One minute, I had been talking to Blaire about high school. The next minute, I was in another world, where words rushed across my mind. Almost like I was too slow to reach out and grab them all. I blinked back to awareness and uttered the completely senseless and rash words that sounded like a song. And I lost her. Blaire stomped away faster than I could hope to apologize a second time.
So, I drove back to the hotel. I’d planned to call it an early night. Instead, I’d taken out my notebook and stayed up until four in the morning, working on a new song. And it was…good. It was maybe the best thing I’d written in years.
“Invisible Girl” was going to be on the new album. Though…I’d probably have to warn Blaire. Since she had gotten so mad even at the notion that I might write another song about her. But, fuck, I couldn’t help it. When creativity struck, I wasn’t stupid enough to ignore it.
“So, what’s her name?” Hollin asked.
I jerked my head up at him. “What?”
“The girl who kept you up all night.”
Blaire. Though I could hardly say that because it had absolutely nothing to do with what he was insinuating. But it was her words that had weaseled their way into my subconscious and forced me to write all night.
So, I chuckled. “I wish.”
“You wish? You could have practically any single girl in a twenty-mile radius.”
I was fairly certain that the radius was larger than he was giving me credit for. But that was beside the point.
“I started working on a new song,” I confessed.
Hollin arched an eyebrow. “Yeah? I thought all your music was shit?”
“It was. But not this one.”
“Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it?” Hollin asked as we headed back toward the front door, where a peeved Nora stood with her arms crossed.
“Are you two done?” Nora asked. “We have more boxes to move.”
“I still think we should have hired someone, shrimp.”
She rolled her eyes at the nickname I’d been using for her since she was a kid. “You were late. I thought you might not even come. Can’t get your pretty hands dirty.”
I glanced down at my callous hands from years of guitar work. They were hardly pretty, but they were fucking useful. “Just wanted to make Hollin do most of the work.”
“That seems fair,” she said, pulling me in for a hug.
“Dad is inside,” Hollin said before we walked in.
“Yeah, I saw his car.”
Hollin shot me a look. “Behave.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’ll be fine.”
“We’ve heard that before,” Nora grumbled.
I sighed as they stepped inside.
My dad and I had a…complicated relationship. Even before my mom had died. When I’d been young, I was Mom’s favorite. But Mom and Dad always fought. One day, it had been too much, and she left. I begged her to come back. And she did. She had come back just to get me to go with her. Dad threatened to call it kidnapping. Everything fell apart after that.
We came back to live with Dad, Hollin, and Nora. She stayed for me. And I bore the brunt of that. Especially since they never stopped fighting. Then, two months before I met Blaire, one of those routine arguments sent Mom flying out of the house in a rage. She was in a hit-and-run and died on-site.
I was irrational and utterly inconsolable. I blamed my dad for the fight and their arguments, which had always been rough but turned worse than ever after we came back. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of that house, away from my dad. All I had for an escape was my guitar and Blaire. She was the person I turned to when the fighting with my dad became too much. I snuck into her house when I couldn’t handle it anymore—the loss, the fighting, the pain.
She was everything. Until I finally left.
So, it was no wonder that my siblings were worried that Dad and I would start fighting again. We’d always been a powder keg, ready to explode. I’d been working on it, and I wanted a relationship with him. I just didn’t think anyone would stop being wary.
I followed them inside to find my dad, Gregg, organizing boxes by size for Hollin to move. He was dressed in practical khaki shorts and an old T-shirt with a beat-up baseball cap on his head. He shouldn’t have even been touching the boxes with the knee problems he had. Sometimes, he had to use a cane to get around.
“Dad, don’t,” Hollin said, hurrying over.
“Hey, Campbell,” Dad said.
I nodded my head at him. “Dad.”
Aunt Vail’s smile lit up. “Hey, kid!”
We hugged. She’d married my aunt Lori in Colorado after the local church ran them out. They’d only come back when a new pastor had been hired and my other aunt, Helene—Jordan and Julian’s mom—had returned from Vancouver after leaving her husband, Owen. Things were better for them now. But I didn’t understand how they didn’t hold it against the whole church.