“What the fuck for? It’s not like you were the one who slept with his wife.”
I nodded absently, but couldn’t bring myself to actually agree with him.
Because Lewis publicly admitting that he had been sleeping with my wife may have been the last straw in our farce of a marriage, but it certainly wasn’t the only thing that led to the demise ofBlack Kite. And while the public infidelity was the thing that eventually led to me being able to divorce Tori, I wasn’t blameless in the fucking dumpster fire that our situation had turned into.
“Lewis and I were on the rocks long before I ever put a ring on Tori’s finger,” I replied eventually, and Gavin nodded, his too-sharp gaze letting me know that he had seen more than he’d let on all those years ago. “I knew he was into her, and I still fucked her anyway.”
Before we’d been married. Not after.
Never after.
“Well, it’s a good thing it’s you that has to apologize and not me,” Alex grumped, reaching for his coat, picking up his phone and pocketing it before he headed for the door. “Because if it was me, I’d be more likely to feed him my fist than anything else.”
“You heading home?” I asked, as he spun his keys around on his finger.
“Nah.” Alex tried for casual, but failed miserably. “I think I might head down toThe Sour Patch, see if there’s anything going on worth looking at.”
I narrowed my eyes at him before I turned to Gavin. He and I shared a knowing look, but neither of us said anything.
Whatever Alex was up to, he wasn’t ready to share just yet. I just hoped he clued us in before he ended up in the news.
Or in Dubai. That had actually happened once.
“I’ll see you boys tomorrow,” he called, then he was out the door.
“Do you think we want to know?” Gavin asked warily.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “But we should probably be ready for anything, just in case.”
“Agreed.” Gavin was quiet for a bit, not saying anything, but not making any move to leave either. He always was the type to really roll an idea around in his brain before letting it come out of his mouth. Kept his ass out of trouble over the years.
I should have probably been taking notes.
“You know, Hawk,” he said eventually. “It really is a great song.”
“It is.” He meant the ballad. The way the music had come together with some of the lyrics I had been tossing around for weeks had surprised me. It was as though the two separate entities had been waiting, patiently, for the other to appear.
“It’s a song that deserves to be heard. If apologizing to Lewis is what makes that possible, then maybe it would be worth it.”
“Lewis deserves an apology from me, regardless of whether it gets him to agree to play on the song or not,” I confessed, and I stared as a slow smile crept across Gavin’s face.
“Well, look at you. All mature and shit.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I groaned, shoving him in the shoulder. “Shut the fuck up about it, you douchebag.”
“If you want us to be there, you know we will be.”
“Thanks, but I think this is something I need to do on my own.”
Gavin nodded, and then, with a slap to my back, he was gone, and I was alone.
After locking the door—just for Charlie—I wandered around the house, nothing but the sound of my own footsteps there to greet me, hating how the loneliness started to descend on me like a cold fog. It was times like these when I wondered what the fuck I was even doing with my life. I gazed out across the property, seeing the lights off Harry’s wing and almost regretting the fact that she was asleep. I would have totally crashed in her room, showing up with a bottle of whiskey so she could slip it into her tea when she thought I wasn’t looking. We would throw on some crappy old action movie, then spend the entire time calling out how unrealistic the script was while simultaneously reciting every damn word.
But her lights were out, and I’d be the biggest asshole in the world if I woke her up just so that I didn’t feel like such a goddamn loser.
When I’d roamed through all the rooms, finding each one as depressing as the last, I headed back downstairs and picked up my Martin. Cradling it close, I looked at the sheet music we’d worked on, seeing all the words and notes spread out before me.
We’d written some awesome stuff tonight, stuff that would probably be nominated for some award or another, but when I stroked the strings and started to play, it was those same four bars that came to me.
