“Needed to make some extra money.”
“Ah,” I said, walking over to the building with the sleek black siding that worked like air-conditioned walls and slid down on my butt. I patted the concrete beside me. “Come sit.”
Rory grabbed his stuff and joined me on the ground. We’d come full circle to the day we’d met. Only now, all promises had been met and both our dreams were coming true, his on stage and mine in words, ones that were now flowing freely. Rory had been the missing piece all along. Once he was returned to my puzzle, I was complete and I couldn’t write fast enough. Jake’s kidnapper didn’t stand a chance with this new and confident me. Now when he bent down to whisper in my ear, I punched back. I emasculated him in my mind and eviscerated him in song. He'd once been the place inside me that scared the hell out of me, but now he was my muse: dark, light, and everything in between. I would smear his name until death came for me, and in the process of evening the score, my own insecurities fell away. Ray Davis had picked me to dump his confession on because he thought I had no voice. Oh, how wrong he was!
But Rory seemed not to have reached his ah-ha moment as I had. Nikki’s death had sent him into a sideways spiral, and I needed to help him figure out why.
“Why’d you come down here?” I repeated.
There was a long pause before he said, “The streets were calling me.”
“Why?”
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
A long sigh was followed by the truth. “I feel safer out here. Nobody knows who I am. No one cares.”
“But isn’t that what you wanted? For people to know who you are? To get off the streets? To be safe?”
“It was… It is. It’s just… nothing good lasts. Trust me, I know.”
“But this will. You’ve gotten to a place where no one can take this away from you now.”
He dropped his head, unconvinced. “Someone can. Someone will. You have no idea what’s lurking out there. I’m living in a house of cards. The question isn’tifit’s coming down butwhen.”
“What does that mean?”
“Too many people know too many things about me, and it’s only a matter of time before I’m buried under my past.”
“So what? This is your solution? Run away? Disappear into the streets? You promised me you’d never run again. You promised.”
“I know. I’m not going to leave you. I’m not going to leave the band. I just… I’m scared, and out here,thisis a scared I understand. The streets don’t care what I did. It’s like a river of catfish out here—the smellier and more decaying, the better.”
“Does it really matter, Rory? If your past is exposed? I’m not trying to diminish your suffering, but so what? It’s not like the people who love you are going to abandon you. You’re part of a family now. We stand by each other’s sides. And your fans—they’ll rally around you. Honestly, the smellier and more decaying your story is, the more they’re going to embrace you. Everyone loves an underdog.”
“Oh, pretty sure they won’t love this one.”
“I do. I love you.”
“Because you don’t know.”
I wanted to crawl into a hole, knowing what I had to reveal. My guilt.
“Rory, I know.”
The shift in his expression was swift. From despondent to furious.
“Nikki told me. In exchange for the concert ticket, she said I could ask her anything. I wasn’t going to. I didn’t want to. But I did. I asked her why you disappeared that night. And she gave me so much more.”
“What did she tell you?” Just by the horror on his face, I could tell he already knew the answer.
“What happened at the ranch house. The pictures and videos. The abuse. Hartman trying to murder you the night of the water park. The kiss outside my front gate. The witness protection program. The trial. I know all of it. Even that you wanted to wait until Friday so you could take me to Homecoming.”
Rory rose to his feet, pacing back and forth, grabbing his hair as he swore and kicked the wall.
“Nikki, you fucking bitch!” he screamed up into the darkened sky. “That wasn’t yours to tell!”
