“—cappuccino,” they said together.
“And while I was waiting, I heard the most beautiful voice singing, and I turned and there she was.” The smile slipped away, replaced by a look of awe. “I was gone from that very moment. I never even got my cappuccino.”
“He’s exaggerating,” Selena said, though the color rising in her cheeks said she loved hearing it anyway.
“And whose idea was it to drop out of school and move to Nashville?” Mom asked, visibly charmed by the smitten couple, but not so much that she forgot the important questions.
“Mine,” Selena said, her chin lifting.
“Hmm. And what did you think about that, Gavin?”
“I know it was a hard decision for her, but you’ve heard her,” Gavin said. “She was made to sing. I’m only glad I heard her first.”
“We haven’t, though.” Mom addressed Selena, who looked away.
“Well, when you do hear her,” Gavin said, “you won’t have a single doubt. I don’t.”
Mom’s expression said otherwise, but Dad showed up then, and the introductions started again. I had to give it to Gavin, he had all the right answers, and he was pretty good at minimizing the bad ones too. Even I wasn’t wholly convinced that Selena dropping out of college was a horrible idea by the time he was done.
Mom and Dad continued to throw questions at him once we got back to the house. But by the time I went up to bed, I knew that Gavin was head over heels for my sister, and that there was no talking either of them out of Nashville. I wouldn’t be surprised if he proposed before they left.
I pulled the covers up high to my chin despite the May heat rolling in and pretended to be asleep when the bed dipped sometime later and Selena slid in beside me. The timeline she had talked about was much faster than I’d been expecting. Selena was going to take every shift she could at Lava Java and hopefully have enough saved up to leave before the end of summer. That was barely three months away. Chase had said Brandon would be leaving for college around then too.
My breathing sped up. I had so little time. They were both leaving. I’d come so close to telling Selena about Brandon the other night, but I’d stopped because I didn’t want the gnawing, gaping hole in my heart to spread to hers. What good would it do to tell her about a brother she couldn’t have if it came with questioning everything she thought she knew about our dad?
Nothing. Worse than nothing.
I didn’t want to lose Chase either, but I had to find out if Dad knew about his son. Everything depended on that. Everything.
CHAPTER 29
When I showed up at Chase’s the following afternoon, he greeted me the same way we’d parted the other night. The kiss was still shocking—the heat of him, the taste—but I was more undone by how easy it was to rise up and press into his kiss, and how hard it was to pull away.
“So, you did a lot yesterday,” I said, grabbing for the closest box in an effort to distract myself from wanting to kiss him again.
He rubbed the back of his neck and smiled at me. “Yeah, my mom is growing more anxious the longer it takes.” He moved closer to me. “So how come I feel like I could do this forever?”
My heart felt like it was pressing up against my rib cage, urging me to step closer too so that I could say the exact same thing. But I ignored it. I had to. Because I could think about either Chase or my brother, and after witnessing Selena and Gavin the night before, I knew I couldn’t afford to drag things out anymore. I needed to find pictures that either implicated my dad or else helped exonerate him, and I needed to do it before my siblings ended up in different states.
“You want to start on the left side and I’ll take the right?”
Before Chase could respond, a car pulled up to the curb behind us. I turned, my stomach lurching in the opposite direction, thinking it might be Brandon deciding to help after all. It wasn’t, but my stomach stayed poised to revolt again when I saw the woman who got out of the driver’s seat. There was only one person she could be.
“Mom, hey.” Chase went to greet her and kiss her cheek. She looked young, late thirties, and pretty in an effortless way. “You’re early. I would have had this all cleaned up before you got home.”
Her eyes darted to the mess of boxes and items spilling out onto the driveway and snagged on the near-bursting garbage bags. I saw her swallow.
“You okay?”
“Uh-huh.” She smiled at him, but her gaze returned to the garbage bags.
“Okay enough to meet my girl?”
His girl.There went my stomach, launching from side to side like a trapped animal. That was wrong on top of wrong. And so many layers that I couldn’t see where they began. Chase jogged up to me and took my hand. It was like I was outside my body watching but unable to do anything to stop the scene as he led me to his mom. I wasn’t supposed to meet her or any other members of his family. I wasn’t supposed to kiss him or hold his hand or any of this. I wasn’t supposed to want to.
“Hi—” I didn’t know what to call her. Mrs. Anything seemed like a wrong move. “I’m D—”
“Dana. It’s so nice to meet you. Please call me Sandy.” She kept talking. Each little thing she said sped up the havoc in my gut. He’d told his mom about me. Said lots of nice things about me. Called me his girl right in front of her. He was still holding my hand in front of her. It was too similar to the way Selena had introduced Gavin to our family—Gavin, whom she was planning her entire future with.
