Page 16 of Last Chorus (A Perfect Song Duet #2)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

wilder

Tell me you feel this

Hear me screaming

As I carve our names

In the sycamore tree

“ I should leave before she gets here, right?”

Rye throws a handful of peanuts in his mouth, chomping them as he tracks me with squinted eyes. “First, you’ve gotta stop pacing. You’re making me dizzy and blocking my ocean view. Second, where are you going to go? You’re literally staying in the house with us.”

“The guys have suites near the arena. I can go hang with them.” I stop at the corner of the couch he’s sprawled on. “Hasn’t anyone told you it’s gross to talk with your mouth full?”

Lily’s disembodied voice answers, “A million times, Wilder!”

Rye rolls his eyes, brushing peanut dust off his chest. “Hilarious, my love,” he calls back, then says to me, “Don’t trust her.

Last week she put leftovers in a cabinet instead of the fridge, then freaked out when there was an unidentified smell in the house.

She wanted me to call nine-one-one because she was convinced it was a gas leak. ”

“I heard that,” Lily says as she chases a giggling Emma into the living room.

Rye’s mom, Kat, follows the pair. With deft precision, she circumvents her daughter-in-law to pick up the nap-escapee. She murmurs to Lily, then gives us a cheerful wave before carrying a squirming Emma back down the hallway.

Lily flops onto a love seat. “Your mom is a godsend, full stop.”

Rye, his mouth full of peanuts again, wisely nods instead of speaking.

Lily rolls her eyes, then yawns so hugely her jaw cracks. “Sleep regression is brutal. ”

My mind still mid-spiral, I squint at her. “Sorry, sleep-what?”

“Regression. Remember when you watched Emma last week and she refused to nap? Imagine that twenty-four seven. We’re a minimal-sleep household at the moment, hence the leftovers in the pantry.”

“And why we told you to pick the farthest bedroom from us,” adds Rye. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Ah. Thanks.” I glance at my watch. “Not to be totally self-centered—sorry about your parent life—but can we get back to my question? I don’t want to make Evangeline uncomfortable. Do you think I should leave?”

Rye grins. “No way. If you bail, it’ll be super obvious to everyone that you’re a big baby chicken.”

“Wow,” I deadpan.

Lily snorts. “Stay, Wilder. She knows you’re going to be here. And you want to see her, don’t you?”

I palm the back of my neck, squeezing to relieve the tension that’s been there since I woke up. “Of course I want to see her.”

Rye sits up, finally realizing I need him to take me seriously. “What are you worried about?”

“I just have a bad feeling,” I admit. “I know you said she’s been acting more like herself the last couple of weeks.

Sophie and Matt told me the same thing. But you guys heard the recording—all the foul shit Clay said about her.

And now suddenly she’s writing Glow’s next album, wants to come up to Seattle to record this summer, and is hanging here solo all day?

Something isn’t adding up. What’s changed? ”

Lily chews her lip. “I don’t know. I haven’t asked about Clay because I haven’t wanted to scare her off. At the risk of sounding naive, maybe she’s finally realizing what a monster he is and is gearing up to leave him?”

“Maybe.” Though I try, I can’t keep the skepticism from my voice.

Rye glances between us. “Let’s hope for the best.”

Not wanting to kill the mood any more than I already have, I nod a few times before turning to gaze out a giant picture window at the ocean.

When I heard Evangeline was reaching out again to her friends and family, that she was working on Glow songs, I was initially optimistic.

Unfortunately, overthinking is my brain’s default mode.

It wasn’t long before I was chewing on other, darker possibilities, the worst of them being that because of my meddling, Clay changed tactics.

I know damn well he didn’t trip and land on how to be a good person.

What worries me is that he’s pretending to be one and she’s falling for it.

Beyond the glass, the Pacific glitters in the morning sunlight, blue water mottled by stretches of foam, seaweed, and darker currents. I follow a set of waves, tracking its transformation from distant swells to whitewater on the beach. Then I find another set and another.

My awareness of the room fades, the vastness and rhythm of the ocean reminding me that I’m one fleeting, fragile life on a planet four and a half billion years old. Measured against the scope of time, my worries are minuscule and absurd.

But I guess that’s part of being human—the intrinsic struggle between irrelevance and ego. Even though I can accept that my emotions aren’t facts, they often feel tangible. Powerful and overwhelming, like a never-ending set of waves pummeling my shore.

Lost in a mini-meditation where I imagine that instead of sand, I’m a wave indifferent to fear or heartache, I miss the soft chime of the doorbell. I don’t notice Rye and Lily leaving the room. Nor do I hear a single set of footsteps approaching me.

But then, like my cells are coded to react to Evangeline’s nearness, I sense her. My skin vibrates, the hairs on my neck lifting. My lungs instinctively expand to bring her closer.

My missing piece.

Her advance is tentative, with several long pauses during which I struggle not to turn around. As hard as it is, I wait .

Come here, baby, I coax silently . I won’t bite.

When she finally appears a few feet away, I give myself permission to look at her.

Baggy sweatpants, white T-shirt, and flip-flops.

Hair in a messy bun, no makeup covering the sprinkle of freckles on her nose.

Arms crossed tightly over her chest. Eyes on the ocean.

Chin slightly uplifted. Lips lightly pursed.

You’re so fucking gorgeous, Fairy.

Like she hears my thought, her gaze flickers to me. The moment our eyes meet, hers snap back to the window.

“Great view,” she says.

My face spasms as I hold back a grin of triumph. “Yep. Pretty much the only thing I like about this city.”

“Hating L.A. is such a cliché. What’s not to love? We have sunshine and beaches. Oh, and don’t forget smoothies and avocados.”

The thick sarcasm in her voice has the unfortunate side effect of sending blood rushing to my cock. I quickly tuck my hands in my pockets to minimize the evidence, grateful I traded sweats for jeans this morning.

“I don’t actually hate it here,” I murmur. “I probably just resent that I can’t experience it. I wish I could hit up a taco truck and spend an afternoon at the beach.” I pause, wincing. “That probably sounds super whiny and ungrateful. ”

Surprising me, she shakes her head. “No, I get it.” She hesitates, and I hold my breath until she continues. “Do you think if our dads weren’t our dads, we still would have felt the compulsion for all this? The career, the fame, this… life?”

Facing her, I lean a shoulder on the window frame. Casual, like this is no big deal. Just your average, deep-as-fuck conversation between lifelong friends.

Inside, I’m exploding.

“I think so,” I say carefully. “I’ve wanted to make music from the moment I first held a guitar, and I vividly remember you singing before you could even talk. That being said, it would have been a lot harder for me to make it to this level.”

She gives me a dubious look. “How so?”

“If certain doors hadn’t already been open because of my dad, I think we both know my personality would have been a major roadblock.”

The glimmer of humor in her eyes makes me glad I’m already leaning on something.

“You seem to do okay with the whole peopling thing nowadays.”

I grin at her. “Are you agreeing I was an asshole?”

Her gaze returns to the window, but her lips curl in the cutest little smile. “Maybe.”

My chuckle reaps an immediate reward: her answering shiver of awareness. It’s a challenge not to entertain a fantasy of mapping her goosebumps with my tongue. Good thing I’m a pro at abstinence.

Pulling my gaze from her, I find a wave to focus on.

“That compulsion you mentioned—I think everyone has it. We all want to be known and heard, validated and loved. As artists, we simply have a public, defined space to ask for that feedback. The key to staying happy, at least for me, is maintaining perspective. My music is a reflection of me, sure, but it’s also just one part of the whole .

So I try to remember that no matter how loud a million strangers are, their feedback isn’t nearly as valuable as the voices of those who see all of me. ”

Feeling Evangeline’s stare, I glance at her and immediately tense. She looks horrified.

“What is it? What did I say?”

To my shock, she laughs. “Nothing. That was really profound, is all.”

The stranglehold on my lungs releases, then re-clamps twice as hard when she fades right in front of me. Her smile falls, shoulders curling inward. Her eyes turn distant right before she looks down.

When she speaks, her voice sounds wrong . Timid and sad. “I’m happy you’re clean and sober, Wilder. I’m sorry I’ve been too cowardly to tell you that.” She makes a soft, derisive sound. “Let’s be honest, I’ve been too much of a coward to even acknowledge you for the last six years.”

My ability to speak is shredded, her name a puff of air she doesn’t hear. She hugs herself tighter, making herself even smaller, and closes her eyes.

“In the beginning, I avoided you because I was angry and my heart was broken. But even when I didn’t feel that way anymore, I kept avoiding you. Probably because deep down I knew your voice mattered more than most. And if I listened to you, I’d have to face shit I wasn’t ready to face.”

The cracks in my heart widen, and I can’t take it anymore.

Closing the distance between us, I wrap my arms around her.

She stiffens at first, but then a miracle happens.

Her weight drops against me, forehead thudding on my chest. And while her arms stay between us, the extra space is a good thing—my stupid cock doesn’t care that this is an intense and tenuous moment.

“I’ll never judge you,” I whisper.

A tremor wracks her body. I hold her as close as I dare, rubbing circles on her back with one hand and cupping her head with the other.

“I’m jealous of you,” she mumbles. “You’ve got it all figured out while I… well, I don’t. Not even close. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. Nothing makes sense. Nothing feels right. ”

This feels right .

I keep the thought to myself and rest my chin on her soft hair.

“I definitely don’t have it all figured out.

Believe me, I’ve felt the same way you do more times than I can count.

In my case, it’s usually expectations that trip me up, specifically the ones my younger self had.

I get stuck comparing how I thought my life would look to how it really does, and I lose sight of what matters. ”

Her breath waterfalls against my chest, warming the skin over my heart. She says tartly, “It’s really weirding me out how mature and wise you suddenly are.”

I shake with a soundless laugh. “I have my moments, I guess. Catch me on a different day, and I’ll be the same immature freak you’ve always known.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

I hum a low, soothing note, gratified when she relaxes even more. “There’s one thing my younger and current self agree on, though. A truth I accepted in childhood that has never been challenged.”

“What?” she whispers.

“You,” I say just as softly. “The truth of Evangeline Marie Sullivan. From birth, you’ve been a force to be reckoned with. I know you feel lost right now. That’s okay. Feel what you feel. But someday soon you’re going to remember how powerful you truly are. ”

She trembles, and I pretend I don’t notice as her tears soak through my T-shirt.

“Damn you,” she croaks.

I can’t help grinning. “I know,” I say, my voice thick. “I’m still the worst.”

Her answering laugh is strangled.

Movement across the room brings my gaze to the hallway connecting to the front of the house. Rye and Lily take us in, their expressions a mix of pain and relief.

When Rye’s gaze moves to my face, I widen my eyes, hoping to communicate that I desperately need his help. My arms don’t want to let go of Evangeline, and I’m seconds from ruining the moment with an inappropriate confession of my feelings.

He leans down to whisper in Lily’s ear. She nods and backs up until she’s out of sight.

I hold my breath.

“Hey, Lily!” Rye throws the jovial words over his shoulder. “You’re not gonna believe this, but it looks like grandma and grandpa are friends again.”

I groan.

Evangeline giggles and rubs her snotty nose on my chest.

Thank fucking God for Rye.