But I can’t. This feels different than before and panic swells through me.
Because I’ve made a vow to myself that I wouldn’t keep things from Lucas any longer, I immediately wake him up. While I sit on the floor of the lounge talking in hushed tones, he strides back and forth down the aisle, his chest moving slightly as he takes it all in. And he takes it better than I ever imagined. His face is a stone mask when I’m done speaking.
“She’ll do what she wants to do.” He stops moving. “But I’m not going to keep chasing after her just to keep myself in the clear. I can’t do it anymore.”
Those were Sam’s exact words from earlier, and they’re even more terrifying when they fall from his lips. I grip my hands in my hair, shaking my head wildly.
“There has to be something.” I gasp for air, and once I find it, I say, “You don’t deserve this.”
Kneeling down in front of me, he tilts my chin up with the tip of his index finger. “Maybe I don’t, but I messed up. I’ve been living with what I did for four years now and these past few days of you and Kylie knowing have been the most liberating f**king time I’ve had since then.” Ma.s.saging my cheek with the back of his thumb, he lays his forehead to mine. “Let Sam come after me. She has to already know that I’m going to take her down, too. After all the s.h.i.t she’s put you through—let her come.”
After this, he refuses to say or hear anything else about Samantha. We spend the rest of the day up until sound check with a stressed silence lingering between us, and when I tell him that I have to go home, he follows me out to my car.
“You’ll come tonight?” he asks, and I just stare at him. I want to scream. Or hit him. Ask him why he’s letting Sam win.
But finally, I close my eyes and urge my lips to twitch into a smile. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
He drags me to him, kissing me until a sob builds in my chest, and I have to push him away from him. The look of fear and uncertainty within his hazel eyes is startling. I turn away, my shoulders limp.
“I love you,” he says simply.
I count to ten under my breath slowly, hoping that it will help calm my breathing before I even attempt to look at him again. As soon as I’m done, I twist around.
He’s already gone.
At first I have no plan to be apart of the backstage scene tonight, but after Kylie pleads with me to come, I go ahead and get dressed early in jeans, a long-sleeved shirt from Alternative Apparel that will hide the bruises on my arms, and ballet flats. I consider putting my hair up, but when I examine myself in my dresser mirror, noticing how some of the purplish splotches outlining my face are still visible through my makeup, I release my red locks around my shoulders. I leave the hairband on my dresser next to a box of tissues.
And, as much as I hate to admit it, I leave my hope at home.
An hour later, I step into Your Toxic Sequel’s dressing room, and I’m met with an awkward silence from Cal and Wyatt—the only band members back here at the moment—that only Kylie can break. Meeting me at the door, she grabs my hand, lacing her fingers through mine, and pulls me over to the loveseat. I know it’s all a show. That much is evident in her dark brown eyes and the way her hands tremble every time she pushes her short brown hair behind her ears.
“After the show we were thinking about going to that bar you’re always talking about,” she says to me in a high-pitched voice. “The Bea—”
“The Beacon?”
“I think we all just need to get some stress off our chests.” She reaches for her bottle of water but knocks her hand into Cal’s Monster instead. It falls over, sending liquid pouring over the edges of the coffee table and onto the floor. “s.h.i.t.” When she tries to clean it up, I shake my head.
“I’ve got it.”
As I kneel down on my hands and knees, wiping up the spill with a wad of paper towels that I found in the bathroom, Cal leans in close to me. “So . . . how are you doing?” This is probably the most serious that I’ve ever heard his voice.
“I’m better. Still a little shook up, but I’ll be fine,” I lie.
He releases a rough sigh. “We were worried about you. All of us so don’t let Sin try to tell you something different.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Giving my shoulder a careful squeeze, Cal rises to his feet. “And speaking of Sinjin, I’m going to go track him down. I haven’t seen that a.s.s**le since sound check.”
As soon as he leaves, Wyatt volunteers to go too, using his pre-concert chain-smoking as an excuse. “You need me, you call, beautiful,” he says sternly to Kylie, and her eyes narrow.
“I will let you know the moment I have to pee,” she answers him, a sardonic smile playing at the corners of her mouth. As he shuts the door behind him, Kylie slumps forward, sinking her face into her hands. “I’m a mess,” she admits in a m.u.f.fled voice.
“G.o.d, I’m right there with you.” Ever since I left the venue earlier this afternoon, I had been trying to reach the number Sam had called me from. I had hoped that if I got her back on the line, I would be able to reason with her, but I hadn’t had any such luck. I swallow over a lump in my throat. “Do you know where he is right now?”
Wrapping her arms over her stomach, she shakes her head. “Said he had something to do with Tyler, but who knows. He’s been so annoyingly calm today that I couldn’t take being around him anymore.”
I make a fist around the messy stack of dry paper towels beside me on the floor. “I’m scared.”