Page 12 of Pretty When It Burns (When The Lights Go Down #1)

Chapter ten

"Panic (After Hours)" - Corbyn Besson

Grayson

Brandon returns from dropping the girls off at the airport later in the afternoon. He has an oddly happy disposition about him, but it disappears as soon as we make eye contact.

“What’s up with you?” I ask.

“I don’t know if I can talk to you about this,” Brandon admits. “Last thing I want to do is piss you off.”

“Can’t possibly be as bad as when I found out about you and my little sister.”

That had gotten ugly.

Johanna had wanted to spend a summer with me years ago and I’d been out of town when she arrived. I left her with Brandon, thinking what could possibly go wrong? When I’d gotten back from my trip to find them coupled up, I’d just about lost my damn mind.

Beyond the fact that I’d felt like Brandon had broken my trust, Johanna had been only twenty when they started dating—a young twenty. She’d been sheltered her whole life, and didn’t know how the world really worked. Hell, she still doesn’t.

It took many weeks before Brandon forced me to hear him out and tell me the whole story before things went back to normal, which made things difficult when it came to the band.

“It might just be, dude.”

Well, damn.

I’m having a hard time thinking of something worse than the Johanna situation.

Well, I could. But Brandon wouldn’t go there, not after Johanna—I know it.

“Right now, there’s really no point in me saying anything,” Brandon adds. “I’ll tell you if anything ends up coming out of it, okay? I just don’t want to start something with you if it turns out to be nothing.”

I study him for a moment before relenting. “Okay.”

In the privacy of my room, I pick a record from the shelf, drop the needle, and lay back on the bed. I pull out my phone and stare at the screen before finally typing

Grayson Harris

Hey, it’s Gray. Just wanted to make sure you made it back to DFW in one piece.

I place my phone face-up on my chest and wait for her reply. I know she’ll be wondering how I got her number.

After one of the shows, like some sort of feral caveman, I’d cornered Rylee in the hallway outside Eric’s room and demanded she put Mia’s number in my phone.

She hadn’t wanted to, but eventually, after a little groveling and a lot of begging, she’d relented.

Not my finest moment—but I’m glad I did it, especially now.

I need my pathetic apology to not be the last thing I say to Mia.

A few moments later, my phone pings.

Mia Alexander

I did.

Two words are better than nothing at all.

It takes all I have to not call her up and just admit everything—that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I’d fly to Dallas right this very minute if she asked me to. That I’m a mess, but I’d be her mess if she’d let me.

But I say nothing.

Because I’m terrified she doesn’t feel the same.

Because she’s already walked away once.

I close my eyes and allow myself to drift into sleep, praying for clarity in the morning.

When I wander into the kitchen the next morning, Lily is sitting at the kitchen counter staring into a coffee mug. It shouldn’t surprise me, seeing her sitting there. After all, this had been her house too, when she wanted it to be. She still has her own key.

Eric and I have lived in this house since shortly after we moved to Los Angeles from Maine when we were eighteen.

We had gotten incredibly lucky meeting Brandon so early on in our attempt to launch our music careers, as Brandon’s parents had given the house to him on his own eighteenth birthday.

When Lily and I started dating a few years later, she told me she never liked the idea of living in the big house with all of the guys and whoever their flavor of the week was.

When I told her I didn’t want to be the first one to move out of the house and away from the band, she begrudgingly moved a few of her things in with us.

But that was also when she decided she’d really rather live on a tour bus somewhere than in this house, and most of the time, that was okay.

She had her key so she could come and go as she pleased, but she never thought of this as her home. We never really had one.

“Finally, you’re up,” Lily says, picking up a thick manila envelope that sits in front of her and handing it to me.

“Divorce papers. All you have to do is sign. To be clear, I don’t want you to sign them.

We could still have a chance, now that your little side piece has left.

I’ll shred these papers right now and pretend that I didn’t see the way you look at her. ”

She sneers as I stiffen.

“Watch your mouth, Lily,” I tell her. “Don’t talk about things that you have no understanding of. To be clear, we have no chance. This has been over long before our separation, so stop playing like you don’t know that.”

I open the envelope and take out the contents, thumbing through the papers I requested. Sure enough, there’s Lily’s signature in thick, black ink on the last page.

Somehow they feel heavier than I thought they would, now that I’m holding them.

All I have to do is sign.

“I’m going back on tour, to Europe, in three days,” she says, no emotion in her voice anymore. “I’ll stay in one of the guest rooms, but I’d like to have an answer by the time I leave.”

“Won’t be a problem,” I reply quietly.

It’s strange—how final it feels. I wanted this.

I’d replayed the conversation in my head a thousand times, trying to imagine what this moment would be like, but this feeling is nothing like what I pictured in my mind.

I thought that seeing those papers would come with a sense of relief, maybe even some kind of twisted sense of freedom.

But right now? I just feel hollow. Finally, I think I’ve gotten her to accept that it’s done.