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I never should have walked away. I should have followed her back to her house and fought for her. I should have told the label that I was going to walk away if they didn’t put her back in the band.
I’m still not talking to Tony. Neither is Matt. Ben is the only one who can and will deal with him, though he doesn’t want to either. None of this are happy about the situation.
There is nothing to say to him. Not after the way he abandoned Cassie a second time. If there was anyone who could have talked White Hot into taking Cassie back, without me threatening to walk.
He wouldn’t do it, though. I pleaded with him for days after the hometown show before he told me I was walking a thin line.
Without her, I don’t know what to do with myself. If it wouldn’t screw over Ben and Matt, I would have walked away from the band by now. I would have flown back to Seattle and stood on her doorstep until she came out to talk to me.
I take a long drag of the cigarette and stare at the poster of the band on the side of the arena. People stop to take a picture in front of it. A few people are wearing old band shirts from when Cassie was still with us.
It only cuts me deeper.
This would be easier if I could lose myself in the drugs and the alcohol like I did the first time. Instead, I have to live with what I did.
I finish the cigarette before taking the back entrance into the arena. As I move through the window halls to the greenroom, several people say hello. I nod to them, but I can’t see their faces right now. Each and every one of them looks like Cassie when I broke her heart.
Even if I got on a plane right now and flew back to her, she wouldn’t want anything to do with me.
Ben and Matt look up as I walk into the greenroom. Kennedy smiles and comes over, handing me Annika before pouring herself a glass of champagne. I smile down at the baby and bounce her on my hip.
These days, Annika is the only person in the world who can make me feel better. It’s hard to be miserable when there’s a baby talking to you.
And if I’d worked things out with Cassie, we might have been on our way to having our own baby. We could have bought her dream house, or she could have moved into mine. I would have asked her to marry me sooner or later.
We would be on our way to starting a future together if she didn’t hate me right now.
“We need to talk,” Ben says, nodding to the couch across from him.
I continue to bounce Annika as I take a seat. “Yeah, we do. I can’t keep doing this. White Hot doesn’t care about us as artists, and I refuse to keep living that way. Tony offered to go out and see if he could get me a hooker the other night.”
Matt scoffs and crosses his arms. “He offered me the same thing. He thinks we need to be photographed with people in order to drum up more interest between shows.”
I take a deep breath, knowing what I have to say next may tear apart the band. “Once this tour is over, I’m walking away from White Hot. They turned me into a person I never thought I was capable of being. I’m not that person anymore.”
Ben and Matt glance at each other before nodding. Kennedy puts her champagne down and takes Annika, sitting down on the couch beside Ben. Ben leans over and kisses her temple.
I wish Cassie was here right now.
“Cassie is one of us,” I say. “She always has been, and she always will be. Letting her go the first time was wrong and we should have fought harder for her. We should have fought harder for her the second time too.” I run my fingers through my hair and lean back into the couch. “I’m not going to continue working with a team who doesn’t support the band as a whole.”
“We’re with you,” Ben says, standing as our signal to head to stage flashes on the screen near the door. “When this tour is done, we’ll sever our contract and figure out where to go from there.”
Matt nods and gets up, heading for the door with him. “We’re going to put an end to this. Performing with Cassie is magic, and we all want that back. Even if we never get signed to another label again, I’m done being a horrible friend to her.”
Matt and Ben leave the room, heading to the stage. I need a few more minutes before I join them. They’ll both stall until I get there like they have hundreds of times before.
I don’t know what I would do without the two of them.
Without them, I would have lost myself a long time ago. I would have been so far gone that there never would have been any coming back. They were right when they said that sooner or later, I was going to end up dead.
Kennedy hums to herself, bouncing Annika on her knees. “You know, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen you look this worn down.Even when you went on that month-long bender, you didn’t look this bad.”
The corner of my mouth twitches. She’s right. That bender was bad, but losing Cassie feels so much worse.
It feels like there is a piece of me missing and I know it’s a part that I’m never going to recover. I’ve let her down too many times.
“I feel like I’m on another bender,” I say as I reach for a bottle of water and crack it open. I take a long drink before screwing the top back on and setting it to the side. “I’m sorry for everything that I’ve put you through over the years. I apologized to the guys already, but I know I never said it to you, and I should have.”
