Page 3 of Anything But Lonely

CHAPTER 2

MATEO

“Did she give you any idea what she wants to talk to you about?” my sister asks, pushing the front door closed behind us.

Crew abandons me immediately.

My kid doesn’t even hesitate. One glimpse of his cousins tearing through the living room and his hand slips from mine, already swallowed up by the noise and laughter.

I watch him go, running a hand through my hair before dragging my palm along my jaw where a few days’ worth of stubble is starting to win the fight. The ink on my forearms is on full display as I hike the sleeves of my shirt up before pulling them back into place just to do something with my hands.

I follow my sister into the kitchen, letting the house settle a little behind us while still keeping the kids in view.

“Nope,” I say to my sister, leaning a hip against the counter. “Just that it was important and had to do with Crew.”

My ex-wife has never asked me to choose between my job and my family, even when we were married. That fact alone had me using one of my very few days off from my band’s tour to travel the nine hours from Nashville to Milwaukee when she texted me that we needed to talk about our current custody arrangement.

Mia glances at me like she’s deciding whether to push it or not. I keep my focus on the kids in the living room instead, where Crew is already fully invested in his cousins’ new set of building blocks.

“Well, it’s obviously important enough to have you renting a car and driving the nine hours here just to turn around and head back there. All on your day off,” Mia says, grabbing two bottles of water from the fridge and handing me one.

I shrug my shoulders as I sit back against the counter. “She said it was urgent, and something that required more than just a phone call.”

Mia’s brown eyes widen. “That has my anxiety spiking. How are you not freaking out?” She shakes her head, taking a sip of water before continuing. “She didn’t tell you anything else? What about when you picked up Crew from her place earlier today?”

“She wasn’t there,” I answer with a shrug. “Daniel was.”

Mia raises a brow, and I know what’s coming before she even opens her mouth. I almost say the words along with her. “It’s weird how cool you are with your ex-wife getting married two months after your divorce was final.”

I roll my eyes, sick of having to continue to explain myself. “How many times do I have to tell you? We were separated for a whole year before we finalized the divorce.”

Mia tucks a piece of her blonde hair behind her ear. She stares at me for a few seconds past comfortable. “Maybe I’m just too used to things going wrong. That’s why your easy divorce and healthy co-parenting confuses me.”

She says it as a joke, but we both know the truth between her words. Losing our parents when she was eight and having to deal with me trying to figure out how to be the legal guardian at the ripe age of eighteen was just the start of my sister’s uphill battle.

My own too.

After years of therapy, I finally understand my own trauma and how to navigate life with it. Maybe that’s why the divorce went the way it did.

No drama, no scandal. Just two people who fell out of love.

And by thirty-nine, I’ve learned that I don’t have time for anything besides my son and my band.

“Your husband says the same thing,” I say with a laugh.

“Because your drummer is smarter than he looks,” Mia replies, her gaze moving to just over my shoulder where I can hear her twin daughters and my son playing what they think is Duck Duck Goose. “I’m surprised you were able to talk Eddie out of not making the drive with you,” she adds. “But I’m glad you did. He FaceTimed me and the girls this morning, and I’m pretty sure he was half-asleep.”

A chuckle escapes my throat. “Sounds about right.”

“He doesn’t bounce back from sleeping on a tour bus like he used to,” she adds. “He’s counting down the days until next summer when this tour is finished.”

My lips quirk for a moment, but the words hit me directly where it hurts—a sensitive spot I’ve been trying to ignore since we decided that this tour would be Cross My Heart’s last.

I can’t lie and say this farewell tour isn’t taking its own toll on me. Doing this in my twenties and even my early thirties was much easier than just a few months shy of turning forty.

But I don’t want it to end.

This band and getting us to where we are is how I’ve spent a better part of my life. And while touring is time-consuming and tiring, and takes time away that I can spend with my son, I don’t know who I am without Cross My Heart.