I chuckle darkly. “Yeah. I had some good ideas, too.”
Then I pinch her side, and she squirms, making the gondola shake.
Lou reaches a hand up to my cheek and rubs her nails in my scruff. I can’t help when my eyes close at her touch or the way my breathing comes easier when I’m with her.
She’s a light in the darkness.
A hand pulling me from the shadows where I’ve dwelt for too long.
“What happened? It sounds like you two were thick as thieves.”
I don’t let myself laugh this time. “That’s a good way of putting it.”
“So why wasn’t it you with him when he dropped the rest of the band?”
The back of my throat itches, even after a decade—more than a decade; what, fifteen, seventeen years?—of pain and memories resurface in me and try to claw their way out. The truth still tastes bitter on my tongue.
“I wasn’t enough for him. He needed Duncan.”
“Oh, Patty. I’m sorry,” she says quietly, her voice rising above the sounds of the park below us. “Do you resent that?”
“Yeah. But mostly, I resent myself. If I’d been smarter, more patient, I could have made something happen on my own eventually. But I got swept away in his dreams, and when he convinced me he didn’t need me and needed Duncan instead, I listened. I let him push me aside so I could fill whatever role he needed.”
Her expressive blue eyes are so wide and sad, I can see an ocean of unshed tears in them. Forme. I don’t deserve them, but they mean something anyway.
She keeps her hand on my cheek, her head against my shoulder, her back glued to my side. “So you went from performing to running sound?”
“I did a lot more than that, but Nash didn’t trust anyone else with the mixes,” I tell her honestly, even as warning bells go off in my head that I need to change the topic—fast.
Even if a part of me doesn’t want to.
A part of me might even want her to press.
Lou doesn’t press, but she doesn’t let go, either. Light but earth-shattering, her fingers trace a slow line along my scar, her nails dragging just enough to send a shiver down my spine.
The Ferris wheel whirs softly as it begins its slow descent, the gondola swaying as the evening air grows cooler. Below, laughter and music drift up from the park, the energy of the crowd a contrast to the quiet of our little haven.
She waits, giving me the space to speak, to keep going—or to shut this conversation down completely.
I should. I should make some joke, redirect her attention, let this whole thing fade into the night.
But she keeps her hand on my face, her touch making my thoughts go quiet, and for some reason, that makes it harder to keep my walls up.
“I told myself I didn’t mind,” I say finally. My voice feels tight, stuffed with too many years of things gone unsaid. “That being in the background was fine. That I didn’t need the spotlight as long as I could still be part of the music.”
Lou tilts her head, searching my face. “And was it?”
The Ferris wheel has made a full rotation, but it stops now with us near the top.
I’m not sure if a little kid got sick or if the universe is simply giving me a minute to decide how much of myself I want to give her.
But I have the time to answer her question, and I need—Iwant—to take it.
“It was,” I admit. “Until it wasn’t. The longer I stayed in the shadows, the more I felt like I was fading into them. I wasn’t even sure who I was outside of who Nash needed me to be.”
She frowns, but she’s looking at me like my secrets are safe, like those parts of me are worth knowing.
And that gives me a stab as painful as any memory.
