Eddie
While Cleo dresses and Barret disappears into his room, I go to the kitchen and put the kettle on, like that’s a thing that can hold a day together.Gas flame, blue ring, metal warming—something I can measure when nothing else adds up.
I should dial my therapist.Maybe even page the pilot, and say, “Fuel the plane.I need an emergency session in Seattle.Now.”I should do a lot more than stand here with my hands on a counter, trying not to crawl out of my skin.
Not running after her took everything I had.
Barret caught me in the hall and kissed me like a dare—hard, brief, his mouth crushing against mine with a surge that sent fire rushing through my veins, left every nerve sparking as if he’d branded me with his conviction.When he pulled back, his breath still tangled with mine, he said, “I swear you can do it.Do it for all of us.You can’t keep trying to save people who don’t want to save themselves.”
He meant,Let her run.He also meant,You can start helping when she comes, but not before.Let her see how far she’ll go before she returns.
Barret didn’t want to let her go, either.I know it cost him not to run.But he gets this in ways that I don’t.
He’s been in the ledger—opposite the side where obsession masquerades as care.Me?I’ve lived there.I nearly lost them both: the man who turned a hand on my skin into prayer, a liturgy spoken without words, and the woman who stepped onto the cliff as if summoned by the wind, only to choose—for today—to rewrite her fate beneath the sky’s unblinking gaze.
I don’t know precisely when the “loving these two beautiful, infuriating people,” part began.It happened somewhere between managing a band and trying to drag a kid out of Connor Dempsey’s claws.
The kettle in the back of my head ticks as I slide into the wrong year, into an after-party that still smells like trouble.It’s the late ’80s.Connor rented a penthouse and filled it with a taste that made my teeth ache: cigarettes, spilled liquor, and cologne that you could almost chew.
Roderick worked the room with a grin like he’d stolen it.Photographers had been paid to be “coincidentally” present.The label wanted a story: two golden boys of grunge, decadent, desired, untouchable.It sells records.
It also eats people, but Connor Dempsey didn’t give a shit about anything but his pocket.
“Image is everything,” Connor murmured, all sugar and barbed wire.“Wilder’s got it.Barret needs practice.He’s still too earnest.”
Earnest, as if that were a flaw you fix with a flame.
The girls Connor hired were bored and dangerous in a pretty way.They knew where the cameras aimed and where they didn’t.They laughed on cue, pressed close in corners, whispered names that would read sweet in the next morning’s gossip.Barret did what he was told: drink this, lean there, let her sit on your knee and pretend your life is a photograph.
This had been the script for years.That’s how Roderick lost Kit Dempsey—how anyone with a vulnerable heart became a subplot.He was high, too far gone to notice what was happening.It didn’t matter to Connor.
He didn’t care his daughter had a broken heart—or that Roderick did too.That thing actually could make better music, he told me once, and he celebrated the breaks.
Midnight stripped the room down.Cameras left and the light went mean.The hookers Connor hired went to the room.I watched Barret disappear down the hallway with two of them—platinum hair and cherry lipstick, bracelets that chimed like alarms.
Roderick glanced at me over a mountain of coats and gave the shrug that said,This is how it goes.I hated him for that.I hated myself more for knowing he wasn’t entirely wrong.My friend had been hollowed out and didn’t care whom he dragged down with him.
An hour later, Barret stumbled back into the living room, shirt misbuttoned, and a smile pulled tight in the wrong places.He moved like his bones didn’t fit.The crowd cheered him like a mascot that had learned a new trick.
Connor clapped him on the back.“See?He’s a total playboy,” he said, satisfied.“Takes to it fine.”
I’d had enough.I stepped between them.
“He’s done,” I said, flat.There was no begging in my voice.I have a way of not asking.
Connor laughed, a sound that wanted to make me small.“He’s barely started,” he said.
“Then he’ll finish in my room,” I replied.I didn’t ask.I have a way of taking things that need saving.
“Eddie—” Barret’s name broke out like he’d been brave for too long and run dry.
I took his wrist.Not tight.Not possessive.Just there.“You’re leaving,” I told him, and nodded toward the elevator.He followed me, like a man learning a new verb.
Back in my suite, I locked the door and bolted it for good measure.He stood in the middle of the carpet like a lost tourist.The party’s smell clung to him—perfume layered over smoke, alcohol sweating from his skin, fear hiding behind a grin.
“I’m fine,” he lied.
Barret was anything but fine.
