Page 56 of Fallen Hero

“No shit?”

“Something else we have in common?”

“Can’t say it’s my favorite, but it’s in my top five.”

I waited for her to ask her question, keeping my gaze on the skyscrapers that were now dwarfed in comparison to the Burj Khalifa.

But she didn’t ask a question; she elaborated.

“Stevie Nicks is one of the best storytellers ever to live. Her breakup songs are golden, made better because Lindsey Buckingham had to sing harmony on the very fuck-you songs Stevie wrote. I want to be her when I grow up. Not that I want my man to cheat on me, but damn, she’s brilliant. If I could only listen to one song the rest of my life, it’d be ‘Dreams.’”

So she did have a favorite song.

And a damn good one at that.

“Though,” she went on sheepishly like she didn’t want to admit the next part. “They both were assholes and cheated.” I heard Calli shift on her lounger and turned to look at her. “Beauty born from heartache.”

Calli was staring right at me, but she wasn’t seeing me. She looked miles away and lost in her head. I wondered if she was thinking about her sister—the ugly end to her. Nothing beautiful had come from Calli’s heartache.

I didn’t get a chance to ask. She continued down her morose path. “Look at Eric Clapton and the Beatles guy, George Harrison. Add in Pattie Boyd and you have an epic love triangle that inspired one of Clapton’s best songs, ‘Layla.’ And I’m not a Beatles fan, but I can’t deny Harrison’s song to Pattie, ‘Something,’ is amazing.”

She wasn’t wrong. There was a lot of bed-hopping in the seventies and eighties. The music scene was rife with cheating and drugs and men taking women who weren’t theirs under the guise of trying to find their muse—whatever the fuck that meant. I could argue Clapton’s song “Tears in Heaven” was his best, though bringing up the death of the man’s son would veer us down a path I didn’t want to take us.

I didn’t have to redirect the conversation—Calli did, bringing us full circle back to Fleetwood Mac. “Though Lindsey’s ‘Go Your Own Way’ is an emotional sucker punch. A man accepting he couldn’t give the woman he loved what she needed and loving her enough to let her go. On the other hand, that acceptance meant he didn’t fight for her.”

I didn’t miss the loneliness in her tone, the whisper of what was left unsaid.

“Did a man not fight for you?” I asked gently.

“Never had a man, but I have a mother who let me go my own way and didn’t fight for me or herself. It doesn’t take a clinical psychologist to explain why that song hits me in the feels.”

Never had a man?

What the fuck?

The woman was stunning, smart, and had a wicked sense of right and wrong. How had she never had a man?

I tried for levity and said, “Let me guess, ‘The Chain’ is your third favorite on the album.”

“There are only forty-four original words in that four-and-a-half-minute song. In a world where people like to hear themselves speak so they use seventy-three words and a lot of filler to make themselves feel smart, instead of the ten necessary to get the point across, ‘The Chain’ proves it’s about the quality of words, not the quantity.”

I couldn’t argue that, so I didn’t. I moved on.

“Never been tied to a man?”

I saw the flinch, but no left eye twitch denoting irritation. Uncomfortable but not angry at the question.

“I’ve been busy. Never had time.”

She’d had time. She just never made the time.

I wasn’t going to ask about men she’d used to pass the time, because I didn’t want to know.

“I know you’ve never been married and aren’t looking to be, but have you ever been tied to a woman?”

I walked right into that motherfucking land mine.

“Yep, for four years.”