“You survived longer than some. You did okay.”

I contemplated him and I didn’t know why I pushed it, why I asked. Maybe I wanted to argue, maybe I wanted a reminder that we couldn’t be friends. “Be honest. You think I was a spoiled brat making a mockery of something real and horrible that other people have no way out of.”

Irritation flickered in his dark eyes. “I think you did what you needed to survive.”

“But the point is that it wasn’t my only option.”

“Wasn’t it? I’m not talking about surviving homelessness, Skylar. I’m saying, I think you did what you needed to do to survive.”

Understanding he meant surviving my mother’s death, tears burned in my throat and I had to look away. If he kept looking at me like that, I would burst into tears. So I continued to prod, to push. “Autumn said you lost your parents.”

When no reply was forthcoming, I knew I’d gotten what I wanted. I looked up, expecting to meet his cold, blank mask but I found something different. I found him scrutinizing me, assessing me, and I didn’t know what it meant.

And then he shocked the hell out of me. “Autumn is my half-sister. Not that I think of her as anything but my sister, full stop. Her dad, Peter O’Dea, adopted me when he married my mum. My real dad has been in and out of prison since I was a baby. As far as I’m concerned, Peter was my dad.

“Our lives changed when I was eleven and Autumn was only six. We were on a family holiday. My parents booked a helicopter ride but Autumn wouldn’t get on it. She screamed and cried anytime we tried to get her in the thing. Dad didn’t want to lose the booking and told me and Mum to go for the ride while he watched Autumn. But Autumn wanted me to stay with her. She howled anytime I tried to let her go.

“Finally,” he paused, his throat moving like he was struggling to swallow. I held my breath, hanging on every word. “I told Mum and Dad to go on the ride. That I’d stay with Autumn at the booking office. The operator promised to watch us, that we’d be fine, and so off they went.” His lips thinned, as if the memory was nothing more than merely distasteful. But his chest, moving with shallow breaths, betrayed him. “The helicopter crashed. It was the last time we saw them. My uncle sued the operator for negligence and Autumn and I won a lot of money in compensation. He managed it for us, invested it well, and we received it when we turned eighteen. That’s why Autumn has what she has without needing a job. Of course, my uncle gloats about it, as if he wants our thanks for providing us with something we’d give away in a heartbeat if it meant having our parents back.”

Grief for him, for Autumn, swelled in my throat and I blinked away the tears, instinctively knowing he wouldn’t want that from me. But my own emotions, ones that had been bubbling closer and closer to the surface for weeks, attempted to overwhelm me.

Why had O’Dea shared this with me?

Now I felt like I owed him. Yet there was something freeing in that. Like I had no choice but to talk, to tell him, because it was a debt to be repaid.

“I wasn’t close to my stepfather.”

O’Dea shook himself out of his thoughts. “Oh?” he said carefully.

The thought of Bryan still filled me with resentment, which was horrible. It only compounded my guilt. “It had been me and Mom all of our lives. My dad died when I was a baby. He was in the army and was killed in action. Mom really loved him so she wasn’t interested in getting into another relationship for a long time. She dedicated her life to raising me, and I think she thought she had to make up for my dad’s absence. Anything I wanted, any dream I had, was hers to give me. Even if she couldn’t afford it, she found a way. My ballet phase. My tae kwon do phase. My photography phase. The art phase. The typewriter phase. My guitar and piano phase. The ones that stuck. I was thirteen when Micah and I decided we were good enough to put a band together. My mom was behind us from the beginning, just as she had been with all my phases. But I think she knew this wasn’t a phase. She saved money to buy me my first guitar, drove us to crappy gigs, paid to get us a slot at a recording booth. My dream was her dream.

“And then Bryan came into the picture a year later. He thought we were a bunch of stupid kids. He made me feel guilty about spending the little money that Mom had. They were in a relationship for two years before they moved in together. He made her happy, but it annoyed her that he couldn’t support me like she did. It put her in the middle. They almost split up because of it. But then we got our record deal, they got married, and suddenly the bastard always knew we’d come through.’”

“It sounds like you didn’t like him very much.”

Suddenly, the memory I tried so hard to keep at bay pushed up and out.

“You’re here but you’re not really here.” Mom suddenly burst into my bedroom suite.

After a disastrous gig in Glasgow, I asked Gayle to find me somewhere secluded to get away from Micah. She’d sent me to a summerhouse on the inner Oslo fjords in Norway. Finally, when I couldn’t escape my mom’s persistent questioning, I came home. To the house I’d bought my mom. A huge six-bedroom home on the outskirts of Billings with spectacular views. It was so big, I had my own suite. I’d naively assumed I could hide in it for the last two weeks before we went back to the recording studio to put together the new album.

Apparently, Mom had had enough.

“You ever heard of knocking?”

“Don’t.” She shook her head, anger flushing her pretty face. “Don’t do that. I am worried sick about you and you keep acting like nothing is going on.”

Distressed that I was causing her worry when that was the opposite of what I wanted, I got off the bed and walked over to her. I pasted a weary smile on my face. “Mom, I swear I’m just tired. I’m just . . . recharging the batteries before I head back to work.”

Mom studied me intently. And then decided, “You’re lying.”

“Mom,” I huffed.

“I know you’re lying. You’re avoiding me. You don’t return my calls. You’re never here . . . I’m shocked that you turned up. And I thought that meant you wanted to stop shutting me out and talk. But you’ve holed up in here the entire time.”

“Mom, I’m not shutting you out.”

“Is it drugs?”

My eyes widened. “No. Do you not know me at all?”

She shrugged. “The paper mentioned something about drugs.”

Anger roared through me. “My mom. My own mother? Are you shitting me? You’re listening to that made-up crap?”

“Well, my own daughter won’t talk to me so what else am I supposed to think?” she yelled.

“Not believe the tabloids like a moron.”

“Don’t you talk to me like that, young lady. You’re not a rock star in this house! Show some fucking respect!”

I blinked in horror. My mom had never screamed at me like that. Ever.

She shuddered, tears gleaming in her eyes as she realized it too. “I feel like I’m losing you,” she whispered.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t her. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and sob and scream and tell her I was lonely. That I was lonely and miserable. That all her sacrifices were for nothing. That I’d pushed the boy I loved away for absolutely nothing. That I’d failed. That I couldn’t handle the fame.

That I wanted her to forgive me for railroading her life only to fail her and everyone close to me who mattered.

But I didn’t.

I choked down my loneliness.

I reminded myself that Micah, Brandon, and Austin were relying on me. That my mom was comfortable financially for the first time ever and that she was relying on me to keep her that way.

I was just having a bad few months. I’d get over it.

“You’re not losing me, Mom. I’m just tired.”

My bedroom door almost cracked off its hinges, she slammed it so hard on her way out.

I locked myself in my bathroom, turned on the shower to muffle the sound, and I cried.

When I eventually pulled myself together, I looked out the window to see her car pulling out of the drive. Hating that I was relieved, I wandered downstairs for something to eat.