The room settled.
Skye stood, smiling over at me.
“This will be quick,” she said. “Because Esther is terrifying.”
“I am,” Esther confirmed.
“I know how to tame her,” Daniel whispered in my ear, and bloody hell, but the man made my cheeks warm. That was not an image I needed in my head.
Skye looked around the room. “Thank you,” she said. “For buying tickets when you didn’t have to. For blocking the lane. For singing too loud on purpose. For letting me be me tonight.” She swallowed. “And to Noah, for sharing his gift.”
I stepped forward.
“It’s you who shared your gift, Skye. You’ve always been the best of us.”
The room took a collective sigh and then all said, “Awwww.”
We all laughed and then Skye lifted her glass.
“To the Book Bitches,” she said.
“To the Book Bitches,” everyone answered, raising whatever they had. Even Wallace got a tiny shot glass of cream.
Skye looked for me. Found me. Held my gaze.
“And to second chances,” she said.
We drank. I kept my eyes on her over the rim of the glass. She flushed, then laughed, then turned back to Shannon who was telling her a story.
Music started up in the corner—a fiddle, a bodhrán, someone with a guitar that managed to be mostly in tune. A band that wasn’t a band. A proper session made up of whoever brought an instrument and knew when to join. The floor cleared a little.
I didn’t join. I leaned on the bar and let it roll over me. It felt like … being allowed to stand still. I hadn’t had a lot of that lately.
“Hungry?” Skye asked, coming over with a plate of sausage rolls.
“Starving,” I said, and meant more than food.
We ate in companionable silence while Esther argued with Cherise about what jumper to wear on Christmas Day. Harper snapped a photo of Wallace wearing his bow tie and posted it with the caption:Leading man energy.
“Do you miss it?” Skye asked, eyes flicking to my guitar case by the door.
“Tonight? No.” I didn’t dodge the question. “I miss the bit where the music belongs to the room instead of the label. This feels like that. I’ve missed this without knowing what to call it.”
“Home,” she said, not romantic. Just stating facts.
“Yeah.” I took a breath. “I thought the road was home. Iliked the moving. No one expects you to fix a boiler when you’re in a hotel. No one calls at six a.m. about the bins.”
“Bins are a big part of adulthood,” she said, her mouth quirking up at the corners. “Nobody tells you that.”
“The road stopped being fun when the rooms all looked the same,” I said. “I kept trying to write my way out of it. Turns out I might have needed to sit still for a while.”
“That’s my business model,” Skye said dryly. “So still moss can grow on me.”
“Your business model works.”
“Does it? Tell that to my guests. Oh wait, I still don’t have any.” Skye looked away.
I wished she would let me help, let me look at the books or make a list of needed repairs. But the stubborn lift of her chin told me everything I needed to know.
