“In your mind,” Iris says. “But maybe not in his.”
Taylor, who’s sitting closest to me on the sofa, places her wine glass on the coffee table and peels my hand off the pillow. “We all know what it’s like to live inside the boxes life shoved us into when we were younger.” She squeezes gently. “Sometimes it’s hard to make your way out until someone opens the lid.”
My throat tightens.
“You’re a lid opener,” Molly confirms. “For all of us, Sloane. Not because you got sick, but because of how you handled being sick. Your bravery, even though we knew you were scared, made us want to be brave.”
“Some of us you forced,” Piper mutters. “Which was rude, but possibly necessary.”
Iris nods. “It’s our turn to tell you to get your head out of your ass.”
I laugh and dab at the corner of one eye. These women have earned the right to call me out.
“The delivery lacks subtlety,” Sadie muses, “but they aren’t wrong.”
“I sent him away,” I say as if they don’t realize it. “Which might be worse than running away myself. I told him he was a babysitter whose shift had ended. I was horrible.”
“You were scared,” Molly asserts.
“I was cruel.”
“Both can be true,” Iris offers.
The tears are flowing freely now, and I don’t try to hold them back. I’m sick of holding back.
Taylor pulls out her phone. “We need to talk about the song.”
She taps the screen, and a few seconds later, Cody Cassidy’s voice fills my apartment, and I’m reminded why people lose their minds over him.
I will find you, he sings.
Down some road I haven’t driven, in some life I haven’t lived yet, I will find you.
Past the door you walked out of, through the dark, and all the distance.
If it takes a million miles, I will find you.
The song is disarmingly intimate, like a handwritten letter in a world full of texts.
But I feel like I’m missing something. I like Cody well enough, but what does his country power ballad have to do with the current state of my life and broken heart? “There’s no question why it was a hit.”
Taylor pauses the song, and the silence stretches until it’s almost unbearable.
“What’s going on?” I demand.
“Do you know who wrote that song?” Molly asks.
I shake my head. “Cody, I assume.”
“Cody sang the hell out of it,” Iris tells me. “But those are Jensen’s words.”
The air leaves my lungs in a sharp rush. Memories of him crash into me like a tidal wave. His voice in the dark, a hand at my back, the heat of him beside me in the cold.
“What?” A shiver ripples up my spine, as if I’m back in that freezing tent with just one person who can keep me warm.
“The song is the reason we sent him after you,” Avah says.
My brain categorically rejects this information. Jensen wrote “I Will Find You”? And he never mentioned it? The man is so hell-bent on tamping down his talent in order to make other people shine, I want to shake him. Except the shaking will have to wait because…
