After a few chews, I made a face. “That’s disgusting.”
She snorted in laughter. “That’s what you get for stealing my snacks.”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, and before I could stop her, she leaned in to sniff my shirt.
“You smell likeman,” she concluded, her eyes squinting in suspicion. “I’m picking up on hints of ‘badass’, ‘smoking hot’, and ‘plays in a famous band.’ Did I get that right?”
My skin turned crimson. Molly’s face broke with a triumphant grin.
“Well done, sis!”
“Nothing happened.”
She laughed. “You are the absolute worst liar. We both know it happened, so don’t waste your breath on the denials. The question is, will you share the details?”
I groaned. “No. There are no details to share. Especially not with my seventeen-year-old sister.”
“Okay, well that’s super lame, especially because my birthday is like a month away, but fine. I’ll let you enjoy the aftermath for a bit before pressing you for more information,” she said with a wink and turned back to the sitcom on TV. “By the way, you might want to comb your hair after your next tumble between the sheets. If that’s not sex hair, I don’t know what is,” she added in a casual voice, eliciting another pained groan from me.
As I shuffled to my room, I could only thank God that her nose couldn’t distinguish the fact there were two different scents on me.
That night, my mind drifted from replaying particularly juicy moments from the afternoon to agonizing over what I needed to do over the next two weeks. I couldn’t decide whether I should take up Cole and Ezra on their offer of sleeping together again. It was tempting, but I was afraid of the mess it could lead to. I couldn’t stand the thought of Silas looking at me with pain in his eyes, or seeing Abel with disappointment in his. My feelings for them aside, I looked up to these men. I loved making music together, and the thought of us losing our groove in the studio made me want to curl up into a tight ball and cry.
Since Bleeding Moonlight had entered into my life, I’d been bombarded with emotions that I’ve long tried to avoid. After that disastrous audition and the collapse of my biggest dream, I had convinced myself I was a nobody. A nobody with no expectations or aspirations for the future. Living this way may not be fulfilling, but it was comfortable. Safe.
With Mom’s and Dad’s passing, I’d had to change my outlook so that I could be a good guardian for Molly. That was why I had decided that after she left for college, I’d finally look for a decent job I enjoyed. I suppose that was a kind of aspiration, but I wasn’t putting my heart and soul on the line for it. I’d been able to avoid doing exactly that for nearly four years, then Bleeding Moonlight had stormed in and destroyed everything I’d ever known in their wake.
The fortress I had built to protect myself was crumbling, one rock at a time. I was going to try to convince Through Azure Skies to keep going, to show them just how much our little cover band meant to me. I had begun something I didn’t fully understand with Cole and Ezra, and I had no idea how I’d proceed. Most significantly, I was recording an album with a world-famous band that was starting to sound really damn good, and if I allowed myself to take advantage of this opportunity, maybe I could keep doing what I loved even after Bleeding Moonlight left.
No,a cold voice sounded in my head.Don’t go there. Don’t let yourself dream any bigger. Stay in your lane and remember that you are nobody.
I sighed and rubbed at my eyes. I guess it was going to take more than one incredible threesome for me to let my demons go.
EZRA
Cole was leaning against the kitchen counter with a shit-eating grin when I walked back into the house.
I couldn’t blame him. It was like we’d gone to bed the night before Christmas expecting a toy truck and gotten a Ferrari.
It had happened. Adeline had made her move. And it had been better than anything we could have ever dreamed of.
“Your face can’t look like that when we get back to the studio on Monday,” I told him. “You might as well be screaming what happened.”
Cole’s head fell back as he laughed. I hadn’t seen him this happy in months, and I smiled in spite of myself. “I’m serious.”
He was shaking his head and still chucking as he made his way to the couch. I followed behind him.
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “But how can we not tell Silas about what happened? I was the one who proposed we all go after the same woman. And now that she made her move with us, we’re going to cut him off?”
“We agreed to let her take the lead,” I reminded him. “Silas knows it can’t work any other way. She has to choose him, just like she chose us. All we can do is show her we’re open to it.”
Cole rubbed the back of his head. “Fine, but even without us saying anything, Silas will figure it out sooner than later. You know how he watches people. I’m sure we’ll slip at some point, and he’ll see it all spelled out in our body language.”
Leaning back into the armchair, I crossed my legs at the ankles. He was right. Silas was like a detection dog when it came to sniffing out our secrets. He either figured things out himself or we grew so tired of his inquisitive gaze that we spilled everything just to get him off our backs.
But we couldn’t do that now. Not when Adeline still wasn’t convinced that this could work.
“We have two weeks left in River Valley,” Cole said, nudging me with his foot. “I hope she can let go of her fears and that we can enjoy this time together.”
