“Yeah?” came my brother’s muffled voice.
“Are you decent?”
“Yeah. Come in,” he called out. I opened the door and walked into darkness. I walked over to the window and yanked open the blinds to let a little light in. “Was that necessary?” he grumbled.
“Yup.” I flopped down onto the edge of his mattress, facing him and arching my eyebrow. “Dad thinks you were out drinking last night.”
“I wasn’t.” He scowled.
“I know,” I mimicked his tone and sighed. I moved so I was sitting with my back against his headboard. I studied him pensively. “How are you?” I asked.
It was Calum’s turn to sigh. He sat up, wiping the sleep from his eyes.
“Processing,” he finally gritted.
I gave him a moment, but my impatience got the better of me. “Well? When are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”
He turned his head and sighed again, deeper this time. Like he’d already exhausted his patience for the day.
“I’m going to wait until after the funeral. It’s tomorrow, and I don’t want to stress Mom out anymore.”
“Why do you think it’d stress her out?” I asked, my brows raising.
“She’ll be disappointed, probably. And even if she isn’t, Dad’s reaction will stress her out,” he answered, daunted. I nodded, agreeing with him there. “I should probably have a contingency in place for when the shit hits the fan.”
“Such as?” I didn’t exactly disagree with him there.
“I don’t know yet. I need to talk to Harper.”
I nodded again. “That’s a sound start. Mom and Dad will be home from the store soon, so you should probably get up anyway. It’s only going to fuel his idea you’ve been drinking.”
“Yeah.” He bobbed his head in agreement.
“Okay, I’ll leave you to it.” I left Calum’s room, retreating to my own to grab my composition notebook. I went downstairs, curling up on the couch with my legs beneath me. Balancing the composition notebook on the arm of the couch, I scratched my pen across the page.
Lyrics had been kicking around in my head for a couple days, and I wrote them out now, letting my loss bleed out across the page. For twenty-minutes, I fiddled and tweaked with a word here, a line there. By the time Calum was done getting ready for the day, I’d written another song.
I heard him on the stairs and looked up when I heard him in the doorway.
“I’ll be back in a bit. Are you okay alone?”
“I’ll be fine. Just working on a paper that’s due when I get back,” I replied, smiling softly. I don’t know why I kept what I was really doing from him, it’s not like he’d judge me for writing a song.
“You sure?”
“Yes,” I insisted, arching my brows. “Good luck with Harper,” I added, sparing him an encouraging smile before my focus returned to the notebook in front of me and the song I’d just penned.
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
Dare
After droppingEvan off at his parents’ house, I drove to my mom’s. I parked the SUV rental beside her car in the driveway and peered up at the two-bedroom bungalow with the attached garage.
It’d been three months since I’d been back for a quick overnight visit over Christmas holidays, but no matter how long I was gone for, this place hadn’t changed in decades. I knew from previous visits home that the garage still held Evan’s old drum set and a few other old instruments we’d left behind after heading out on tour. Mom had left the garage virtually untouched.
We came up with our first album in that garage, dicking around on our instruments. Finding a rhythm with each other.
I grabbed my duffle bag from the trunk before walking up the stone pathway to the front porch. Mom opened the door as I climbed the steps, the hugest grin on her face.
