I just?—
Life won’t be right if Sloane doesn’t trust me.
The end.
I close my eyes and picture myself on a beach at sunrise—nothing but me and the seagulls and sand and ocean—and breathe to ground myself.
Trying to calm my panic at the ammunition I’m giving her.
I’m never in the tabloids. Like it that way.
And she has the power to change it now.
Because I have to trust her.
It’s the only way.
She touches the back of my right arm. “Which flag is that?”
“Morocco.” I keep my eyes closed, picturing sunset over the Atlantic in Morocco now.
“You’ve been?”
“Hiked the Atlas Mountains between the band breaking up and me starting school.”
“What did you go to college for?”
“Dual degree. Nuclear engineering and computer science.”
“Why?”
“I get bored easily. Good challenge.” I point to my left bicep where there’s an atom and a series of ones and zeros that spelldo goodif you know how to read binary. “That was my job. At the nuclear reactor. Keeping people safe by keeping the bad guys out. Virtually.”
“The bike?” She touches a bicycle tattoo on my forearm.
“I was eight before I learned to ride. Scared before that. My father tried to bully me into learning, and that made it worse. So Wyatt taught me. Beck’s best friend. Ellie’s husband. He didn’t want to join the band. Him and the other two Rivers brothers. Wyatt was too serious and needed security. Waylon thought we were going to bomb. Hank had two left feet and sang like a pig being butchered.”
“Do they know you talk about them like that?”
“Yes.”
“What do they say about you?”
“Far better things than they should.”
“Because you’re a terrible person?”
My jaw clenches, and I actively force it to relax. “Because I’m human. I make mistakes, and when I do, I judge myself harshly.”
Snip.
Snip.
Snip.
My head feels lighter.
My hair too.
