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He nods and starts to scroll through the list.
“I’m sorry,” Mick mouths at me.
I nod and avoid his eyes.
“I didn’t know.”
He knew.
“I didn’t mean to…” he says, and this time he catches my gaze. “Really.” I stare into the dark depths of his eyes until I can swallow past the lump in my throat.
“Okay,” I whisper. He looks at me. “It’s okay,” I say again. He didn’t know I’d have quite such a visceral reaction to that song. I get it.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” he says.
“Okay,” I say again.
Suddenly, my sisters are right next to me.
Finny whispers something to the operator and he scrolls through his list until he finds one of our songs. I know it’s ours the minute I hear the melody. It’s the song Finny wrote about her mother, and it’s about the unconditional love you get from a family. It’s about what moms are supposed to be.
I nod. “I’ll sing that one.”
I glare at Mick and he pretends to poke his bottom lip out and sulk when we take over his song. He crosses his arms and leans against the wall, probably because he can no longer hold himself up. His eyes are rimmed with red and there’s a form of pain hidden in the dark depths that I can only begin to guess at.
The crowd goes wild when we start to sing along with the melody. Cameras nearly blind us as people take pictures of us, but we keep singing all the way to the end. Then we take a deep, dramatic bow and rush off the stage. My sisters’ husbands and significant others meet us at the edge of the platform.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Sam, my sister Peck’s husband, says. He grabs Peck’s hand and leads her toward the rear of the building. If we don’t get out of here quickly, there’s a good chance we’ll be mobbed.
“Is this the way out?” someone else asks.
Sam and Peck, Finny and Tag, Star and Josh, and Ryan and Lark rush down the hallway, and Mick and I follow. Mick’s fingers touch the small of my back as we go out the door. “You okay?” he asks as we step out onto the street.
“I’m fine.” I’m angry as hell, but I stop to really look at him as my family members all pile into two waiting cars. He’s drunk. Really drunk. “Are you okay?” I ask Mick as he weaves like he’s walking a tightrope.
“You might not be aware of this yet, but I’m a tiny bit drunk,” he tells me. He covers his mouth, holding his fingers over his lips to stifle a burp. “Just a little,” he says. He straightens his shirt, pulling it down and rubbing across the front as though he’s pressing out a crease.
“You don’t say,” I reply, trying to stifle my worry for him.
“Are you being sarcastic?” he asks. He narrows his eyes and stares at me.
I hold up my hands like I’m being held at gunpoint and shake my head. “No, definitely not.”
“Because I happen to have a thing for sarcastic chicks.”
My heart starts to thump. “You don’t say,” I mutter again.
His eyes dance across my face. “Yes, sarcastic chicks with bow-shaped mouths and sparkly eyes. They totally do it for me.”
My pulse beats double-time.
My sister Finny sticks her head out the open car door and says, “Stop making moony eyes at my sister and get in the fucking car.”
I feel his fingers at the small of my back again, and the hairs on my arms stand up. It feels good. It’s intimate and comfortable and… God, I have missed having a man touch me there. “Need some help?” he asks.
I jerk myself out of my stupor and slide across the seat. Mick closes the door behind me and leans in the open window.
“Aren’t you coming?” I ask.
