Wrong choice of words. I swung back around, furious. “Oh, but that’s a lie. Iwashappy… with you. I would’ve floated down your lazy river forever. You did this to us, Rory. You. And don’t ever forget it.”
The force of my words gutted him as surely as if I’d taken a knife to his abdomen. He looked stricken, and rightfully so. My heart still hurt for him, and I feared it always would, but I was done comforting him.
Avoiding eye contact, I turned for the door.
“Goodbye, Beats.”
* * *
Elliott was there,waiting for me on the opposite wall, his legs crossed at the ankles like he had all the time in the world. He looked up, a smile already sitting on his reliable face. If he suspected I’d been in the bathroom with his most formidable competition, he didn’t let it be known. Elliott was a good man. Kind. Dependable. And when the going got tough, he didn’t walk away. Elliott was the right choice. The only choice.
So why did I feel like I’d swallowed a cleaver?
No, I just had to get my head back in the game. Rory always did have a way of derailing me. But not this time. This wasn’t about Rory anymore. I had to make it right with my boyfriend so that I could return my focus to the man who needed me most: Quinn.
Walking straight up to Elliott, I grabbed his smooth, whisker-free face and planted a kiss on his lips. He eyed me with a wicked grin before taking his revenge by wiping my kiss away with the back of his hand.
“Oh, no, you didn’t.” I laughed, swatting his chest playfully. “How dare you wipe my cooties away!”
“Just evening the score, sugar.”
“And so you should.” I kissed him again. “I’m so sorry. I was a bitch.”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “You had good reason. That joke I made about Quinn earlier was tasteless, and then, in the scope of what happened later, just really horrendous. I was such a fucking idiot. I deserved everything you gave. Forgive me?”
A huge weight lifted off me; I wouldn’t be forced to dig deeper for the apology because I wasn’t sure I could.
“Forgiven,” I said, reaching my hand out and we shook on our shared guilt. “Now, tell me everything you know about Quinn.”
Elliott pushed off the wall and snagged my hand, walking and talking as he filled me in. Basically, everything he knew had already been communicated through the closed bathroom door, but no matter. I hung on his every word because it meant my brother was on the road to recovery, and this night would soon be in the rearview mirror—the same mirror I was forcing myself not to glance back in for any sign of my drummer boy slipping out of the bathroom door.
3
RORY: UNLIKELY ALLIANCE
Iwas in destruction mode, thundering around the bathroom trying to find something to ravage. Something to satisfy the fury in me that Grace had left behind. But the bathroom was battened down tight, almost as if it had been constructed with this very tantrum in mind. The toilet paper holder was caged in plastic and drilled into a stud. The titanium hand dryer needed power tools to dislodge from the wall. Even the soap dispenser required a full-on cabinet disassemble to squirt that shit around the room. With no other outlet for my rage, I gripped the edge of the sink and roared.
“Arrggg!”
Forcing my eyes up, I cast flitting glances at the saboteur in the mirror but was careful not to catch his eye. I hated him for what he’d done to me. For what he’d done to Grace. I could feel his deadened glare, daring me to look. I faltered. God, what was wrong with me? If I couldn’t meet the eyes staring back at me in the mirror, how could I ever be good enough for her?
And Grace wondered why I’d walked away.
I’d had to do it—for her.
Slowly, my eyes scanned upward, over my neck, up my chin, along my nose, and then finally locking eyes with the child I’d once been who was staring back at me through a camera lens, accusing me. He had every right. I’d let him down, and so much more. I’d ruined his life. My life. But what did he expect? I was just a child. I was once him. The boy in the mirror. Gripping the sink tighter, I held the boy’s gaze and wondered which one of us would blink first. But I knew who’d win—who always won. The kid with the condemning stare.
The door handle jiggled, indicating that there was a line forming just outside. I needed to get the hell out of here. Go home. Drink my night away. Reluctantly, I broke the morbid connection with the image in the mirror. It was further than I’d gotten in years. Give me another fifteen and we might actually get somewhere. Grabbing my beanie out of my pocket, I shoved it down over my head and lifted the hood up and over to protect my identity. For obvious reasons, I’d revealed myself to Grace, but I wasn’t feeling generous with the rest of her family. One restless breath later, I opened the door and could instantly feel the opposing weight, the force of it pushing me back. I offered up a fight, but he was inside the bathroom and blocking my exit before I even knew what was happening.
“Not a word,” he demanded, using the back of his foot to hasten the door’s closing. Only then did I see who I was dealing with, and it wasn’t the assassin I’d been expecting.
“Jake?”
It had been years, but it wasn’t like I could forget his face, not when it was consistently in the media. I stood my ground despite knowing I had very little bargaining power against this formidable opponent. Jake McKallister really was in a class all his own. Not only did he command respect for his fame alone, but he also held a secret for me that even time and estrangement hadn’t tempted him to spill. We hadn’t even really been friends, not like Quinn and I had been, but we weren’t enemies either. And I trusted him, which was a feat all itself, considering that if Jake wanted to, he could totally and completely destroy me.
He asked the same question his sister had before him. “Why did you come here?”
“I saw it on the news. I had to be sure she was okay.”
