Page 150 of Next to Everything We Wanted

“Um, sure.” Gavin gestured for us to follow him.

“Stay here,” I told Raina as we walked.

She frowned. “What’s going on? No one’s answered my question.”

“You need to stay out of this!” I snapped, causing more people to look at us. I lowered my voice. “Can you do that just for once?”

She blinked, hurt washing over her face. “Fine.” She spun on her heel and stormed back into the crowd.

“I think no one is in here,” Gavin said, opening a random door. There was only a couch in the room. Once we were inside, he slammed the door shut. “Can someone explain what’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” I said, holding my hands up. “I promise, I don’t.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You know who she is, don’t you?”

“Hey, do not talk to her like that,” Mom demanded.

So, now she wanted to be a parent. Nice.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, keeping my voice steady. “Why aren’t you in Arizona?”

She drew in a sharp breath. “I had this trip booked for a few months. Your dad told me about Somewhere in the Sky, and I thought I should check out your boyfriend’s band since I’m on the lookout for new talents.” She examined Gavin from head to toe. “I thought I was going crazy when I recognized you.”

“I—” Gavin let out a loud breath. “Can Sienna and I talk alone for a few minutes?”

“Of course.” Mom took no time to leave the room and slam the door. The clock on the wall rattled.

Gavin faced me. The rest of his body appeared calm—no shaking, no sweating, no faintness—but the hurricane in his eyes told me it was only the beginning of the end. “Did you know this?”

“I-I didn’t.”

He huffed, crossing his arms. “I know you’re lying. You wouldn’t have acted like you didn’t know her if you didn’t.”

“You were going to break up with me if you found out!” I cried, fighting the tears that threatened to surface. “I had no idea what she did until I found her Wikipedia page last Thursday and saw she worked at your old label. Even then, I didn’t think it was a big deal because I wasn’t sure if she worked with you and your bandmates.”

“Why didn’t you ask me? Was this why you were asking about my label at the picnic date? You wanted to get information out of me without being direct?”

Gosh, how could he read into things so well? “You’re the one who hid your entire identity from me! Yet as soon as I hide something, I’m the bad guy?”

“Stop deflecting. Didn’t I perform a whole song for you when I realized how badly I’d screwed up?”

“You want me to perform a song for you over this?”

He clenched his jaw, stepping away from me. “I thought we were over this bump in our relationship, Sienna, but you planned on hiding this from me like it didn’t matter. And you said yourself that you did the research to figure things out. You were just going to keep lying to me.”

“How do you know I was never going to tell you?”

“Were you?”

I resisted the urge to look at my feet, knowing the truth deep down.

Gavin let out a breath. “There’s my answer.”

“Look, I didn’t want things to go this way. I didn’t want you to break up with me because my mom was one of the people who made fame a living hell for you. My mom and I aren’t the same person. I don’t agree with anything she’s done—I only talked toher after getting her letter so I could learn more about this. I never wanted to rebuild my relationship with her.”

“You only talked to your mom to get information about my career?”

I put my head in my hands, resisting the urge to scream. I was only digging myself into a deeper hole. “You have to understand where I’m coming from.”