I'm in It (The Reed Brothers 10)

“Oh, no,” my sister Finny hisses at me and yanks on the sleeve of my blouse. “You have to go stop him.”

I turn to speak close to her ear, so she’ll be able to hear me over the thumping music. “Why should I do it? He has family and friends here.” I nod my head toward the redhead sitting on the other side of the VIP lounge. “And her. She can go save him.”

Finny rolls her eyes. “She’s nothing,” she bleats out. “He’s barely looked at her all night.”

But she has been looking at him. With longing. With dreams of a future. Or at least dreams of his tongue in all her wet places.

“Frankly, I can’t believe he brought someone here,” Lark says, leaning toward me.

“It’s fine,” I say quickly. “We went on a few dates. That’s all.”

Mick takes the microphone from the guy running the karaoke machine. Finny nudges me again. “Go save him!” she whispers fiercely.

“There are about a hundred people here who could save him. Why me?” I hiss back.

“Because you’re secretly in love with him and if you let him do this, you’ll have to tolerate the shame of it for the rest of your life.”

My cheeks heat up instantly, and I shush her. “Why would you put that out into the atmosphere?” I take a sip of my water. “And I am not in love with him,” I mutter.

“But you like him,” she sings out, her tone containing a jaunty little melody that irks the shit out of me.

What’s not to like? Mick is a tall drink of water on a really thirsty night. He’s broad-shouldered, with dark hair and dark eyes, and he’s kind and considerate and…he’s not mine.

Mick trips over the edge of the stage as he walks up to take the microphone, and the people on the other side of the red velvet rope that keeps us away from the public laugh.

Finny makes a scissoring motion at them with her fingers and says, “If you snicker one more time, I will chop out your tongues.” She arches her brow at them until they both blanch, and then she turns back to face me with a sigh.

I sit with my heart in my throat as I watch Mick pick a song. I don’t know Mick very well, and yet he knows me better than anyone.

Finny jerks me out of my reverie with a loud groan. “We have to go save him,” she says. She grabs me by the elbow and jerks me out of my seat.

“Would you stop?” I say. But she doesn’t stop walking. She grabs our other three sisters too as we walk through the crowded bar toward the stage.

We form a group of five, with all our hands linked, just like we’ve always been, since the day we met at a group home for kids who didn’t have parents. We bonded. We all were adopted by the same family, and we became sisters in every sense of the word.

We came to the club wearing ball caps and casual clothes. We’re not a rock band right now. We’re not Fallen from Zero, the internationally famous rock band. We’re the Vasquez sisters.

Until we step onto the stage. I know that if we all go up there, we’ll give up our night of peace and fun and we’ll have to go home. So, I stop them at the edge of the stage. “I got this,” I say to them.

“Are you sure?” Star asks, worrying her lip between her teeth.

I nod. “I got it. Go sit down and pretend you’re not famous.”

I walk onto the stage, my boots clicking against the wood floor. Mick looks over at me and suddenly stops singing. “Hey, Wren,” he says into the mic and the room goes quiet.

“Hey, Mick,” I say, but no one but him can hear me. “Pick a song for me, will you?” I pull out a stool and settle on the edge of it. Mick turns and speaks to the guy running the karaoke machine, and a tune begins to play.

“Not that one,” I say, shaking my head.

Mick stares into my eyes. “Yes, that one.”

I get to my feet. “Not that one,” I say again.

I can hear the opening bars of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” playing softly, and it’s like Mick has just kicked me in the gut. He knows what that song meant to me. He knows that my mother, who died in a car accident, used to sing i

t to me and Star and Tag when we were little. He knows it means the world to me. He knows because I told him. I put the words of that song on the wall in the nursery I was building, before it all happened. He saw them. My mother sang the song with the wrong words, and so do I. Instead of troubles melting like lemon drops, she sang about laughter falling like lemon drops. I still sing it like that, because it’s the way I learned it. That song is special. And painful. And I can’t sing it. Not now. Not here. Probably not ever.

“I won’t sing that song,” I tell the karaoke operator.