by Lisa Suzanne
Not even close to the way I still felt about a boy who broke my heart.
I blew out a breath. “It was a mistake.”
“No, babe.” He shook his head, both of his brows drawing down. “No. It wasn’t a mistake.”
“It’s a joke, and we both know it. It’s time we face it and stop playing house.” I took my bowl of peanuts out to the other room where our guests sat laughing, but suddenly I didn’t feel so joyous anymore.
“I think Kai and I are going to call it a night,” I blurted loudly to the group gathered. I set down the bowl of peanuts, not sure why it was my default to do that since I basically just told everyone to leave not in so many words.
The din of laughter and chatter silenced as all the eyes in the room turned on me.
“Thanks for coming tonight. It was fun. Goodnight.” I spun on my heel and headed for my bedroom.
As soon as I was alone, I realized I let him win again.
I let him spark these feelings in me that ruined my marriage—a dramatic way of saying it since it wasn’t a real marriage, but I allowed him to sneak his way in, or at least I allowed the feelings I once had for him to sneak their way back in.
Kai means forgiveness in Japanese, and Kai was the most forgiving person I’d ever met.
Lucky for me since I just stepped all over his heart in the kitchen.
I, on the other hand, never possessed that same power. I allowed Kai’s way of life to let me believe my quest for revenge was wrong—a quest I never even told him about. The closest we ever came to discussing it happened about three minutes earlier in our kitchen.
But that plan I’d thought about letting go of?
It was back on.
Big time.
PART TWO
The Present
It is what it is,
and it isn’t what it isn’t.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ETHAN
I can just make out her silhouette on the bed in the darkness. She rustles, which tells me she’s awake. “What you saw...” I start. It’s a stupid start. I certainly don’t need to explain myself to her or anybody, yet I can’t help defend myself. I don’t want her to see me the same way everybody else does. “It wasn’t what it looked like. Can I come in?”
She doesn’t say yes, but she doesn’t say no, so I take her nonresponse as a yes. I feel on the wall for a light switch, and when I flip it up, the room is enveloped in a soft, warm glow. And there she is, lying on her bed, face red and eyes swollen from crying. I feel that same unfamiliar squeeze in my chest I feel every time I’m around her, but this one’s accompanied with a huge dose of guilt.
Mark’s pissed at me for the way I’ve treated her after he made me promise I’d play nice. She’s upset and crying over me. I feel like I can’t do anything right, and I’m not sure how to approach this situation. It’s foreign. Girls don’t cry in front of me—I leave before they get the chance. I decide to use a little levity when I finally break the silence. “I never thought I’d see the tough as shit Maci Dane shed a tear—least of all because of me.”
“What do you want, Ethan?” she asks. Her musical voice is once again so reminiscent of the girl I once loved, and I’m sure I know something about her she hasn’t told me yet. But I have no proof other than my own intuition, and I can’t say that has traditionally led me in the right direction.
“I just want to explain.”
She gestures for me to go on, so I do.
“She kissed me.” I sit on the bed. “I was trying to push away from her but she was a strong little thing.” I remember grabbing her arm and holding it up over her head just as she used her other arm to pull my hips against hers. She wanted me, and if Maci’s bus wasn’t parked directly next to mine, if this was a year ago...fuck, if this was a few weeks ago, I’d have given in.
No question about it.
But things are different now. All it took was one glance from Maci Dane, and I was done. “Mark said you saw us and took off for your bus.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, defeated. But it does matter. It matters a lot. “You can kiss whoever you want.”
I don’t know how else to get through to her other than to repeat the things I’ve already said a million times. “I’ve already told you, Mace, I don’t want anybody else.”
“Why me though?”
I shrug because I don’t have an answer for that. “I don’t know. There’s just something about you.” I can’t look at her when I say it. It’s too hard to think about what’s gone—what I never even had the chance to have. What I’ll never get back, even though I feel like I could have it and so much more with her. “Something familiar. Like I’ve known you my whole life. Like I’m home again even though I’ve never had that before.”
I think about what that means and how odd it feels to be home for the first time in my life. She is home. She’s the piece I didn’t even know was missing.
She’s quiet, and I look around the room as I wait for any sort of response out of her. She can never seem to find the words, yet she’s a songwriter by trade—and a damn good one, too.
As my eyes sweep the room so I’m looking at anything other than her, a photograph on her nightstand catches my attention. “What’s this?” I ask. I pick it up and study it. I’ve never seen it before, but it’s unmistakably Mark and me when we were in high school.
My first thought when my brain decodes what I’m seeing is that I’ve been burned too goddamn many times in the past to trust a woman. I should know this by now. Yet something about Maci pushed me into believing she was different.
But having a picture of me from high school sitting on her nightstand? It’s too fucking coincidental. It’s too fucking close to the truth I’ve been skirting around for the last month.
“What the fuck is this?” I ask a little louder when she doesn’t respond. Beneath the photo sits a notebook with a drawing of my face. Clearly this girl was thinking about me when I wasn’t here.
But why? I don’t get it. I’m missing something. She’s hot and cold, hates me then likes me...
“Why do you have this?” I ask, holding up the picture. It looks old with its faded, yellowed corners, and I’m more sure than ever that I know the truth.
It’s her.
I know it is. Why else would it feel like the other half of my soul stepped into the room the minute Maci walked in?
It’s because she’s the one who vanished. She’s the one I held out for, the one I never gave up on, the one I never got over. The only one who ever had a chance of understanding who I was. She knows me, she knows my past and my faults, but one look from her told me she accepted it because she accepted me. No one else ever had the power to do that. Even now, I have plenty of women throwing themselves at me, but they don’t really get me or who I am or what I’m about.
I felt that from Maci when she walked in the room at our first meeting. It was some sublime feeling like we were already entwined—like she held the other end of that goddamn thread Zoey told me about.
My little sister told me that stupid story about the threads when we were kids. I never believed it was true until the day I first saw Dani Mayne walk through the halls of North Chicago High School as a freshman in my sister’s class. I was a junior at the time, the big brother looking out for his little sister, and I spotted this beauty sitting beside my sister when I looked in the window of her first period class on the first day of school. I’ll never forget the way she took my breath away even though she was only fourteen, and I’ll never forget tripping as I turned around to head back to my own classroom. I was alone in the hall—no one saw, but as I looked to find the culprit of what I tripped over, it was like divine intervention took over my brain.
Something whispered to me in that moment. It’s the invisible thread.
Before I accuse her of it, though, before I make a fool of myself by saying something I can’t take back, I give her one more chance to admit it.
“Why do you have a picture of Ma
rk and me from high school?” I gaze at her as alarm shadows her eyes. I watch as she tries to come up with some reason why she has this picture on her nightstand.
Lots of women have photos of Mark and me on their nightstands. But not too many people carry around photos of the two of us from high school. She either knows me or knows someone who does.
Before she can tell me more lies, my mouth takes over as I start pacing the tiny space between her bed and the wall. I soften my tone because I don’t want to sound accusatory—even though throwing accusations at her is exactly what I’m doing. “’It isn’t what it isn’t.’ There’s only one person I’ve ever known who said that. The colored contacts. I was hungover that morning, but I saw your eyes when you had your glasses. They’re not blue. I’ve had my suspicions, Maci, but now this photograph.” I hold it up and turn my eyes on hers—the fake blues that hide the beautiful and innocent brown ones. “You aren’t who you claim to be, are you?”
She still doesn’t speak, but her eyes are full of guilt.
“I can’t piece together why you wouldn’t just tell me, but you’re her, aren’t you?”
“I’m who?” she whispers, the first words out of her since I first spotted the decades-old photograph.
“Dani Mayne.”
She shakes her head sadly, and then her eyes dart away from me. “No, I’m not. I’m Maci Dane.”
“Look me in the eye and tell me that.”
“I don’t owe you anything, Ethan.” Her voice is still defeated.
But I won’t give up.
“You’re Maci Dane now. But you were once Dani Mayne, back before you vanished without a trace. Dani Mayne? Maci Dane? You barely even changed your name even though everything else about you is different.”
She doesn’t answer, and the desperation starts to set in.
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
She blows out a breath, and I stand there like a chump while I wait for her words. They don’t come, though. Instead, she bolts upright, jumps out of bed, and runs to the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her.
I glance once more at the picture and then gather all my fury that she won’t even talk to me before I throw it with all my force onto her bed. It’s paper, though, and it doesn’t get very far.
Fuck this. I’m not waiting around for her to come out of the bathroom to face me. She ran in there to get away from me, and as far as I’m concerned, she can have her wish.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MACI
I’m not sure if it was his line of questioning that made me nauseated or the baby, but I couldn’t hold down my dinner a second longer as I listened to him toss accusations at me.
So what if he’s right? So what if the accusations are founded on the truth? I’ll tell him when the time is right for me.
And it’s not right for me. Not yet.
I’m afraid that the moment I drop one truth bomb, another will detonate. I’m not ready for any of this, but like the asshole that thing we call time is, it won’t slow down until I get on board.
I rest my head against the cool wood door of the cabinet in my tiny bus bathroom for a minute, the cold a welcome relief to my clammy skin.
“You okay in there, Maci?” Griffin’s voice sounds like it’s so far away even though it’s just on the other side of the door.
I can’t answer. I don’t have the strength right now to even squeak out a few syllables to let him know I’ll be okay.
I’m not even sure I actually will be okay. I don’t know if anything will ever be okay again.
He knows.
I should just confess, confirm his suspicions. Tell him he’s right, oh and by the way, let him know I’m also having his baby.
Griff knocks on the door. “Maci?”
I’ve come too goddamn far to give it up now.
I’m so close to getting everything I’d planned for the past eighteen years that I don’t even know how to give it up. I don’t even know how to face what Ethan and I have done, how to pretend like I can let go of all the pain that started all because of an offhand remark he made so long ago. It’s giving up my entire identity. Too much has changed already. I need time. I need to get used to the idea of a future I never bargained for.
The asshole time is not on my side. I realize that. But I can still buy myself a few more days...weeks...until the end of the tour, even. Then I can regroup once I get home. I can figure out where we go from here.
I’ll tell him about the baby, but not yet.
I’ll tell him I used to go by Daniella.
What I’ll never tell him, even though we’ll be connected for the rest of our lives through the baby growing inside of me, is the reason why I worked so hard to get close to him. I’ll never tell him it was all some stupid plan for revenge.
I just need to come up with a good enough reason why I’d change my name and entire identity—and why I’d hide it from him—before I confess.
“Maci!” Griff’s getting desperate out there.
“I’m fine,” I mutter. “Leave me alone.”
“I have soda and crackers for you,” he says tenderly. I hear a thud against the door and figure it’s his head. I can only imagine how many times a day he has the urge to beat his head against the wall. I tend to do that to people.
I force myself up if only because I owe Griffin a debt of gratitude. I owe him more than telling him I’m fine through a door while I lean against a cabinet.
“Thank you,” I say when I open the door. I snag the soda from him and take a small sip. “That was nice of you.”
He slings his arm around my shoulder as I pass by him. “I just want you to feel better. Are you up for the show tomorrow night?”
I duck from under his arm, set the soda on my nightstand, and collapse on my bed. “Let’s see how I feel tomorrow night, okay?”
He walks over and kneels beside my bed. “Do you want me to stay with you? Put something on Netflix? Get you a bucket?”
I force a laugh. “A bucket would be great. I’d prefer not to move for the next twenty hours or so.”
“Consider it done.” He nods resolutely. “I’ll take care of your every need for the next twenty hours, though I draw the line at excrements.”
I sit up a little and wrinkle my nose. “Gross.”
“You let me know if you need to use the restroom and I’ll gladly carry you there.”
I laugh again, but this time it’s not forced. I rest my cold hand over his warm one. “Thank you, Griff.”
“It’s my duty, Maci.” His eyes are sincere when he says it, almost like it’s his honor to care for me.
“It’s more than that, and I know that.” I pat his hand. “And I mean it. Thank you.”
He nods. “Of course. You need me, you text me.” He nods to my phone on the nightstand. His own phone starts ringing, and he checks it, smiles at me one more time, then bolts out my door. “Hey, you,” I hear him say softly just as he shuts the door. I’m too tired to wonder who he’s talking to, but just before I drift off to sleep, the random thought hits me that he deserves to find someone who will treat him the way he treats me.
CHAPTER NINE
ETHAN
“Ethan, stop!” Mark’s voice comes firm and loud next to me.
“Fuck off,” I yell at him. All I see is red rage everywhere I look as I pound my fist at the side of my bus.
He pins my arms to my sides. “What the fuck are you doing?” I pant.
“Stopping you from hurting your hands, you fucking idiot.”
It feels more like he’s hugging me, and I’m sure there’s some joke in there somewhere about how he must be in love with me, but I’m too fucking angry to form the words. I look down at my fists as I heave in and out, gulping for air. Blood trickles down the back of my knuckles.
“Fuck up your face, break a rib, and I won’t give a fuck. But your hands are essential to what we do, and we’re playing Boston Garden tomorrow night.”
I wrestle out of his hold and spin arou
nd to face him with a glare.
His voice is calm when he speaks, and I can’t help but think how much he’s changed. In the past, he would’ve punched my bus with me. But now he’s the voice of reason, the fucking annoying Lisa Simpson of our band. “Before you fuck yourself up and fuck up the rest of our schedule in the process, stop being a dramatic and destructive teenager.”
I stare at the guy who has been my best friend for over twenty years. I shake my head at him. “What happened to the days when you’d help me fuck shit up?”
He shrugs. “I manned up. And I suggest you do the same.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Ethan, we’re not kids anymore. I’ll always fight with you in spirit, man, but I’m going to be a father in a few months. I want to be here for my kid, not fucked up behind some alley and not cheating on the wife I love and not pounding my fists on a bus. I already have enough historically bad press published about me. Don’t you want to set a better example for the people around us?”
I roll my eyes. “Fuck off.”
He sighs heavily, as if it’s hard for him to have this discussion with me, not as if it’s hard as fuck for me to hear it. I want to scream at him, Don’t you think I want that, too? Don’t you think I want Maci to love me? Don’t you think I want her to tell me the truth and admit what I’ve suspected for weeks? Don’t you think I want the answers to the questions that eat away at me all fucking day and night—the very things that cause me to drink and smoke and get high and pound my fists into the side of a tour bus?
But I don’t say any of that because it’s not the way I function.
Instead, I have the sudden insatiable need to drum. Whenever I get antsy, it’s what calms me. It allows me to beat the fuck out of something and make something magical while I do it. It allows me a physical way to beat out the rage and emotion and fear inside of me, and when I’m done, I always feel better. Music’s my sanctuary, and it has been for as long as I can remember. And Mark’s a huge part of that—he’s the one who’s been there with me through it all.