Page 78 of Wreckage and Rain

"Metaphor, Sam."

"I know. I was deflecting because this is a genuinely important moment and I'm allergic to sincerity."

She throws a dumpling at me. I catch it. She looks impressed.

"Sincere version. I think you should. You've got something. Not technique. Presence. You walk out there and people are going to stop breathing."

"More powerful than a bestseller list?"

"The list is other people deciding what you've created is good. The stage is you throwing off everything and owning your damn self and not giving a single fuck what anyone else thinks. Different muscle."

She leans against me. I put my arm around her. The dumpling containers cool between us.

I think about Elise.

Not with the knife-twist. Not with the grief.

I pick up my phone. The folder labeled Don't Open This that I've opened four hundred times in three years. Photos of us. Elise and me. Happy. Or looking happy.

Select all. Delete.

Are you sure?

I'm sure.

The folder empties. My phone feels lighter.

"Two weeks," Summer says. "I'll tell Bex that I'll do it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She squares her shoulders. "I'm going to take that stage and terrify every person in the room."

"You'll be magnificent."

"Obviously." She steals my last dumpling. "Now stop being sincere. It's unsettling."

I let her have it.

In two weeks she's going to stand on a stage in front of strangers.

She falls asleep against my shoulder. I don't move.

Chapter 21: Vibes

Colt

Dom is driving us to Chicago. He doesn't trust me behind the wheel. I also don't trust me behind the wheel. I haven't slept more than four hours in three days. My hands shake around my coffee cup. I've lost enough weight that my suits hang off my body and my barber has started looking at me with the expression usually reserved for abandoned dogs.

Chicago rises out of the prairie like a dare. Steel and glass and a vertical ambition that Charleston, with its horizontal sprawl and Spanish moss, would never attempt.

"You good?" Dom asks, pulling into the hotel garage.

"No."

"Eat a steak. Take a shower. Put on a clean shirt."

"I want to go now."