Mind Games - Page 215

“Grammie said subtle.”

“I’ll take subtle.” He slid his hands into his pockets. “Bray misses you. That’s a fact, not a ploy. I miss you. I miss the hell out of you, and that’s a fact.”

Other decisions coming, Thea thought as she set the pot on the counter. “I miss him, and I miss hearing your music, since I’m not outside as much, and have the windows closed.”

“When you’re ready … Maybe we can’t pick up where we left off, but I’d like to. Or at whatever point works. Or you could come down with Bunk sometime, and I can make myself scarce, so you see Bray.”

“You’d make yourself scarce?”

“If that’s what you need, sure. He’s just five. He doesn’t get it.” Then he shrugged. “He’s five. He shouldn’t have to get it.”

“No, he shouldn’t. Let’s sit down a minute.” Taking the initiative, she sat at the kitchen counter. A casual spot, and friendly enough.

She kept her hands busy pouring out tea.

“I didn’t trust you with a vital part of who I am. I had reasons, but that part’s on me. I’m going to tell you why. I didn’t have a need to tell anyone before my parents were killed, and that’s mostly because it made my mother uneasy. I’ll never know exactly why, but it did. After, being here, it just was. I’m Lucy Lannigan’s granddaughter, and that’s that. But when I went to college, I decided I’d just be … ordinary. Nobody knew me there, I’d study and make new friends, and just be.”

She picked up her own tea, then set it down again. “Then there was a boy, freshman year. I told you, late start for me. I told him, and he said awful things to me. Breaking it off wasn’t enough, but he said awful things. And he told someone else who said awful things, and someone else who wanted me to perform like some sideshow.”

“I’m sorry. Betrayals are tough.”

“They are,” she agreed. “So I closed off, and kept to myself until that died down. Anyone else I cared enough to be with, I didn’t tell. I remember what it felt like to have someone I cared about enough to share myself with turn on me, and I never wanted to feel that again.”

She picked up her tea again. “That’s on me.”

“Private’s private. I understand that.”

She nodded. “The other part’s on you. You never gave me a chance to explain, or to tell you, or try to.”

He kept his eyes level with hers. “And I said awful things.”

“You did. You said you had a history, and that’s why. I’d like to hear it.”

“All right.” He shifted as if he’d prepared to do exactly that. “I told you about Bray’s mother.”

“You did.”

“It goes back before that. Before finding an underage girl naked in my hotel room bed, and other incidents. You had a boy, I had a girl. We were together through most of high school. She was my first, I was hers.”

He smiled a little. “I didn’t get a late start there. I loved her, figured it was forever the way you do at sixteen, seventeen. She liked the music. Maybe she thought it was more a hobby, but she liked it. Liked when we had a gig and she could come and watch.”

“I’m with the band,” Thea murmured.

“Yeah, like that. She didn’t like it as much when we started getting more gigs, and she couldn’t always come. But we stuck.” He shrugged. “Until we didn’t. She went off to college, I didn’t, but not a lot of drama there.”

For a moment, he frowned down at his tea, but didn’t drink.

Seeing her, Thea thought, the girl, his first. Seeing himself.

“The way I figure, looking back, we both believed the other would change their mind, right? But instead, we drifted into our own worlds. Then Code Red hit. Recording contract, ‘Ever Yours’ blasting its way up the charts. I don’t know how ready we were for it, but man, we were in it.

“And in the middle of that first rush, the touring, Grammy nominations, she did some interviews. My high school sweetheart, complete with photos of us from back then. And how I broke her heart, dumped her when I got a taste of success. How I hated my family.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. I said shit to her when I was battling my parents about college or music. Shit you’d say to someone you loved, you trusted when you’re seventeen and feel pressured and misunderstood. You know what I mean. Sorry,” he corrected quickly, “you don’t.”

“I had my moments with and about Grammie as a teenager.”