like they’ve hit it off.”
A huge grin spreads across her face. “Yes, they definitely have.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “What do you know?”
She pauses before leaning in closer to me. “I saw them together this morning.”
Confused, I frown.
She continues, in a quiet voice, “They were having sex in the back room.”
My jaw drops. “What? Did you interrupt them?”
She giggles, and that beautiful sound fills the air around us. “No, they didn’t see me. But I saw them.”
We both laugh together and I imagine her watching from the shadows as they touched, kissed, and fucked hard.
“At least someone’s getting some!” She laughs. Before I can come up with a response, she gestures towards the exit. “Come on, let’s eat.”
“Yep, I’m starving,” I agree as we walk off stage.
But now I am hungry for more than just food.
I wonder what she did when she saw them.
Did she watch? Did she fantasize about it being her?
My cock twitches, and I tell myself to stop thinking about it.
This is not the time or place for those thoughts.
I’ll save them for later when I’m alone in bed, wishing she was with me.