Well, then it looked like I was doomed, because I couldn’t let her go.
“I thought I could get over her, Kaz. I really did try. But I can’t. I want her, even though I have no right. Last night, I told her about my dyslexia, and afterwards, I kissed her. I’m an asshole.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m telling you this because you’re my best friend, and I’m done keeping secrets.”
The ground beneath my feet felt unsteady, as if my words had destabilized it. Kaz was my best friend. The guy who’d dropped out of college to chase after the same crazy dream as me. I was risking it all by confessing how I felt about the woman he was with. As seconds ticked by with silence as his only response, dread enveloped me.
He let out a heavy sigh, letting his shoulders drop before turning to me. His expression seemed defeated. “She never got over you either. It all started as a way for her to move on from you.”
I let his words sink in for a moment. No, that couldn’t be true. “I’ve seen how she looks at you.”
“And I’ve seen how she looks atyou. Today at the shoot. That first time in Hyperion’s office. Fuck, every single day she’s here when she’s capturing you working downstairs.” He dragged his nails down his neck. “It’s always been you and her, Mase. I’m just a temporary thing, ready to be discarded when the right time comes. I’m the one that gets left behind.”
I saw his hidden thoughts spelled out across his face. “I don’t know how it started, but I know where you are now, and you’re not disposable to her.”
He scoffed and looked away. “That would be a first.”
He thought that because that’s how his mom had made him feel for a good chunk of his life. But he was wrong.
Pushing off the wall, I made my way to him. “Kaz, you’re my partner. My only real family in this fucked-up world. Have you forgotten this?” I bared my wrist to him, showing him the tattoo we both had. “Thicker than blood. You’ll never be disposable to me. I’m telling you this stuff about Molly not because I want you to step aside, but because if I’m not honest with you, then I can’t be honest with anyone.”
His eyes swam with vulnerability I’d rarely seen on him. He swallowed hard. “I don’t know what to say, Mase. I…I like her a lot. Seeing her hurt that day made me realize how much she means to me.”
Even in this, we were in sync. The moment I saw that bruise on her neck would be with me until my dying day. I’d never felt so livid, so ready to make whoever did that to her pay.
“We both want her,” Kaz said. “And maybe, just maybe, right now she wants both of us too. At some point though, she’s going to have to make a choice. You or me.”
What would happen to us when that choice was made? Would Last Rites survive in the aftermath? Would our friendship?
I covered my mouth with my palm as fear filled up my lungs. We could lose everything we’d managed to build over the past three years.Everything.
“Unless there’s a third option we haven’t considered,” Kaz said.
I met his contemplative gaze, an inkling of what he might say next sparking and growing inside me.
“If she really does want us both, why should we make her choose?”
“She’s not her sister,” was my immediate response. “We can’t assume—”
“I’m not assuming anything, and her sister’s relationship is not why I’m suggesting this.” He held my eyes with his. “Tell me, didn’t it feel kind of…really fucking right to you today at the shoot? The three of us together?”
I paced the hall. Once. Twice. “Yeah, it did. But we were acting.”
Kaz let out a chuckle. “I’m a shitty actor. It wasn’t just today either. Lately, whenever we’re together, I feel like I finally belong somewhere. It’s a fleeting sensation, but maybe if we explored it further…”
“Who knows,” I muttered.
“You said it hurt to see her with me.” Kaz stopped in front of me and looked me in the eye. “Dig deep, Mase. Does it hurt because she’s withme, or becauseyou’renot a part of it?”
This was a distinction I hadn’t considered. I wanted Molly, but I also needed Kaz. Our friendship wasn’t something I was willing to throw away. What if we shared her the way we shared our dream of making it as musicians? What if it worked just as well?
Hope dripped into my blood, spreading a tentative lightness through me. “Neither of us are perfect, but we’ve always been better together,” I said, placing my hand on his arm.
The corners of his lips inched up as he covered my hand with his. “Then maybe together, we’ll be good enough for her.”
* * *
She slept with Kaz that night. We hadn’t wanted to spring anything on her when she returned from the store tired and ready to pass out. I lay in bed staring at my ceiling for a long time, mulling the idea over and picking it apart from every angle. There was a long list of things that could go wrong, starting from her rejecting us outright, and ending with Kaz and I—our friendship and our band—disintegrating in the aftermath.
The latter worried me a lot less than the former. I guess there was a part of me that was sure Kaz and I would figure out whatever we needed to. That’s how it had always been with us.
