“I didn’t know about them until after he passed. I was the only one brave enough to go in his office after his funeral, so I got stuck with organizing everything. I found them in his desk.”
Lexie rubbed her thumb over the back of my hand, listening closely.
My stomach sank at the thought of her telling Danny I’d been keeping part of our dad from him. “Danny doesn’t know about them, and as hard as it might be for you to understand, I need you to promise me that you won’t tell him.”
She looked at me warily.
“Please, trust me on this.”
Her lips pulled up into a warm smile. “I invaded your privacy, so I definitely owe it to you to let you make that decision on your own. I don’t know what the significance behind you keeping them to yourself is…” She paused. “But I know it would mean a lot to Danny if you shared them with him. I haven’t known him as long as Tic or Liam or Nikko has, but I do know he thought the world of your dad. He still plays one of his old guitars.”
I held my breath, waiting for her to say it.
Finally, she sighed and squeezed my hand. “I promise, Avery. I just hope you have a good reason for it.”
“I do,” I assured her.
“Food’s here!” Danny’s voice rang from the front of the house. His footsteps carried down the hall, pausing at my open door. “Sup, ladies?”
I held my breath for a moment, realizing I’d just told a secret—one I’d worked so hard to hide—to a girl I barely knew and couldn’t trust.
“Hey, Lex. What the fuck happened with the new track? Liam texted me and said we had to scrap the new lyrics for the chorus?”
Liam swung open the basement door across the hall and snatched the greasy paper bags out of Danny’s hands. “They don’t work with the song.”
“Like hell! Nikko sent me the sample. It sounded dope.” Danny folded his arms.
Lexie shot me a grin and then nodded at the two of them. “He’s right. They didn’t fit.”
“You guys are crazy. We’ve been trying to nail down the chorus on this for weeks now,” Danny said, frustrated. “We finally had something! Let’s go down and play it again. We can tweak it if we need to, but I really think—”
“I said, it didn’t work. Drop it!” Liam barked and stormed off to the kitchen without even glancing my way.
“Damn it!” Danny smacked the wall with the back of his hand. “He’s so fucking picky.”
“And we’re selling out shows because of him. We’ll come up with something else, Danny,” Lexie said.
“It’d better happen. Fast. Or we’re scrapping the song altogether. The label wants a new single out next month. We don’t have time for this bullshit.”
“You want tacos?” Lexie asked as everyone else disappeared to the kitchen. She held her hand out for me. “Danny always cleans house at the taco shop. It’s like he’s trying to feed an entire stadium. There’s more than enough.”
When I didn’t move, she dropped her hand and knelt in front of me.
“I know you’re still mad, but you’ve gotta eat, hon.”
I had been so angry and convinced that Liam was behind all of this, trying to torture me. But Lexie hadn’t taken the poem for the reasons I’d thought Liam had. Would it be such a bad thing to let Danny use them in his music?
My chest tightened at the thought of him finding out, and I quickly pushed the idea away.
Liam’s words echoed in my head, and I shivered. The thought of having to apologize to him made my skin crawl. With biting fire ants.
“I think it’s best if I stay in here.”
She patted my knee and walked out of my room, appearing again a few moments later with food for two, promising to find every way to make it up to me.
You had to hand it to her though. Tacos and beer were a good place to start.
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the couch, I stared at the front door and waited for the band to get back from the gym. I wasn’t going to chicken out like I had every other day that week. Every attempt I’d made at apologizing to Liam crumbled the moment I saw him.
