“No, actually it’s funny to learn that neither one of us liked oatmeal,” I say, skimming the next few entries.“Most of these are short.Stuff like, ‘The test was hard but I passed.Who needs math when you want to be an artist?’”
“That sounds logical ...kinda,” he says, leaning over my shoulder.“But you need math for everything.”
“You like math?”My eyebrow lifts before I can stop it.
“Yeah,” he answers, as if it’s the most mundane truth in the world.“There’s a correlation between music and math.Patterns.Ratios.Symmetry.When I was a kid, I didn’t know how to name any of it, but my brain just ...tracked things.Fixed things.Organized notes before I even knew what notes were.”
The way he says it pulls at something tender inside me.Like he’s offering a piece of himself without realizing it.
“How did you end up being a musician?”I ask, softer than before.
He shrugs, but it’s not careless.It’s more like he’s sorting through memories that still sting.“Every school I went to, the music teachers said I had talent.I could play songs by ear—even when I didn’t know the instrument.”
I stare at him.“Really?”
His nod is small, almost self-conscious.“George O’Shea—the foster parent I stayed with at the age of sixteen—worked for Connor Dempsey.Connor was helping put a band together for Roderick Wilder, and they needed someone around his age who could keep up.Dexter and I auditioned guitar, but I was better at drums.”He shrugs again, but this one carries history.“I was almost seventeen.And honestly?It beat being at home with half a dozen teenagers who beat the fuck out of you because they wanted the little you had.”
He says it like it’s old news, like it’s just another line in a biography he hopes no one would read.But to me it feels seismic.
“Alec,” I whisper, unsure what to do with the ache spreading through my chest.
He doesn’t look up, pretending to be absorbed in a journal entry about geometry tests and a girl named Denise who apparently wore “too much perfume.”
But I see it—the tension around his mouth, the careful arrangement of his shoulders, the practiced neutrality.
This isn’t a story he shares.I want to reach for him, touch him and tell him that none of what happened should be just shoved like it’s nothing.I want to reach for him.
Touch his arm, maybe even hug him.
Tell him none of what happened to him was okay—because I feel it all the way down to my bones.
Instead, I sit there wondering what else he had to survive.And yet, despite everything, he grew into the man who helps a woman with grief, her inquisitive child.Something about that undoes me a little.
“I’m glad you ended up with them,” I say softly.“Your bandmates.”
Alec doesn’t answer right away.His eyes lift, catching mine for a second before drifting away again.“It was ...an experience,” he says finally.“We hated each other.We were all fucked in different ways.But no one else wanted us, so we stuck around.Eventually, we realized we were a family.”
There’s a pause.I’m almost going back to the next entry on the journal I’m reading when it hits me.The name Connor Dempsey.I remember Mitzy—the singer Ari told me about.The lawsuit after his death.The headlines included taking advantage of some of his underage clients and even grooming them in different ways.
My heart stutters.
“You were part of Connor’s clientele?”My voice is a mix of curiosity and fear.
I’m afraid of what it did to him.His breath pulls in not sure what it is, but I move before I think, reaching for him.One hand on his arm, then sliding up toward his chest like I’m trying to offer comfort I have no idea how to give.Like I can undo something that buried itself deep inside him before I even knew him.
His body doesn’t tense.He just closes his eyes for a second.
“I’m okay,” he says, almost too gently.“I’ve worked through it.I’m still working through it.”
The ache that rolls through me is impossible to hide.“You shouldn’t have had to.”
“No,” he agrees, gaze catching mine again.“But I did.And I survived.”
I don't move my hand from his chest.Neither does he.
His eyes stay on mine, and there's something fragile in the way he looks at me.Like he's not afraid of being seen but afraid of what I'll do now that I know.The broken, the repaired, the pieces still being rebuilt.
“I wish I could make it better,” I whisper.
