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“Will you do me a favor?” she asks.
I look down at her hand still on mine, her fingers so much smaller. She’s fragile, and I have to remember that.
“What?”
“Will you sing for me?” she whispers. “Please, Madden?”
My gut clenches at the notion the same way it always does. “I told you—”
“I know,” she cuts me off. “You don’t sing for anybody. But you already did once. You just didn’t know it. I want to hear your voice again more than anything in the world. I’ll turn around. You won’t even know I’m here.”
“It’s not that simple,” I mutter. “I get too twisted up inside my head.”
“Okay, well then, how about this?” Bianca pulls a half-empty bottle of peach schnapps from her bag. “Some liquid courage.”
Despite my dark mood, my lip tips up at the corner. “Trying to get me drunk?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes.” She offers me a hopeful smile.
“Fine.” I reach out and grab it. “Let’s get drunk.”
An hour later, after hoping she would just forget, I’m tipsy enough not to give much of a fuck about anything when Bianca pushes me up into a sitting position.
“I have an idea,” she says. “Why don’t you try to clear out some of that adrenaline before you perform? You can do a bunch of push-ups or something, and then you just go for it no matter what.”
“And you think that’s going to help?” I arch a brow at her, definitely thinking about a better alternative to push-ups.
“Maybe.” Her eyes spark with amusement. “Or maybe I just want to watch you do push-ups. Either way, I don’t see how it can hurt.”
“I knew it,” I smirk. “Always objectifying me, aren’t you?”
She rolls her eyes. “Okay, but seriously, though. How about this? I’ll sit on the other side of the tree. It’ll just be you and the moon and the water lapping against the shore. Put your spotlight on everything else around you. That’s all you have to do. You’ll be in the shadow, and I’ll be in the light, and you can forget I even exist.”
I almost tell her that’s impossible, but she moves before I have a chance to argue. Quiet settles over me, and when I close my eyes, I can hear the water, just like she said. A minute passes. Maybe two. I take a deep breath and then another, and I reach for my guitar. Even with the alcohol numbing the edges of my consciousness, the nerves are still there. They probably always will be. But for a minute, I can imagine it the way Bianca said. It’s just me and the moon alone in the darkness.
I ease into it, barely loud enough for myself to hear. But within seconds, I’m lost to it. The world around me falls away, and soon, I’m singing every word of the song I’ve been working on for the past few weeks. It’s a song about her, and when I deliver the last line, it feels fucking good. It feels like I’m free-falling, high as fuck on something I want to taste again and again.
When it ends, silence engulfs me, and for a second, the rush is swept away by a bigger question. Did she like it? Before that thought can grow roots, she appears from behind the tree, offering me a watery smile.
“Madden,” she blurts out. “That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”
Chapter 21
Madden
“All good?” I glance up from the table as Birdie and Ace emerge from the game room and enter the kitchen.
“Yeah.” Ace nods.
He’s ready to leave, but Birdie tells him to wait before her attention swivels to me.
“What is it?” I ask.
She chews on her lip, and I can see that Bianca is getting inside her head already. It doesn’t surprise me. Ace’s wife might come off as tough, but she’s notorious for her bleeding heart. She’s always had a soft spot for girls who remind her of herself when she was in trouble.
“What if something happened to her?” she asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” Birdie sighs and props her hip against the counter. “You spent all this time looking for her, thinking she was dead, only to find out she isn’t. So I get why you’re angry. Trust me, I do. But maybe there’s a valid explanation for her never coming forward.”
I shake my head, refusing to accept that. Bianca and I have been through too much. There’s more history between us than Birdie could ever imagine. Secrets nobody knows. I fell for her charms too many times to count. But over and over again, Bianca betrayed me, and I didn’t want to see it. Now, it’s clear as fucking day. She’s a liar, and she doesn’t care what she left behind.
“She knows what she’s doing,” I answer. “Whatever happened that night, she just doesn’t want to acknowledge it.”
