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Because this was on me. It wasn’t on Silas. My feelings were my own responsibility. Silas couldn’t help his platonic feelings any more than I could help loving him.
With a shaky breath, I wiped my wet cheeks and stiffened my resolve.
I couldn’t keep doing this.
It wasn’t fair to me. It wasn’t fair to Silas.
Once this tour was over, I was moving on.
It would kill me, but not as much as this. Maybe if I loved another, I’d be able to feel like myself again.
Rather than the broken man who currently occupied my skin.
Forthenexttendays, my issues faded into the background as Ollie and Luca’s relationship was dragged into the spotlight.
One minute, they were loved up and happy, and the next, Ollie was on a plane headed back to England and Luca was distraught. Even on stage, the place he loved the most, he struggled to hold it together.
For the first time ever, Silas and I turned our attention to Luca. Between us, we managed to distract the audience from Luca’s impending meltdown, pretending to flirt with him while giving him the time to pull himself back together.
Originally, we’d all believed Ollie had left following an argument, having told Kevin he’d been using Luca all along. Despite my reservations about how Ollie truly felt, something about the story didn’t quite ring true. Nothing about Ollie suggested he was one to run from a difficult situation.
But when the truth of the situation was exposed, it was so much worse than any of us could’ve imagined.
Not only had our manager effectively orchestrated their whole breakup, but he’d also been defrauding us for years. Ollie’s final article exposed how he and our accountant had been colluding to funnel chunks of our profits into their own accounts.
Needless to say, Kevin had been summarily fired. Only the thought of lawsuits stopped us from taking a swing at him.
Now we were back in London, ready to perform our final show. This week hadn’t even been on the original itinerary, but Kevin had added it at the last minute, eager to milk us for all we were worth.
Luca had shot down to Southampton the second we’d landed in London, determined to win back his reporter. Judging by the massive grins on their faces when they joined us backstage at Wembley, their reunion had been very successful.
With everything else going on, I hadn’t thought about the phone call I’d made to my agent a couple of weeks ago.
I knew it was for the best. I needed the distance from Silas. Needed the space to let my heart heal.
Luca grabbed a mic and began to hype up the crowd. With Ollie back in the audience, all his previous charisma and bravado had returned to centre stage.
My gaze drifted to my best friend. Tonight, he’d paired a tight black T-shirt with the scruffy denim jeans he liked to live in. He drove our stylists crazy, but Silas valued comfort above everything else.
Like he could feel my gaze, he turned his attention to me. When his eyes connected with mine, his whole face lit up like the fucking sun. His small smile blossomed into a full grin as he shot me a playful wink.
Even as my mouth twisted to return his joy, it was like an arrow to my heart. How could I not love him? Put any sane person in his company, let his joy leech over their life, and tell them not to fall.
Because they wouldn’t be able to. Being in Silas’s sunlight was the most dangerous trap of all.
He sauntered over to me, and I couldn’t breathe. Knowing what he wanted, I turned so my back was to him.
We leaned against each other, playing our instruments and singing the backing vocals into the same mic.
For the first time ever, my mind wasn’t on my performance. I had no idea if I hit the right notes. Sung the right words.
All I could think about was that I’d be walking away from Silas once this show was done.
We hadn’t been apart for longer than a night since we’d met.
Could I do it?
I needed to…butcouldI?
