She’s the one.
She’s my all-or-nothing.
She’s the only woman I’ll be with for the rest of my life, or she’s the reason I will never, ever, for all eternity, have companionship again.
“I almost killed a man,” I whisper. “That’s what happened in Denver. That’s why Bro Code broke up. Because of me. It’s my fault.”
Sloane squeezes harder.
So does Tillie Jean.
Tillie Jean.
Fuuuuuuck.
Just as quickly as she’s squeezing me harder, she lets me go. “Chester. Get these assholes out of here.”
“Excuse you,I am an old lady, not an a—not what you called me.”
“You’re an asshole,” Sloane says into my chest, still squeezing the hell out of me while my heart tries to claw its way through my ribs. “Nigel, you’re a bigger one. Come back here again, and I will self-defense you into your grave.”
“Out,” Tillie Jean repeats. “You’ve got them both in cuffs. Quit hoping for a peep show andget out.”
Granny Gaslighter keeps yelling. Nigel arrogantly insists that he can’t be charged for assisting an old lady, that he was trying to stop her and his balls were caught in the crossfire.
And Sloane keeps holding me tighter and tighter.
Which is good.
I think I might fall apart if she lets go.
“Cat’s safe and sound in the living room and I’m closing the door,” Tillie Jean calls. “Alarm’s set again too.”
The door clicks shut.
The alarm beeps.
And Sloane keeps her grip on me. “Tell me more,” she whispers.
So I do.
I tell her everything.
All of it.
Nothing held back.
“I was breaking. Being on the road. The fame. The attention. Limitless money to try to ease the anxiety. Too much time too. Started playing a game—I hacked into the AV system everywhere we went. Harmless at first. I’d play that dancing hippo that was like the first meme on the internet. Put the videos up on the scoreboards while the crew was setting up. Did it at every stadium, every arena, but people assumed it was one of our roadies taking over the sound and video systems, or people who heard it happened and wanted to be the next to do it. Nobody suspected me. So I started doing darker and darker and darker shit. Started trying to hack local banks. Local police stations. Prove I could. I’d shut the lights out entirely in arenas and put it in straight darkness while our roadies were setting up.”
She presses a kiss to my chest, and my breath shudders out of me.
Spent six years singing my lungs out on a stage. I can run a marathon. I can swim for miles.
And I can barely breathe right now.
But she kisses my chest again, and it gets easier to find my breath.
“There was a guy on the crew. Terrified of horror movies. I knew it. We landed in Denver. They were setting up. And I—I put onThe Exorcist. He was on the lights. Up about twenty feet. Scared him so badly, he—he fell. Landed on his shoulder. Broke it. Wasn’t tethered right. If he’d landed four inches to the left, he would’ve?—”
