“Did I ever tell you how I learned to play?”
“No,” we each said at the same time.
Deep in thought, she nodded absently as she fidgeted with the ends of her red hair.
“Faithful isn’t the kind of place that grows, you know? It closes in until you feel like you’re trapped in a box with no escape and no air to breathe. The only people who stay long enough to be buried are the ones who were born and raised, unless they get out and don’t look back.”
“Like you,” Loren filled in.
Braxton nodded. “Seven years ago, I met a stranger named Jacob Fried. He was on the road with his band, and they were passing through our town when their drummer fell asleep behind the wheel. The van was totaled and everyone died except Jacob. His injuries were so bad that he slipped into a coma while the doctors were fighting to save him. When he woke up six months later, Father Moore claimed God had delivered him to Faithful, and the reason for it was why he was spared. Jacob believed him.”
Braxton fell quiet, but I could tell her mind was still sifting through her memories.
“In hindsight, I realize now that he was a broken, grieving man desperate to understand why he’d lost all his friends in one night and was left to bear it alone. He needed to believe there was a higher purpose to keep going. He stayed in Faithful, but it wasn’t to find his calling like he thought. He couldn’t bring himself to leave the last place he’d seen his friends alive.”
Braxton studied each of us, and I knew she was wondering if we would have done the same.
Yes.
“Did he ever find his calling?” Houston asked. His eyes narrowed as he tried to piece together Braxton’s memories for himself. He was anxious to understand her. We all were.
“Eventually,” she said with a shrug. “Despite being the pious Christians they claim to be, Faithful isn’t welcoming to strangers or strange people—even if we’re all His children.” She rolled her eyes. “Jacob was left utterly alone in a strange town for weeks until a sixteen-year-old girl decided to befriend him.”
I stopped breathing.
I tried to fill my lungs, but it was like I’d forgotten how.
There was only the hope that this story wouldn’t take the turn I knew it would.
“I was on my way home from school when I heard him play. He’d gotten a place, and when I walked by…I don’t know why I turned in…or why he never sent me away. We didn’t speak. I listened until he had nothing left, and then I went home. It was the same the next day, and we continued like that for a week before he finally spoke to me. He asked me if I played. I told him maybe one day.”
She stopped speaking for a while when the plane began to take off, and she didn’t speak again until we were in the air. “It started with him just showing me a few things. Once he realized how quickly I was catching on, he started to challenge me. I adapted, and Jacob found his calling. He never talked about himself during those times, and neither did I. We never stopped being strangers. I was his student, and he was my teacher. That was all we were to each other…at least for a while.”
“What happened?” I heard myself ask.
“He fucked her,” Loren blurted bitterly. His eyes were angry when his gaze met mine briefly, and then he slowly turned it on Braxton. “Am I right?”
“It was my idea,” she argued as if it made a goddamn difference. Her eyes were wild and determined as she met each of our gazes. She didn’t want to be a victim. “I came on to him.”
“Oh, was he just a kid who mistook gratitude and adoration for love and attraction too?”
Loren and Braxton stared at each other, neither willing to concede. For once, I sided with Loren, and I couldn’t recall the last time that happened. Braxton might have been the aggressor, but it didn’t change the gut-turning truth that she’d been taken advantage of by someone she not only trusted but idolized.
And what about you?
I tried to shove the thought away, but it kept coming back.
I wasn’t ready to face the truth that I’d waited too long to tell her about Emily. I wasn’t prepared to accept that Braxton may never forgive me. My betrayal would hurt her more than Houston or Loren’s ever could because she never expected it from me. I could see the unshakable trust in Braxton’s eyes each time she looked at me.
Fuck.
“How old was he?” Houston asked, and I knew he wasn’t merely curious. The dick wanted her to admit out loud, even indirectly, that she wasn’t to blame.