Finally, she stirred again in her duvet shell.“Dante?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what to do.”Sobs racked through her body, and Dante couldn’t stand by any longer.He leaned over and cuddled the soft mass of her, wishing he could suck all her pain and take it into himself.He would cast it out into the Pacific Ocean like a scattering of ash.
“What do I do?”she asked through broken breaths.
“I don’t know.”His mother’s words ran through his head on swift feet.Tell her to take it day by day.Tell her she is loved by so many.Tell her you’ll be there for her.None of them felt right.It felt right to let her talk, let her cry, let the emotions work through her.
She pushed him away and crawled from beneath the covers, emerging like a tortoise from its shell.
She wouldn’t look at him.She hugged her knees to her chest and rested her forehead there.“I keep picking up my phone to call them.I want to tell them about the show.Isn’t that selfish?”
“No.No, of course not.”
“Even Samara.Selene said something yesterday, and my first thought was to send her a text.”A sob barked from her body, wet and anguished.
Doubt curled through him.Maybe he shouldn’t have come.He had his family.Was he a reminder of everything she had lost?
She sniffed and met his gaze for one heartbreaking moment before sliding away.That’s what it felt like, like she was slipping away from him.Maybe she already had during the months he hadn’t played with the band.Maybe you could never go back to before.Maybe that was how people changed in grief, so rapidly that after even a few weeks, they were unrecognizable.
“Thank you for coming.”She wiped at the bottoms of her eyes with the heel of her hand.
He nodded, unable to say much more.“Anytime.Always.”
He stayed with her, not saying anything, not moving.
When she crawled over the mattress and folded herself into his arms, he allowed his own tears to fall.
CHAPTER28
Then—Ellery
Thank goodness for Dante.
He stayed, silent and calm and anticipating anything she might need.
After a week, Ellery emerged from her bedroom, fed for the last several days on nibbles of sandwiches and macaroni and cheese and steaming bowls of soup he brought her on trays.Her appetite wasn’t the best, but at least she was vertical and not wrapped in a mountain of bedsheets.
They held the memorial for her family at sunset in Malibu.When she couldn’t finish her eulogy, Dante held her while Selene and Lorraine read through her notes.
Movement hurt.Breathing hurt.Her nerves tingled constantly with reminders of the people she would never see again.She lay in bed, curled under the covers, and couldn’t sleep.
Jasper sat in the corner of her bedroom like a velveteen rabbit, a discarded reminder of painful times.
She wanted to burn him and see whether it would bring her family back to her.
It will get easier, said the counselor Logan sent to the house.Day by day.
Whereas Dante was all calm strength, Logan was a walking checklist.Arrange funeral, call counselor, send flowers to house.
Not that she would admit it to Dante, because she saw the way his eyes narrowed when the Logan-sent flower delivery or Instacart driver appeared, but she was grateful.There was an adult in charge.There was someone she could call with a problem.It was a relief not to have to make all the decisions on her own.
Because she was on her own.All on her own.
She couldn’t write.She couldn’t sing.At night she heard Dante and Selene and Lorraine in the living room, keeping their voices low.They were a unit now.They had families.
She wondered whether Dante understood.He never told her she had to get up.He never told her to move on.He sat with her, sitting on the floor beside her bed, playing music until she couldn’t stand it any longer.She would find him sleeping there, covered by his sweatshirt, ear buds clutched in his hand.
