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The question was for Lauren, but DJ’s eyes remained on Danny. Although his voice was soft, his body language told a different story. He squared up, folding his arms across his chest.
Danny’s answer was curt. “Everything’s fine.”
“I’m not talking toyou.”
“Hey!” Lauren’s sharp voice was a slap to both. “Put your dicks away. Both of you. You—” She put a hand on DJ’s chest and gave him a gentle shove. “—You go on, I’ll be at the bus in a minute. And you—” She pointed a finger at Danny. “Just—enough.”
Danny started to open his mouth.
“Donotsay anything stupid,” she warned.
DJ mumbled an apology to her—not to Danny—and walked away with Ox. They loitered at the exit with Augie and Stevie until they realized she was going to stare at them until they left. Lauren knew they meant well, but this discussion was none of their business.
“They’re waiting for me,” she told Danny, and then she sighed. The day she first left for California floated through her memory. “This feels way too familiar.”
“I’m sorry, Lauren. I never meant…” His voice faded away.
“I know you didn’t. I didn’t either.” All the drama, all the turmoil. None of it had been Lauren’s intent. The lingering silence crept back and threatened to swallow them both.
“There’s a certain peace in it. Being done,” Lauren said. “To finally come to terms with the fact that something you wanted so much can’t happen. Maybe I needed to know that we tried, even with the deck stacked against us.”
Danny shook his head. “What if we’re not done? What if we—”
“What we had when we were kids was special,” she said. “Wild. Beautiful. Wonderful. Sad. But we’re not who we were back then. We are who we are now—and this version of Danny and Lauren? It wasn’t meant to be.” She hated saying it, but it was the truth.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes. I do.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but Lauren raised a hand to stop the argument before it mushroomed.
“We ended a long time ago, Danny.” It was a stark truth, but Lauren wasn’t cruel about it. “I held on to you all these years because I believed you were the only one who’d ever loved me for who I am. But the person I am now issodifferent from the one I was back then.”
Danny reached out and tried to take her hand. She hesitated for a split second, warring between wanting to lace her fingers with his and knowing it was a mistake. She pulled her hand back and pressed it to her forehead. This was insanity.
“What about working things out with Heather?” she asked.
“We might be too broken to fix.” The flat, resigned acceptance in Danny’s voice startled her. Lauren turned her face away, the unspoken implications of his statement cutting her to the bone.
“Don’t look like that,” he said. “Me and Heather, we were broken before you came back. I just don’t think we knew it.”
“That doesn’t mean we—”
Danny interrupted her. “I’ve spent years wondering if I could live this life, be with you. I love you, Lauren. I do. We could make this work—”
“No, Danny. No, we can’t.” This time, Lauren wasn’t as gentle. There was bite behind her words, and willpower. His head jerked back in surprise.
“You’d hate this life,” she said. “The unpredictability, the chaos. The publicity. And this vision you have, our life together? What does it look like?”
“I don’t know. We’ll figure it out as we go.”
Figure it out as we go?Lauren managed not to laugh. Life-by-the-seat-of-your-pants wasn’t Danny’s way of moving through the world. He was, she realized, a lot like Ox in some ways: predictable, solid, steady. And she admired those qualities, but that didn’t change anything.
“There’s nothing to figure out,” she said. “You’d come on the road with me, live out of a suitcase, never the same bed twice. You’d never see Lucas, Matty or Tommy—or your family.”
“No, I’d—”
She cut him off before he could continue. “Or you’d stay home while I toured, stuck in an empty house on the West Coast. Alone. Still without your family. Your friends. Your sons.”
