I close my eyes. I’m not surprised. But it still fucking hurts.
“I told her to stay away,” I say quietly, the regret dripping from my voice. “She’s just doing what I told her to.”
Another moment of silence. “Yeah. That was an… interesting choice.”
I let out a breath. There isn’t anything else to say.
“She was the one holding it all together, you know?” Jake says after a few more moments of uncomfortable silence. “You might’ve been the voice, you guys all have talent, but she was the one who made itmeansomething.”
He doesn’t wait for me to respond. Just promises to text the flight details and the itinerary for the show in Austin. Then the line goes dead.
I toss my phone to the side and stare up at the ceiling. It doesn’t take long for the sound of heels on the creaking floorboards to arrive outside the door. Without knocking, Johanna pushes the door open and sits down beside me on the bed.
“I figured you’d still be in here,” she says, kicking off her shoes.
I don’t look at her. I’m still processing the phone call.
“I heard from Jake,” I say after a beat.
“Oh?”
I meet her gaze, finally. “The lawyers approved the deal. It’s almost official.”
Johanna blinks. “The record deal?”
“Yeah.”
A pause settles between us.
“Well, shit,” she says quietly. “That’s… major.”
I let out a dry laugh. “Seems pretty anticlimactic now.”
“I know it feels that way, Gray,” she murmurs. “But you made it. You should be celebrating.”
I look down at my hands. “It should’ve been everything. But I can’t feel a damn thing.”
Johanna is quiet for a long moment and we let the silence between us sink in.
“So, what now?” she asks.
“I’m supposed to go to Austin to sign with the guys, and there’s a show there to close out the tour—another arena, like in Miami. It’s the whole label announcement thing. Jake says I need to be there.” I glance up at her. “Mia didn’t answer when he called.”
Her eyes narrow. “Have you heard from her?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “And I don’t blame her. I told her not to come, told her I didn’t want her around, and she listened. I don’t get to be upset about that.”
“So, what—you’re just gonna go to Austin alone?” Johanna asks. “Play a shitty show and blow up your deal because you’re too scared to admit you fucked up?”
“Ididfuck up,” I say, probably sharper than I mean to. “You really think I don’t know that?”
“I think,” she says. “That you don’t know how to fix it. So you’ve convinced yourself it’s too late. But you don’t really know, do you?”
Maybe she’s right. Maybe Iamjust a coward.
Johanna rises from the bed and stands in front of me. She puts her hand on my shoulder and forces me to look at her head-on.
“I was wrong about her,” she admits. “I didn’t get it at first. I thought she was temporary, that you’d just use her to forget about Lily. She’d be another complication. But she’s not.”
