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“I see,” she says, looking at him severely. “He did, then.”
“Isaiah, look, I need to talk to you about a girl on my crew,” Spencer immediately changes the subject, and my stomach sinks. “I hear someone’s life was in danger the other day. Now, I don’t need specifics, and I’m sure your guards were there. But I would hate for something like that to happen again. Do I need to take care of it?”
“No,” I reply. I don’t feel hungry anymore. Just really, really tired. “I handled it.”
He nods, ready to move past it. But I’m not.
“Wait,” I say. “Which time?”
His sandy eyebrows shoot up into his forehead. Ari’s face goes blank with fear.
“What do you mean?” Spencer asks me.
I swallow slowly. If he was flying in from Vermont and then probably sleeping off the jet lag, it’s possible he didn’t hear about what happened at the club last night. But he will.
“There was an incident at the pre-tour party last night,” I say, and he’s already scrolling on his phone. Oh to be brave enough to go on the internet. “Someone… some fans actually, they got out of control. It had to do with Eden.”
He tenses. “What?”
“It was apparently leaked that she and I… That we had history.” His body jerks, he’s so surprised. So he didn’t know. Eden didn’t tell him when he hired her. I don’t know why, but this makes me feel a little bit better. “The police came and no one was hurt. Except for… Well, we were all a bit traumatized. Eden especially.”
‘What do you need?’
‘You.’
I remember the night we spent on the floor of her room, how she trusted me, how she kissed me. Like we were us again.
And then I hurt her worse than all those death threats had, with my jealousy and my insecurity. But it wasn’t just that. It was bitterness. I’ve let it fester inside me for so long, I don’t know how to move past it. And it’s poisoned everything good that’s ever happened to me.
And it will continue to.
“That looks absolutely horrifying,” Ari says in a low, shocked voice, as she scrolls the news articles on her phone.
Wes grabs it from her fingers and presses it on the table face down. “Don’t look at it, baby,” he says to her gently. “You know how they exaggerate.”
“Not this time,” I murmur, and Ari’s eyes well up with tears.
Wes just looks at me, his usually sunny eyes turned stormy. “Damn,” he says. “I’m sorry. But you weren’t hurt? Nobody was hurt?”
I can’t reply. I turn my head away, because suddenly there are tears burning my eyes too. I’m just so tired, so depleted. It feels as if I’ve been fighting against some invisible, vicious enemy for too long, and now it’s time to accept my defeat. Only the enemy has been me all along.
The heartbreaker has been me.
No one has broken my heart but myself.
“What’s up?” Wes says, his warm voice anchoring me to reality. He’s leaning forward, trying to peer into my eyes. “Something’s wrong. Talk to me.”
Wes and his ‘talk to me’s. I swear, the man has a way of popping my soul open every single time.
“Isaiah?” he asks carefully. “Why did you want to see me?”
“I… I can’t do this tour.” It all comes bursting out of me, like blood from a gunshot wound. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m so tired. I’m… empty. I’m nothing. I can’t do the show in two days, let alone the whole tour for the next year or two.” My eyes go wide as I realize what I just said. How long I’ve been thinking of these words but never said them until now. “But all these people, Wes, all their jobs… My mom, she… I can’t not do it.”
He looks at me with pity and compassion. He gets it, doesn’t it? He’s felt it too, probably, yet he’s still here, fighting, working, creating. How is he so strong?
“Tell me more,” he says quietly. “Break it down for me, Isaiah. Make me understand.”
“Well, for starters, I hate all my songs.”
