Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
She’s good at hiding what she thinks—it’s part of her job—but I know her tells. Neither of her eyes is twitching, and there’s no subtle flaring of her nostrils. She doesn’t look tired, which strangely happens when she’s the most peeved.
Of all the people in the world, she’d be the last to be starstruck. She doesn’t even seem affected by the radiant presence Wilder seems to carry with him wherever he goes. She’s breathing just fine, even though he naturally sucks all the air out of a room whenever he enters it. In a good way.
Wilder is sex on legs, a walking mystery, and so damn intriguing. He’s his own personal orbit, but Mom seems as though she’s more interested in the roast than in roasting us, or at least grilling us about what the hell happened in there and what the absolute hell is going on in general.
I try to make my sigh of relief as subtle as possible.
I guess that’s her signal to make sure I don’t get too comfortable.
She sets her fork down and gives Wilder a pleasant enough smile, a real one, since she doesn’t do the fake shit. “I don’t like you for her,” she drops in a conversational tone. She might as well be discussing the merits of baked versus boiled potatoes.
Wilder doesn’t freak out. I think he saw that one coming. “I know.” He stops eating.
I reach under the table and curl my hand around his thigh. The leather is warm from his body heat, and it seeps into my palm, electrifying me.
“What can I do to change your mind?” Wilder asks. “Do you want me to change your mind?” He’s not looking at my mom. He’s studying me. His voice is all smoky tones with a hint of hope trembling around the edges.
I have trouble getting my heart to stop slamming in my chest. Words. Right. I could use some of those. They’re hard to push out, especially when I have no easy answer for that. In short? Yes. But it’s always more complicated than that in short. Always.
“You know I have a private studio at my house. I’d love it if you’d go there, whenever you’re ready.”
I grasp his leg a little harder, as though I can change the future and the facts and alleviate all my doubts with just that squeeze. “I’m not going to record anything.”
“I thought you might want to watch and listen to me do it. They’re your songs.”
Mom just takes it all in. Silently.
“I know I can’t change your mind overnight,” he continues. “There’s going to be some crazy emotions and a big storm coming when we let the world know the band is breaking up.”
I close my eyes against the heat surging straight to them. I knew this was going to happen. I knew it a while ago. But knowing it and hearing Wilder drop those words are two very different things.
It might not be my band, but I was tied to it for a good chunk of my life. And far more than that, I know how this is hurting Wilder, even if he’s good at hiding it. It’s there in the shadows in his eyes, in the way the tiny wrinkles at the corners of his mouth deepen, and in the too-rigid posture he suddenly adopts. They’re his family. Wilder does let some of his pain through, the tiny ouches, but the stuff that guts him? He nurses the worst of it in private.
“Is it really?” I have to hear him say it for it to be real.
He nods. “Yeah, it’s happening. We’re going to tell the label this week. Well, I am. Going to tell them. They left it up to me.”
“Are you going to be—” Okay is such a shitty word, so I stop myself from saying it. “Are you… do you… what do you need? Space? Time? For me to be there for you? A hug?” My fingers curl into his thigh muscles.
He blinks the slow blink he does when he’s trying to contain his emotion. He wants to keep it inside, especially with my mom sitting right there. It might have been a long time coming, but it’s a fresh wound, gaping and bloody. He doesn’t know how to treat it. I don’t either. I just know it’s brutal, and I wish it weren’t.
“All of the above?”
As a friend or as more? It’s the question I can’t ask. I don’t know what he’ll say. I have no idea what I’ll say.
“I think time is a good thing,” Mom interjects softly.
She doesn’t judge us for what she walked into today. She doesn’t press on the obvious after she said she didn’t like Wilder for me. She doesn’t tell us that we’re being rude for getting lost in each other right now.