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Chapter 35
Violet
Time slows to a crawl. The sheets smell like Ethan. The whole room smells like Ethan.
It's not fair that he occupies this much space in my mind. Dammit, I really thought things were different this time. He promised he'd make this work. He held me while I cried. He planned that whole trip back home, just to ease my pain.
Fuck, he held my hand while I got a tattoo.
I thought I wanted him to stitch together my broken heart. And he did. But then he tore it in half again.
I shower so I won't smell like him. The water is hot and it's pounding my back and the only thing I can think about is him holding me while I cried.
The tile wall is slick against my palm. I can't get a grip. All my ideas about spending a glorious half an hour in here with Ethan get ugly. I think about him in another shower, with another woman, stroking her and pinning her to the wall and driving his cock deep inside her.
Do I mean that little to him?
Right now, I don't know.
Right now, I don't know anything.
I scrub until my skin is raw and red. I wash and condition my hair three times. When I step out of the shower, I no longer smell like Ethan.
Turns out that doesn't do shit to erase him from my mind.
I can't sit here wallowing. No matter how frozen I feel, I need to do something.
My body hurts as much as my heart does. I take another dose of cold medicine, I take a seat at my desk, and I pour myself into my work.
Chapter 36
Ethan
Playing Better Days on a famous sound stage, even at rehearsal, is the kind of thing that should light me up inside. I don't hold back, not at rehearsals, not on stage, not offstage. Not anywhere.
But right now…
Muscle memory is the only thing that gets me through the song. My fingers know the way around my guitar better than they know anything. This is what I'm good at.
This is where I belong.
Even Violet thinks so.
I should be happy about this opportunity. I should at least be taking it in. My eyes are clear. I can see everything. I can hear every note from my guitar, from Mal's guitar, from Kit's bass, from Joel's drum kit. I can hear every bit of my brother's breathy voice.
I can hear the orders from the crew and from Mal, and I can even sense the continuing frost between Joel and Mal—the two of them hold grudges better than anyone in the universe.
It's all here. It's all happening around me. But I'm not here. I'm off some other place, stuck in how badly I fucked everything up again.
Mal's New York fuck buddy is sitting in the front row, half watching our rehearsal, half looking at her phone. She's waiting for him. She's at his beck and call.
It's the same with all his fuck buddies in every city. They jump to meet his terms. They jump to do what he wants to do, wherever he is, whenever he wants to be there.
No doubt he makes it up to them with his hands, mouth, or cock, but I'm not entertaining those thoughts.
They really are sidekicks. He cares about them, yeah, but he always makes it clear it's only when things are convenient for him.
If that's what I was doing to Violet, she was right to let me walk away.
