by Emily Conrad
He went back to the melody he’d been circling. Matt’s problem wasn’t just having too much free time. The natural fearlessness that enabled him to try his hand at sports like rock climbing, surfing, BMX, and snowboarding seemed to have led to one risk too many, and now he was in too deep with all the wrong entertainments. “I’m not sure band commitments will straighten him out.”
“Some accountability might. There are consequences for our choices, but everyone around us acts like there aren’t. We’ve got to do each other the favor of speaking up when no one else will.”
Matt was an expert at turning a deaf ear to their advice, but they could try. Besides, Awestruck had a couple of shows over the summer. It’d been months since the end of their last tour, and extra rehearsal time wouldn’t hurt.
Gannon reached for his pencil, jotted down the first words in what might turn into a song about addiction. Maybe Matt could still benefit Awestruck after all. “All right. There weren’t many private, gated rentals, so the one I got is huge. There’s plenty of room for you guys.”
“See you soon, then. Tell Addie I said hi.”
Gannon hesitated.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ve got for us.” John disconnected.
That last part might as well have been a threat. John and Matt would expect more than old music and one song about Matt to work on. He needed to talk with Adeline again. The sooner, the better—and without an audience this time.
“Lakeshore Victory Church. This is Adeline.” She cradled the phone with her shoulder, typed the last word in an email, and hit send.
No one answered her greeting.
“Hello?”
Drew appeared in the office door and crossed his arms.
“Hello?” Since no response came, she hung up and focused on the pastor. “What can I do for you?”
“I’ve been thinking about your problem.”
She touched her throat, which still burned with unspoken truth. She needed to tell someone the whole story. Tegan would be a more appropriate audience than Drew, but what would her roommate think when she found out Adeline wasn’t who she’d seemed all this time?
“We’d like to help you with the porch and the leak you mentioned.”
Oh. That problem. “We?”
“The church. I called Chip this morning, and he swung by to take a look. He thinks a crew—volunteers from church—could get the old porch out in a weekend. The new porch would go in on weeknights or the following weekend. The whole thing would be totally free to you.”
“I …” She shook her head. “I can’t ask them to do that. It’s too much.”
A click sounded like the main door. Someone must be early for the Monday afternoon Bible study.
Drew continued like he hadn’t heard that or Adeline’s refusal. “He climbed up on the roof. He said the shingles aren’t too bad. He caulked a few places. If that doesn’t stop the leak, let him know.”
“Chip was on my roof?”
Drew grinned. “So you see, there’s no way to stop us. The porch isn’t behind locked doors either.”
“But there are so many people who could use help with house projects. I’m employed and—”
“Don’t tell me you could do the work yourself.”
“I don’t deserve this.” In so many ways. “I’m healthy. I’m young.”
“And you thought paint would fix rotting wood.” He laughed. “You’ve done so much for everyone, and we want to help. Let us.” He stepped backward into the hall, getting ready to leave.
“I really can’t.” At least they weren’t also offering to paint too, but the porch was still too massive a favor to accept. “I think I have a way to cover the cost. Please don’t go ahead with the work.”
Something caught his eye—maybe Rosanne was approaching to make photocopies for the Bible study. He frowned at Adeline as if he wanted to continue the conversation but wouldn’t with a witness. “Remember what we talked about.”
“What we talked about?”
Drew gave Rosanne an odd, curt nod and turned for his own office without asking the longtime member how she was doing.
But it wasn’t Rosanne.
Gannon, with broad shoulders, intense eyes, and each moment of their complex history, appeared in the doorway.
Yesterday, he had had a short beard, but today he was clean-shaven, revealing each of the strong contours that kept landing him on magazine covers. No wonder the press ate up anything he did.
His T-shirt left most of his arms exposed, and as he shut the door behind himself, she glimpsed the word honor on his triceps, woven into the mane of the roaring lion. Actually, she could see only the last three letters, but compliments of a magazine cover, she knew the rest.
He pulled the spare chair up to her desk. As he sat, he plunked a black motorcycle helmet beside her keyboard. He must not have worn it long because it hadn’t flattened his hair, which fell across his forehead, unruly and begging for her fingers.
Her burning throat flared hotter at the thought.
He watched as if she’d summoned him and he wanted to know why. Had he somehow sensed her longing to confess the past? He’d been there. Talking to him should be easier than revealing her secrets to others. But confiding in Gannon, whom she never should’ve been close to, would deepen her betrayal of Fitz.
“No bodyguard today?” she asked.
“Tim’s our manager, not a bodyguard. I don’t have security up here yet, but he’s bringing some on.”
She was close enough to see the gold at the center of his irises and the blue-green surrounding it. In the old days, he’d always seemed to have a special reserve of attention for her.
Even now, the intensity of his focus on her belied his casual posture. “Once the guys get here, security will be more necessary.”
“John’s coming?”
“And Matt. But John will want to see you. He asked how you are.”
“I’m good.” She wiped dust from her keyboard with her fingertip. Gaze-avoidance didn’t reinforce her words, though. She met his hazel eyes again.
“Why don’t you play with the worship team?”
“I help with the kids during the service.” Not every week, but often enough.
He nodded slowly. “You used to love playing.”
“I haven’t touched a bass in years. Not to play it, anyway.”
Now, he was the one to look away. He seemed to take inventory of the file cabinets, the photocopier, the shelves of colored paper they used for bulletins. “This isn’t where I expected to find you.”
“You’re here for another reason?”
“No, I knew you were here today. I called to make sure of it.” He leaned forward, placing his forearm on the corner of her desk. “What I mean is, I didn’t expect your life to turn out like this.”
What right did he have to judge? To think her less-than? “What do you know about my life?”
“I know you’re not using your degree. You’re working two jobs and barely getting by. You quit music, even though you loved it.”
He left so much out, all the good she did for this church and this community. How much Drew and Asher depended on her. The magnificent view she had from her own front porch.
The rotting porch that others offered to fix because she was a charity case.
The unsteadiness of emotion seeped into her chest. “You don’t know me.”
“But you think you know me.”
She did know him. Why did she always bite when she saw something about him in the tabloids? And if an entertainment show mentioned him, why could she never change the channel? She couldn’t get enough news of him, even though everything she heard and read and saw left her lungs stinging with anger. He joked around on Audition Room, obviously enjoying his life while dating beautiful women and probably behaving with them the same as he had with her.
The only thing she’d managed to resist was Awestruck’s music. His voice struck her too deep.
“I k
now you much better than I’d like to.”
He nodded, mouth tight. “I’ll give you that. What happened when I came home that year never should’ve—”
“That’s not what I mean.” She spoke quickly, though doing so added gas to the fire blazing in her throat. “I mean, that too, but I’m sick of seeing you in magazines all the time. All the interviews and the awards and the TV show.”
He hung his head and pushed what looked like tense fingers into his hair. When he sat back again, he leveled his gaze on her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about that night, and I’m sorry that in my guilt, I fired Fitz instead of facing him. God and I dealt with my sin a long time ago, and I told myself that was enough, but it wasn’t because my actions involved you too. I never acknowledged that because God … I knew He’d forgive, but you, after Fitz died …”
“You thought God would absolve you free and clear.”
He cleared his throat and studied his hands. “He did. Jesus Christ died so that God can forgive us when we repent. Free and clear.”
If we confess our sins, He’s faithful and just to forgive.
But what about the sins that were too bad to put into words? “So, just like that”—she snapped her fingers—“everything’s good again.” Her voice came out rough, as if she’d inhaled smoke.
He lifted his face. “I’m still a sinner. But I’m forgiven. And, Adeline …”
He believed he was forgiven.
It wasn’t fair.
Her eyes were hot, and she caught herself holding her breath to keep from adding air to her smoldering throat.
When he didn’t continue, she met his gaze.
“All you have to do is ask, and you’re forgiven too. Without doing anything. So if that’s what all this is.” He circled his hand, indicating the office or maybe the city. The life. “If you’re trapped in some effort at doing penance, you’re wasting your time and your potential. It’s not what God wants for you, and it’s not what Fitz would’ve wanted.”
A tear fell, and she hated that show of weakness. Hated how much she wished he was right, how transparent her motives were to him. But there was no way Fitz, let alone God, wished her well. “How would you know?”
“About Fitz? Maybe I wouldn’t. But you can’t say what he was thinking or would’ve wanted either. He rarely gave hints about how deeply he struggled. I didn’t connect the dots until after he died, but he dealt with depression the entire time we knew him, and I don’t think the time he succeeded was his first attempt.”
Her hands fell limp to her lap. “What?”
“He crashed his car once in California, and his explanation …” Gannon winced and shook his head.
Adeline remembered that, how he’d strangely waited a day to tell her. He’d claimed he hadn’t wanted to worry her. “He said the turn was sharper than he expected.”
“He drove that road all the time.” Gannon watched her, what he wasn’t saying as loud as any words. “I saw his sister once a few years ago and learned he never had mono either. He disappeared on us because he’d been hospitalized on suicide watch.”
Her blood ran cold. “No.”
It didn’t make sense. They’d known then that a label was interested in signing them. Fitz should’ve been as ecstatic as he’d sounded. She’d never for a moment doubted that illness had kept him from the stage at such a pivotal time.
And it had been an illness.
Just not the one she’d thought.
“He put on an act with all of us. Lied to all of us.” Gannon’s words washed over her like melancholy waves on a calm, cloudy day. One sentence after the other, slowly he carried her old beliefs about Fitz out to sea. “He was especially careful with you. While he was alive, I thought the way he brightened up around you was his way of keeping you from worrying about things like his grades or the band’s prospects. Looking back, he was hiding his mental state most of all. I think he knew you’d read more into his behavior than we thought to.”
Because she should’ve known. Should’ve helped. Her back ached with the effort of keeping herself from doubling over right there in her chair.
Gannon continued, and she listened, though she couldn’t imagine how anything he had to say would alleviate the pain. The remorse. “What we did—especially what I did—piled on more wounds, but in the end, his choice wasn’t based on one or two experiences, as awful as those were. He lost a war that had been raging for years.”
“And that’s how you justify going on to live your life. That he was depressed. That he had it coming.” Two fat tears dropped, one to each cheek. She swiped them away.
His voice gained a gravelly edge. “That’s not what I said or what I meant.” He folded his arms, muscles tense. “This is how you’ve been coping all these years, isn’t it? Penance and blame. Vilifying me and denying your own dreams to feel good about yourself.”
She didn’t feel good, though. Sometimes, when she volunteered for the umpteenth committee or cared for a rescue animal, the pain stopped. But good? No. Because Fitz was dead, and she could never have what she most wanted: a do-over so she could break up with Fitz when they grew apart. That way, she wouldn’t have gotten between Gannon and Fitz. Gannon wouldn’t have fired him. Maybe she would’ve ended up with Gannon or maybe she would’ve lost touch with both men that way, but at least Fitz would be alive and thriving with Awestruck.
He would be alive, right? Thriving? Eventually, someone would’ve learned his secrets and stepped in to help.
Maybe.
But those chances were dead and gone.
So maybe she had vilified Gannon. She was as guilty as he was, but going easy on him was one step toward letting her old feelings come back, and what good would that do? Their past was tainted beyond repair with sins she couldn’t bring herself to confess.
She shook her head and stood. Since he’d plunked his chair in the walkway, blocking her exit, she turned her back on him and set her jaw as she waited for him to go.
A rustle signaled him rising, then he sighed, close in the small space behind the desk.
If she took a step backward, she’d run into him.
Gannon Vaughn, the man she’d thought so much about for so many years, was finally close, but they could never bridge the gap.
“You sought me out that night, not the other way around.” His voice rolled with tightly controlled anger, but that faded as he continued. “I shouldn’t have responded the way I did. For your sake, for Fitz’s, for my own. But it was you, and I was nineteen, and I had liked you for years.”
Guilt squelched the thrill his admission gave her. If only his voice weren’t his strongest feature and she weren’t so close to bawling, she’d stop him there. Or maybe she wouldn’t. If she let him say this out loud, would the burning in her own throat stop?
Until the night he was talking about, she’d had nothing to feel bad about. She and Gannon had gotten to be good friends through Awestruck. Sure, she’d felt occasional moments of attraction toward him, but she was with Fitz, and she didn’t want to be the kind of girl who’d end a good relationship over a fleeting, one-sided crush. When the band left, she and Gannon had mostly lost touch. Still, when she’d heard he was in town that Christmas, she’d been desperate to see him.
That should’ve been her warning that what had started as an innocent connection had grown across time and distance, like a ripple amassing into a tsunami.
“We were striking out in California,” he continued, “and I wanted to feel good about something. None of that justifies my choices, but when you kissed me after that party and wanted the same things I did—”
“Enough.” By now, he’d probably done much worse than sleeping with a bandmate’s fiancée. But for her, that night had been the worst mistake of her life. It’d been so wrong, so incongruent with her beliefs. Gannon claimed to be ashamed of his behavior, but if he’d come to talk about it, he didn’t know the meaning of the word shame. “We’re in a church. The pastor’s right down the hall. I won’t reha
sh every detail.”
Gannon’s frustration was audible in his exhale. “Fine. Just tell me you haven’t rewritten all of this, that your version doesn’t involve me seducing you or forcing you or asking you to hide it from Fitz.”
He hadn’t done any of that. About a week after he’d returned to California, Gannon had begged her to tell Fitz because he didn’t want to live with the guilt and deceit. She’d refused. Gannon had kept the secret, but then he’d fired Fitz.
At that point, she should’ve never breathed a word of it to Fitz. But shortly after he’d returned, he’d wanted to elope.
If she’d stayed quiet and married him, would he still be alive? Wouldn’t that have been a fair price to pay? Her silent guilt for his life?
Instead, she’d told him what she’d done, and her confession had been part of his undoing.
Confession couldn’t wash all sins clean, at least not in this life. Maybe God would still allow her into heaven. She’d be a pauper there, and still she’d have gotten off easy.
She turned and aimed for a quiet tone that couldn’t be overheard outside the office. “The only reason I would talk to you about this would be if it could bring him back.”
“What if talking about it brought you back?”
Impossible. Nothing could restore the innocence she’d lost. Anyway, she never wanted to go back to being a person who would utterly fail the way she had. “You might not understand being happy in a life like mine, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with how I’m living.”
Frowning, he pulled a scrap of lined paper from his pocket and held it out to her.
She took the slip. Another phone number. “What’s this?”
“My direct number. The other one was Tim’s, but if you change your mind about talking to me, I don’t want you to have to go through someone else.”
“And you trust me with it?”
“Do whatever you want with it. I’ll get a new one if you share it.” He took his helmet from the desk. “I hope I’ll hear from you, but if I don’t, I’ve said my piece. I’m staying in the area, but I’ll leave you alone.” Without another glance in her direction, he let himself out.