“How?”
“Because we’re the exception to the rule, dude. Everyone I know who dove headfirst into some relationship with a person they didn’t know had it end in tears.”
I stared for a beat. “Do you think you’re the only exception to that rule?”
“I—no. I’m just saying?—”
“That you don’t trust my judgment because I was a young man with his head up his ass when I was charmed by Raleigh? You think I didn’t learn from that mistake?”
“You were with him for years,” he repeated.
I squeezed the handles on my crutches to give myself something to do that wasn’t punching him. “I was in a band. I was under a contract. I put up with his bullshit and stayed miserable because I thought it would be worth the money.”
Tollin was silent, and then he took a step back. “I get it.”
“I know you don’t get it, but I’d like for you to trust me. I’m not about to propose marriage here, Toll. I’m just trying to enjoy some time on a nice, tropical beach where I’m not being followed around with someone holding a net in case I fall.”
“I—oh. Right. You mean me.”
“I mean you.”
He flushed. “I didn’t think you’d resent me for the help I gave you.”
“I resent you for thinking that’s all I am now. And for believing that I couldn’t make any life work, no matter what it looked like.”
“Tarik already bitched me out about it,” he said with a soft sigh. “I get where I was a dick, okay? I just…I don’t know. I freaked out. You disappeared in the middle of the night, and Tarik refused to tell me where you were.”
“I did tell you!”
“After you were gone,” he snarled back. “And I’m obviously not in the minority for how I feel, here,” Tollin went on. “Your friend’s family did the same fucking thing.”
“Obviously, people have boundary issues. Maybe you can bond over it.”
He glanced away. “I just needed to see with my own two eyes that you’re okay. My ferry back is tomorrow so I can be withLyria and Sadie for the new year. And Tarik is going home then too.”
Well, at least I wasn’t going to have two angry wives going after me for taking their husbands away from family. Not that I thought either of them would blame me, but still. The thought was vaguely terrifying.
“I hope it works out between you two,” Tollin said after a moment. “If you really want to make this work, anyway.”
“I don’t know. I feel like my life would be too much for him. I’m not ready to give up music just because I gave up on the band. I don’t want to overwhelm him.”
“You need to let him decide.” That was not advice I was expecting him to give me after he’d just implied I was making a huge mistake being here with Ryan, but I appreciated it because he wasn’t wrong. Ryan deserved a say.
The only thing that scared me was that Ryan had no idea what this life could be like. Paparazzi was different now. The world had shifted to being stalked by people on cell phones, taking random shots of me shoveling food into my face or coming out of a festival porta-potty and making them viral on social media channels.
And the parasocial relationships people formed with me without my knowledge or consent would extend to Ryan. People would find out who he was, where he worked, what he dressed up as for Halloween in ’96.
There would be so little peace unless he went dark online and we pretended the rest of the world didn’t exist. And that would be a lot to ask of him. With Raleigh, we were in it together. We cut our teeth on the edge of fame hand in hand. He was a monster, but he got it in ways no one else could.
How could I ask Ryan to do that?
“Give him a chance,” Tollin said, like he was reading all of that off my face.
I raised a brow. “Now you’re defending him?”
“I’m asking you to be careful, but that doesn’t just mean protecting yourself from him. It also means not sabotaging something that could be very good because you’re afraid. You do that too, you know.”
I hated that he was right.
