“Do you still hate me?” he asked.
It wasn’t going to be easy to do without those sources of power and the hurt was burned so deep it might always be part of her. But the night they’d spent together and the urge to wipe the concern from Jay’s face were clear indications that she was over hating him. That fire was smothered out. “I’m finding it harder to keep up with the ritual of despising you.”
He brushed a finger over her cheekbone. “Isn’t that something? Do you sing at all?”
“To goof off.”
“Do you miss it?”
Not a question she had a good answer to. She’d stuffed it so far down, remade herself without it maybe it was buried forever. “I’m too busy to think about it. And I do love my business.”
“Have you written anything?”
She grunted her dissent and rolled her eyes. “I don’t know if you realize how hard it is to write a song. They seem to come easily to you.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been lucky.”
“No, Jay, you were always the most talented lyricist of all of us. You got a late start and had a lot more obstacles.”
He looked at her in shock. “Abel is a better musician. Isaac is a better showman.”
“Abel needs to work on his stage presence, Isaac is tired of it all and Oscar is one foul mood off an assault charge. You outgrew all of them.” He was so lacking in ego, she could shake him. “You really don’t see that?”
“I see that I worked hard. Took chances. I see luck. Could’ve easily gone the other way. I was a dreamer. Had my head in the clouds way more than I had a handle on how I was supposed to get what I wanted. If that wasn’t the truth, I’d never have left you.”
“You changed.”
“I grew up. That’s not an achievement.”
“You deserve your success.”
He was going to deflect but stopped himself. “Thank you. I never wanted to hurt anyone. In my craziest dreams I never thought I’d hurt you, Evie.”
Young and dumb but not malicious. “You didn’t have to come back. You didn’t have to do this for us. It’s a big deal.” It would give Lost Property the boost they needed. It would save the band from dissolving bit by bit.
“There’s something we can continue to disagree about. If I could go back, I’d have stood up to Errol, stood up for us, never let you go.”
“I’d have believed in you, fought for you with everything I had and never stopped.” Not let anger and disappointment flavor all of her decisions since.
“We could hash this over forever and never answer all the questions.” Jay her hand. “Are we good?”
She was shaky, lost and found and still angry, but not with Jay. “I don’t really have to work tonight. If your offer stands, I’d like to spend the rest of the day, the rest of the weekend with you?”
“I can’t even fake being cool about that. Do I get your lips?”
He smiled and she fell straight into the relief of it. “I want to kiss you. I do, but this is a lot to take in, and you’re a little ahead of me in working it all out.”
“I get it. If we never kiss on the mouth again, Evie, I’ll regret it, but I understand. There’s a lot of smoke to settle and also,” he rubbed a finger over his front teeth, “they’re a little furry.”
“We’re going to get sunburned if we stay out here any longer. We should go.”
“One last thing.” He brought their still joined hands to his chest. “I’m proud of you.”
“You don’t have to say that.” She understood why he was disappointed now. He’d lived the same lie as Errol, imagining her as someone else entirely.
“You’re totally kicking arse with Tice Social and you knew how powerful a gig at the Grumpy Fiddler would be. Not all manipulation is a bad thing. Sometimes it saves the day.”
Not all. Her whole business was about manipulating images, reputations and egos, but the kind of manipulation that distorted the truth and took someone’s decisions from them had unseen consequences. There was a black sludge inside her that stood in the way of forgiving Errol for building a castle of lies, and Jay for not seeing it for what it was.