“Bitch, please.”
They both cracked up, and as Dom sobered up he felt calmer. Lighter. As if the entire situation wasn’t quite as screwed up as he’d thought, and that things really could get better. “Will you help me pick a song?”
“Hell yes.” Lincoln sprang from the couch, probably off to find his iPod.
Dom dug out his phone and sent Trey another text:I wasn’t in a place to really hear you last night, and I’m sorry. Lincoln talked sense into me. I’m going to play V at Unbound. You inspired me. <3
“You do realize,” Lincoln said as he trotted back into the living room, “we’re going to be playing this new song, like, nonstop until nationals. We need to be one hundred and twenty percent perfect.”
“Agreed.”
They hunkered down over Lincoln’s playlists, searching for the perfect number to add to their set. Dom kept his phone close while they played song after song, waiting for inspiration.
Trey never answered his text.
TWENTY-ONE
Trey was so completely turnedaround by his whirlwind trip to see Dominic that he spent most of the day after in bed with his headphones on, playing some of the hardest metal he could find, hoping it would drive some of his bitterness away.
It didn’t.
Driving to the suburbs of Philadelphia, alone, on freaking interstates some of the time, had been the hardest thing Trey had done in his life. Harder than leaving home and starting fresh. Harder than the first time he got up onstage with Fading Daze. But he’d done it so he could make things right with Dominic, and that had exploded in his face spectacularly.
They’d made peace. Dominic had opened a metaphorical vein and told Trey about the worst experience of his life—one that still made Trey see red if he dwelled on it for too long—and somehow Trey had taken that trust and smeared it with shit. All he’d wanted was to find a way to help Dominic heal, and instead Trey found himself being sent away.
The drive home had nearly killed him, and not only from the car anxiety—from the very real fear that Dominic was done with him this time. And also the bitter anger of knowing that no matter what they promised each other, Dominic didn’t want tolean on Trey. He could talk calmly about a horrific ordeal from six years ago, but talk about the emotions he was feeling in that moment?
Nope, sorry, not happening.
And that had hurt Trey more deeply than if Dominic had knifed him in the gut. For all his talk, Dominic didn’t trust Trey to be careful with his heart when it really mattered. And maybe Trey could have thought through his Unbound suggestion a little further, but he’d said it in love.
Danielle barged into his room a little after four, dressed in her uniform and still smelling faintly of seafood and Old Bay. She climbed up the ladder and stretched out next to him. “You left your phone in the kitchen.”
The only way he understood that was because his current song was fading away. Resigned to her staying put until he talked, he tugged out the earbuds. “I know.”
“I tried calling you twice today, you jerk. I was worried when I saw you’d come back last night instead of staying over with Dom.”
Even the name made Trey’s heart flutter. “He sent me home.”
Danielle’s eyebrows shot up. “Shit, he didn’t forgive you?”
“Not exactly.” He laid it out as fairly as possible, from forgiveness to fresh anger, glossing over the details of everything that happened with Chambers. That wasn’t his place to tell. “He told me needed space, and all I wanted to do was help him through what he was feeling. I just don’t understand.”
“Did you ask his parents about it?”
“No, I thanked them for dinner and left.”
“What about Lincoln?”
“He’d just take Dom’s side. No.”
Danielle propped her elbow on the bed and dropped her cheek into her palm. “Did you check for texts or messages?”
“He texted last night and apologized. I have a voice mail I didn’t bother listening to.”
“Damn, you are mad.”
“Can you blame me?”
