Page 236 of My Three Billionaire Rockstars

I stare at the soundboard lights blinking softly in the dark. I know he’s right. After Josiah died, I stopped being a person. I became machinery. Interviews. Contracts. Touring. Existing.

Anything except grief.

“I didn’t know how to help you,” Dylan admits. “And every time I tried, you looked at me like you blamed me for breathing.”

“I didn’t blame you.”

“No,” he says softly. “You blamed yourself.”

I close my eyes briefly.

Maybe I did.

Because Josiah had been unraveling for months before the accident and none of us saw it. Or maybe we did and chose not to look too hard because we were all unraveling, too.

Fame makes cowards out of people sometimes.

“You disappeared,” I tell him.

Dylan nods. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

He laughs once under his breath. Tired. Broken around the edges. “Because every time I walked into a room, you looked at me like you hated me.”

I don’t answer. Because part of me did. Not at first. At first there’d only been numbness.

Then Claire happened. And grief had somewhere to point itself.

“What happened with her?” I ask.

Dylan goes still. He looks down at his hands for a long moment before speaking. “You really want the truth?”

“Yes.”

He nods. “She came to me.”

My jaw tightens.

Dylan holds up a hand before I can speak. “I’m not saying that to avoid responsibility.”

“Good.”

“I’m serious.”

I lean back in the chair harder, arms folding across my chest.

Dylan exhales. “You were gone already, Xander.”

The words hit ugly because they’re true.

“She kept trying to reach you,” he says. “And you just… weren’t there anymore.”

My throat feels tight. I remember that time period in fragments. Claire crying in the kitchen. Voicemails I never returned. Me sleeping in the studio because silence felt unbearable.

“I never meant for it to happen,” Dylan says roughly. “And afterward I hated myself for it.”

“I bet.”