Chapter 54 Dani
DANI
The concert was amazing, and as the rest of the crowd disperses, we line up to enter the after-party. I still haven’t seen Tyrell, and I can’t admit to anyone how much that’s killing me.
He didn’t come.
He obviously didn’t want to see me, and I hate that I hurt him enough to scare him off for good.
So just text him! Find out how he’s doing.
On impulse, I pull my phone free and just do it, sending him a message before I chicken out.
Me: Missed you tonight. Was hoping to see you at the concert. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. Maybe we can catch up sometime. Hope you’re doing okay.
I bite my lip, reading it back and wondering if I should press Send. It feels like an explosive text, each of those words potentially tearing a hole right through my defenses.
Do I really want to say that to him?
Yes! Press Send!
“Dani, let’s go.” Tobin grabs my wrist, pulling me forward, and my thumb bumps the send button, the message going through.
I watch the box appear on my screen, holding my breath and toying with the idea of deleting it, but Tobin’s pulling me into this after-party and ugh!
Slipping the phone into the back pocket of my jeans, I let that message linger in the sphere or wherever the hell it goes. It’ll be on Tyrell’s screen by now. He’s probably read it already.
And great, now I’m going to spend the rest of the night obsessing over whether or not he’ll text me back.
Shit, I shouldn’t have sent it.
I’m about to pull out my phone and delete the message, but Tobin won’t let me.
“Get off your phone and be in the moment, please,” he singsongs, introducing me to some hot guy in leather pants with a neck tattoo.
I force polite conversation while Jed and Tobin gush to the woman beside him about how much they loved the concert.
It’s painful and awkward, and when I spot Nix and Darian moving farther into the room, I take off after them.
They veer left, and I’m about to follow when I end up bumping into Reef.
Oh great.
“Hey… again.” I stutter to a stop, my tone far from enthusiastic as I give him an awkward smile. “Uh… nice job tonight.”
“Yeah, thanks.” His eyes are kind of glazed; he obviously lit up just before entering the party. Although maybe it’s not just weed. There’s a dangerous energy coming off him, a vacant, lax smile… and the way his eyes trail down my body is making me squirm.
Who knows what the hell he’ll say in his current condition? I’m pretty sure he was as close to sober as he could get when I bumped into him that other day and he made it clear that I let Atlas down.
I don’t want to know what his high brain thinks about it.
I shift away from him, searching the room for my friends, and end up bumping into another band member. The drummer. His hair is still wet from the exertion on stage, and yep, he stinks.
“Hey.” He grins down at me, looking just as wasted as Reef. “Who’s this?”
“This…” Reef rests a hand on my shoulder. “This is the girl who used to go out with Atlas. Do you remember that guy? He was like the best guitarist I knew.” His words are slurred and offbeat.
“No fucking way!” The drummer gives me a dopey smile. “You’re Atlas’s girl?”
“Well… I… I was.” Past tense. It always used to be so brutal that I’d keep it in the present. “Yes, I am Atlas’s girl.” It didn’t matter that he was dead. I was his, always and forever.
But I just said was.
And it didn’t hurt.
Because I have finally let him go.
I was Atlas’s girl, but he’s dead, and I don’t belong to anyone.
I’m my own person. A woman who wants a man but doesn’t need one.
I want Tyrell.
The reminder is a soft whisper, and I turn to look for him, one last desperate bid to see if he actually made it tonight.
But I don’t see him.
With a swallow, I resist the urge to check my phone. It hasn’t buzzed or anything, so he’s either not seen it, or he’s ignoring it.
“Yeah, this one here, she…” Reef’s scoffing laugh gives me chills. “She got all shitty with Atlas the night he died.”
My head pings back. “What are you doing?”
“She told him to go to hell,” Reef keeps talking, pointing an accusing thumb my way. “And then took off and just left him there, all brokenhearted.”
I gape at him while the drummer beside him lets out this awkward laugh.
Reef narrows his eyes at me. “He should be alive.”
“Yes.” I nod. “He should. But then he took those pills.”
“Because he was upset!” Reef growls. “And he wouldn’t have been that way if you’d stayed.”
I shake my head, drawing on my therapy sessions and scrambling to find that calm she told me look for. The place where I could logically and unemotionally assess the events of that night.
“He was upset anyway,” I reply in a small voice. “And this is not the time or place for this conversation.”
“I think it feels pretty fucking familiar, don’t you? You gonna yell at me too, make me feel so shitty that I need to get me a little something to take the edge off?”
I grit my teeth.
“I didn’t know how else to help him.” Reef shakes his head, looking at the drummer like he’ll get it. “He was gonna lose his shit, man. I had to give him something.”
“What?” The word comes out of me as a soft whisper, my heart slamming into my rib cage as his confession registers with brutal clarity. “What did you do?”
Reef turns to me with an accusing glare. “I helped him out, because you left.”
“You helped him out?” I repeat, an explosion of rage firing through me. “You mean gave him those pills!”
“Hey.” He raises his hands like I’m being the unreasonable one. “He needed to chill out. Find his Zen. You riled him up pretty bad, and I didn’t know what to do.”
“You… you killed him,” I rasp.
“Fuck off.” He shoves my shoulder. “No, I didn’t. You did! You should have been there.”
“You were there,” I snarl. “And you’re telling me you gave him the pills that ended his life! You asshole!”
“We don’t know that’s what it was. He’d had a lot that night.”
“Those pushed him over the edge!” An anger so hot and evasive I don’t know what to do with it fires through me and I lunge, my hands shooting out like rockets as I shove this stoner with all the force I can muster.
He stumbles back a step, growling at me when I pounce forward with my fists.
“You were his friend!” I scream at him, pounding his chest. “He looked up to you!”
He grunts, shoving me away, then rounding on me with a punch I didn’t see coming. His knuckles connect with my cheek, and I let out a shocked gasp as my head snaps sideways.