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But it was loud enough.
The release of Peter’s last shred of hope came in the form of a mournful sigh. “Okay,” he replied simply, throwing in the towel. “I appreciate the honesty.”
Disbelief rattled my bones as I opened my eyes and stared at an old water stain on my desk. How he could sound so disappointed that we weren’t getting back together after everything that had happened was entirely beyond me. How he could say he loved me after what I had done …
“Lisa called,” he then admitted.
His ex-girlfriend. The woman whose dress had resided in Peter’s closet for months before I demanded he throw it out. It didn’t surprise me she had reached out. In fact, I was sure his mother had sprung at the opportunity to shoot her a text and let the preferred girlfriend know that the lowlife he had been slumming around with had had someone else’s tongue in her mouth. I was sure it’d filled his mother with great joy to give Lisa the happy news that her cherished son was once again single and ready to make her his wife.
I couldn’t say I blamed her.
“She wants to get together,” he went on. “I haven’t given her an answer yet. I told her I had to think about it. But I needed to call you first. I guess I just needed to know.”
“You should go,” I said, curling my lips in a smile he couldn’t see.
“Yeah,” he replied in a more uplifted tone. “I think I will.”
“Good.”
The realization that this would be the last time I spoke to Peter hit me like a stinging slap in the face. Tears sprang to my eyes, and my throat thickened with an urgent rush of sorrow and regret. I wanted to say I wished things had been different. Hell, had it not been for Dylan, maybe it all would’ve been. Maybe I could’ve fallen in love with Peter. Maybe we could’ve had the life I’d thought I wanted.
But I didn’t want our last conversation to end on a lie, so instead, I said, “Hey, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” he said, and I swore I could hear the faint hint of a smile in his voice.
“Why didn’t you tell me you loved me sooner?”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah.”
Peter blew out a long-drawn-out breath into the phone, as if to prepare himself to speak the truth. I braced myself by pinning my lip between my teeth and picking at a frayed cuticle, somehow knowing whatever he said would glue itself to my mind and live there for a long, long time … and I was right.
“Because, Lenny,” he said, a little breathless and unsure, “I knew you couldn’t say it back.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Dylan
“Dylan, what's it like, being back on tour after everything you’ve been through? Did you ever think you'd be back, doing what you love?”
Madi Stills sat across from us, looking directly at me with expectant eyes and a show of straight bright-white teeth. But the stool I sat on was hard and uncomfortable. The only way to sit was to keep my bad leg outstretched at an angle with the other perched on the middle rung, and even then, I kept slipping.
Not long ago, I would've put up with it. I would've kept silent and suffered through the pain to avoid the embarrassment of making a spectacle of myself.
But today, I didn't care.
I tried not to care at all—ever.
“I'm sorry, Madi,” I said, raising a finger and turning to Mitch, who was standing on the sidelines and scrolling through his phone. “Hey, Mitch, can I get another chair over here?”
With a start, he looked up, clueless and distracted. “Huh, what was that?”
I planted my palm against the hard wooden stool, using it as leverage while I stood upright. “I need another chair, man. This one is killing me.”
“Oh, yeah, no problem,” he said, pocketing his phone and hurrying to find something else for me to sit on.
Madi stood from her swivel chair and pushed it toward Mitch. “Here, is this better?”
