“Yes,” she says, holding my gaze.
I drop her braid and step back. Another knock at the door draws my attention over her shoulder and to the doorway, where Josh and the guys are walking past, already amped up.
“Let’s fucking gooooooo,” Josh shouts as he walks past the room anddown the hallway.
“Good to know,” I say, looking back into her eyes. I step around her and out into the hallway where I follow the guys to the stage. I probably shouldn’t have done that before a show, but at least now I get to spend the next ninety minutes releasing my foul mood by pounding the shit out of my drums.
****
I slide into the booth across from Tyler and find myself having a hard time looking at her without my heart feeling like it’s being torn out of my damn chest. We’ve barely spoken to each other since she verbalized her regrets last night, and I hate the tension that exists between us now. Hate that all the hope I was holding onto is now gone. Vanished into thin air like she did the night we met.
She looks over her notes, apparently also unable to look at me.
“Tyler,” I say, watching as she flinches at the sound of my voice. “Look at me.” It takes a few seconds, but she slowly raises her eyes to meet mine. I open my mouth to apologize for going back on my word, but she cuts me off.
“I’m sorry,” she rushes out. “About what I said last night. It was needlessly rude and completely untrue.” She looks away for a second before looking back up into my eyes. “You’re not a mistake. I could never think that. You are…” she sighs, brow creasing as she searches for the right words. “You are a lot of things, but a mistake is not one of them. I’m sorry if I made you believe otherwise.”
“The walls aren’t necessary,” I say, calling her out.
“You don’t have to protect yourself from me. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She nods once, but doesn’t say anything before she unlocks her phone, fires up her app, and taps record.
“So, after the Grammys that year,” she says, taking control of the conversation. “What happened?”
I sigh, stretching my neck from side to side.
“Like I predicted, it wasn’t a one and done thing for her. And it got worse on the tour where I was forced to watch it escalate. I begged her to stop, begged her to get help, begged her to move in with me so I could get her away from her sister and help her through it.
“We fought constantly, especially when she was high. For about three months after the tour, it was all just fighting and sex. I realized about a week before the guys and I started our European tour that year that it was over. That it’d been over for a while, but neither of us pulled the trigger. So, I did. I used the tour as an opportunity to make a clean break.”
“How did she take it?” Ty asks.
I shrug.
“She didn’t seem to care. Like I said, we both knew it was over way before it was. Didn’t stop her from saying some pretty awful shit to me before I left, though.”
You think you’re so fucking special because you’re sober. So much better than me.
I shake her words from my head when I feel Tyler’s fingers wrap around my hand and squeeze. She doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t need to. Just her presence is enough to fill this void that’s been in my chest for the last five years.
“So you went on tour, and then what happened? How long were you gone?”
“Four months,” I say. “And when we got back, I kept myself busy visiting family and friends and writing new music with the guys. Six weeks after we got back, I got a call from anumber I didn’t recognize. I almost didn’t answer it, but something told me I needed to, so I did.”
“It was Amy?” Ty guesses, and I nod.
“She was terrified. Screaming and crying. Telling me she couldn’t find her phone and didn’t know where she was. All she knew was that she wanted to get out.” I swallow the burn in my throat at the memory of her voice on the other end of the line. How, despite everything we’d been through, it tore my fucking heart out. I clear my throat. “I didn’t think, I just got in my car and started going to every place I knew her sister would drag her. When I came up empty handed, I told her to try and find a land line so she could call 9-1-1. It was the only way I knew to track her location.
“She finally found one and she kept me on the other line. When the dispatcher relayed the address, they told her they were sending emergency services, and she freaked out. She was so scared, Ty. Scared she was going to get in trouble. That her career would be over. That the people she was with were going to start shooting when the cops showed up. She thought she was going to die.”
“I remember when that news broke,” Ty says, her voice low, arms wrapped tight against her stomach, and eyes vacant. Like she’s imagining herself there with me.
“It was bad. As you know, they arrested everyone. It was an absolute shitshow.” I sigh and run a hand down my face. “I didn’t make it to the house in time, and by the time I did make it there, they weren’t letting anyone near it. So, I went straight to the jail and as soon as they let me see her, I told her I’d pay her bail and get her out if she agreed to go straight to rehab, and she did.”
“And you never left her side,” Ty says, looking at me. “I remember that, too.”
“I didn’t. I was there every day. Some days she didn’t want to see me, but other days? God…it was like…it was like I’d finally gotten her back. The real her. The one I met that first night in the studio. The one I fell in love with.
