“Someone needs to give your mascara manufacturer a prize,” I teased, even though I was glad I hadn’t worn eyeliner today.
“Oh shush.” She snapped the mirror closed and put it back, then looked at me. “I got a call from Thorne yesterday right after the press thing.”
I grinned. “Surprise.”
She snorted softly. “Yeah. He wasn’t best pleased with you, but they never would’ve been.”
“How’re the others?” I asked. She was in closer contact with Mila and Q than me, even though I’d had some text exchanges with them both, and a three-way call when I’d told them about the presser.
“They’re good. Stable. Figuring shit out.” She reached to take my hand and squeezed my fingers. It was funny that her body temperature matched mine now. She’d always felt cooler before. “But you look outright radiant.”
I ducked my head and scratched the back of my neck. “I guess being healthy and having a stable pack around me has helped.”
She smiled. “And being madly in love.”
Chuckling, I nodded. “That, too.”
“How are they?”
I took my phone out and showed her a selfie of the three of us on a bed the other morning. We were all shirtless, sleep rumpled, but smiling and looking deliriously happy.
“Oh, no words needed,” she said approvingly. “Gorgeous wolves.”
We chatted for a while longer about the band and the pack, then she asked the question I’d been sort of dreading.
“What do you think about music? Making it again?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. It feels….” I was quiet for a while, staring into the middle distance. “I destroyed Dolly.”
She gasped. She hadn’t known that. “Oh gods, Luca.”
I snorted self-deprecatingly. “I did all the stupid things anyone would’ve expected, right? Destroyed my favorite guitar and shaved my head.”
She frowned and took my hand again. “First of all, you were allowed to let the emotions out. You were heading downhill in so many ways. None of what happened was fair.” She squeezed tightly until I looked at her. “But secondly, and I hate to say this because nothing is going to bring Will back and I feel shitty even saying this, but maybe it was time for you guys to stop. I wish it wasn’t like this, of course, but you were all burned out.”
She wasn’t wrong there. I’d realized that during my talks with Rian over the past six months.
“I know. On some level I think the cancer was my body’s way of saying enough is enough.”
She hummed. “Might be. I know stress does a lot of weird things to human bodies and you were on the road or in the studio for years without ever really taking a substantial break.”
We’d been on the label’s hamster wheel since we were eighteen. That was almost eight years. It was a long time to not just stop and take an extended break, and by extended I meant more than a couple of weeks we’d gotten a few times during those years.
“So, I don’t know about music right now.” I also didn’t have a guitar.
Her face went through a journey. Sort of a wince or a cringe as she pulled her hand back.
“What?” I asked. I’d never known her to not speak her mind.
“Rian told me you’ve been humming a lot more lately.”
I went still. It was as if my brain screeched to a halt. I had?
“He wasn’t snitching on you or anything. We just message sometimes randomly. We kind of became friends during everything that was going on last year.”
“No… I… that’s not it.” I frowned, trying to understand how I could’ve been humming when I didn’t realize it myself. “Max and Ben haven’t said anything.”
She tilted her head, thinking hard. “Would they have? If they thought you didn’t want to address it?”
