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“I can’t believe she answered you,” he grunts under his breath, glancing at Tyler. “Fuck, I miss her. I really regret things now that we’re back in the States. It was easier to ignore everything when we were working half a world away from her.”
“Aye,” I mutter methodically.
Tiny Valkyrie: You made yourself not fit. No one asked you to put your dick anywhere near my sister. You were supposed to watch over her, be a safe space to land when we weren’t around and I was fucking gone. Nowhere within that did it say to please dick down my baby sister!
“She’s not playing very nice,” Mav snorts. “Lennon O’Reilly has always played for keeps, Atlas. If you’re getting into this conversation, be prepared to have Turner ready to smack some retribution into you with his bat.”
“Turner and fucking Sally.” I smile. I should be scared and not amused, right? I can’t help how backwards my feelings are, or how much I’ve missed my friends. “I caved and had to text her.”
“I don’t blame you, but she’s never going to understand our side, Atlas,” Mav says.
“She’s never going to understand it because you fucked over her sister,” Tyler says, continuing to work. He doesn’t even look away from his computer as he adjusts his glasses. I guess he can hear with those stupid ear plugs. “I’m not saying you should have actually fucked her and taken her first, because I had the honor of that, but you could have handled it very differently.”
“Bastard,” I mutter. I didn’t need to be reminded that he got her firsts. I mean I figured, but it’s a bitter pill to swallow. “I didn’t think it all the way through, but I have to sit with my choices, regardless if I don’t fully agree with them now.”
I could have handled it differently with Mav when those beautiful blue eyes begged me for more. Or we shouldn’t have gotten hot and heavy at all with our best friend’s little sister.
“The fact that you’re speaking to Layla’s sister right now says you’re a liar,” Tyler says evenly, waving at his computer screen. “I don’t consider that a very good apology, though.”
Mav and my lips drop open in surprise.How does he know that?
Looking down at the phone as it vibrates again, I read the text.
Tiny Valkyrie: This is Turner. You’ve upset my wife, and there will be consequences for that. Figure your shit out.
“Well that sounds ominous,” Tyler chuckles. He’s definitely reading my texts from over there.
Fuck.
“Why are you bugging my phone?” I ask. It’s surreal that I even have to ask that. I feel like I’m living in the Twilight Zone.
“I don’t trust any of you,” he says. “Draven I’m coming around to, but you both? Not even a little bit. You get the full stalker nerd treatment.”
“You’re a dangerous man, Tyler,” Mav grunts. “It’s always the quiet ones.”
“I do believe you have a text to respond to.”
Forcing myself to look down at my phone, I swallow thickly. Fuck it, here we go.
I owe you all an apology. Mav and I left the country the second we could to get space, and didn’t tell a soul. The label and Jordan have always known where we were, but they promised to keep it to themselves. Mav and I got hard and bitter over the last five years, and I’m positive it’s because we’ve been running from our pasts.
Mav glances down to read the text before I send it, nodding curtly. “That’s exactly what it feels like,” he says softly. “We’re very different people than we were five years ago, and not in a good way.”
“Yeah, we’re dickheads,” I sigh, lunging to my feet to fall into a bunk. I need a nap before I face this nightmare that is my life again.
Mav throws out his feet where he is, dropping his head back to nap, and I don’t have the heart to tell him he’ll wake up sore. Stomping to the back, I pull off my boots and flop into the bunk. The bedroom behind me is completely quiet, I notice.
Guess they really are sleeping.
Layla’s screamed words to Mav and I float back to me.
“The way you treated me five years ago, your words, it all runs rent free in my head and my heart. Please feel free to take all the blame for it…”
The way she thinks over her words carefully, how she’s afraid to share her lyrics, it all comes crashing down on me. Mav and I aren’t the only ones who have changed, and not all of it is from growing older.
Our choices have caught up to us, and I’m fully seeing the consequences of them. Maybe I’ve seen some of them before, I just couldn’t allow myself to care. Now that I’m fully sober,and we haven’t smoked in almost twenty-four hours, I’m seeing everything in a new light.
I don’t much like what I’m seeing.
