Rook's jaw tightened. “I came to see the band.”
“Yeah?” I leaned back slightly, trying to look relaxed even though every muscle in my body was screaming at me to run. “What'd you think? We put on a good show?”
“You were good.” He said it flatly, without the warmth that used to color his voice when he gave me compliments. “You always were.”
You always were.
Like I was a memory he'd filed away instead of a person sitting right in front of him. I wanted to ask what he meant by that, wanted to dig into the subtext and figure out if he was talking about drumming or hockey or the version of me he'd known before I'd disappeared. But asking meant opening a conversation I didn't know how to have, so I kept smiling instead.
“Thanks. We've been playing together for a few years now. It's a good gig.” I was rambling, filling the silence with words that didn't matter because silence meant I'd have to face the weight of this moment. “June's the bassist, she's been keeping me sane. Luca's the guitarist, he's an idiot but he's talented. Weplay all over the city, mostly smaller venues like this, but it pays the bills.”
Rook just looked at me, and I could see the frustration building behind his eyes. He knew what I was doing. He'd always been able to tell when I was deflecting, even back in high school when I'd been better at hiding it.
“Why are you here?” I asked, because asking questions was easier than answering them. “I mean, I'm glad you are, obviously, but how did you even find me?”
“I've been looking for you.” His voice was controlled, measured, but there was an edge underneath it that said he was working hard to keep it that way. “For a long time.”
“Oh.” It was the only word I could get out, and it sounded pathetic even to my own ears. “I didn't know. I mean, I didn't think you'd?—”
“Didn't think I'd what?” Rook leaned forward slightly, and I could see the frustration breaking through the control now. “Didn't think I'd care that you vanished without a word? Didn't think I'd want to know why you left? Didn't think I'd spend years trying to figure out what I did wrong?”
“You didn't do anything wrong,” I said, and it came out too quiet, too sincere, stripping away the humor I'd been hiding behind. “Rook, it wasn't about you.”
“Then what was it about?” He was staring at me with an intensity that made me want to look away, made me want to run, made me want to tell him everything and nothing at the same time. “Because one day we were fine, and the next you were gone. No explanation, no goodbye, just an empty house and years of wondering what the hell happened.”
I wanted to tell him.
But the words stuck in my throat. And even if I could get them out, what then? He'd look at me with pity, or worse, he'dtry to help, and I couldn't let him do that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“It's complicated.”
“That's not an answer.” Rook's frustration was palpable now, bleeding through every word. “You don't get to show up again after all this time and tell me it's complicated. I deserve better than that.”
He was right. He deserved better than deflection and half-truths and the version of me that kept everything locked down tight. He'd always deserved better than what I'd given him, which was part of why I'd left in the first place.
“I know,” I said quietly. “You do. I just — I don't know how to explain it right now. It's a lot, and we're in a bar, and I have another set in two hours, and I can't?—”
I stopped, because my voice was starting to shake and that was absolutely not allowed. I touched the bracelet on my wrist without thinking about it.
Rook's eyes tracked the movement, and I saw confusion flicker across his face before he looked back up at me. He didn't ask about it, but I could tell he'd filed it away as another piece of the puzzle he was trying to solve.
“I'm not asking you to explain everything right now,” he said, and his voice had gone quieter too, some of the frustration bleeding into something that sounded more like exhaustion. “I'm just asking you to acknowledge that you left and it mattered. That I mattered.”
“You did.” The words came out before I could stop them, raw and honest in a way I hadn't meant to be. “You mattered. You still—” I stopped myself before I could finish that sentence, before I could admit that he still mattered more than he should, that I'd carried him with me through every bad year and every worse night. “You deserved a better goodbye than what I gave you.”
He looked at me for a long moment, and I couldn't tell what he was thinking. Couldn't tell if he believed me or if he was just tired of trying to pull answers out of someone who'd spent years perfecting the art of not giving them.
Then he pulled a napkin toward him from the stack sitting near the drinks, grabbed a pen from his jacket pocket, and wrote on it with deliberate strokes. He slid the napkin across the bar to me, and I looked down to see a phone number written in his clean, precise handwriting.
“Use it or don't,” he said, standing up from the barstool. “But if you do, I'm done chasing ghosts.”
He turned and walked away before I could respond, disappearing into the crowd with his shoulders set in that particular way that meant he was holding himself together by sheer force of will. I watched him go, the napkin sitting on the bar in front of me like a dare, and tried to figure out how I was supposed to breathe when my chest felt like it was caving in.
I'd spent years telling myself that Rowan Kincaid belonged to another life. That the version of me he'd known was gone and couldn't be recovered. I'd convinced myself that staying away was the right choice, that it was better for both of us if I just let him move on and build something that didn't include me.
And now his phone number was sitting in my hand, and I had absolutely no idea what to do with it.
The last set was a blur.I went through the motions, hit all the right beats, kept the rhythm steady while my brain spiraled through every second of that conversation at the bar. June kept looking at me with concern between songs, and Luca tried tocatch my eye a few times like he wanted to check if I was okay, but I just kept playing. Kept moving. Kept pretending I was fine.
