“God, I fucking missed you so much.”

“You look tired.” She reaches up and touches my cheek, rubs her thumb along the circles under my eye.

“You do too.”

Her gaze shifts down to my chest. “I had a hard time sleeping. I missed you. I had so much on my mind.”

I link her fingers with mine and grab the suitcase from the back seat, eager to get out of the garage. “Are you hungry? We can have lunch and then take a nap together.”

She pushes her hair behind her ear. “We should talk.”

We both know we have to talk, but I wasn’t expecting her to bring it up as soon as she got home. I thought we’d relax a little together first. My vision of snuggling under a blanket in a love burrito quickly fades.

I’m losing her.

She’s slipping through my hands like sand.

I don’t want to think it, or believe it, but I can feel the broken pieces of us scattering farther away from each other.

We chop up fruit and veggies together while she tells me about her visit with Katherine and how fascinating she thought it was to quietly observe people at the bed and breakfast, all staying for different reasons. Some on romantic getaways, some for business, some to escape from life for a few days.

“I came close to putting my feet in the water, but I wanted to wait and do it with you.” We carry our dishes into the sunroom and sit on the couch. “It feels like after everything…it’s a fear I want to overcome with you next to me.”

I nod, unable to put into words how much it means to me that she wants me to take that step with her.

“Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be there.”

Putting her dish on the coffee table, she turns toward me, and tucks her leg under her.

“I did a lot of thinking while I was in Maine, and Katherine and I talked a lot. About everything.”

I lick watermelon juice from my lips and wipe my fingers on a napkin, hoping to disguise the worry that’s racing through my veins.

“That’s good. Katherine loves you, and she’s a great listener. She gives good advice too.” I trust that Katherine would never steer Ember in the wrong direction.

“She’s a sweetheart, and she always has nice things to say about you. That’s been important to me right from the beginning. Not knowing who I was or who to trust, I counted on the fact that my own sister would tell me the truth. It put my mind at ease when you first started visiting me.”

I chuckle, remembering her first reactions to me. “You didn’t like me much at first.”

Tilting her head, she smiles shyly. “You were a lot to take in.”

The bittersweet tone of her voice has me stuck in an odd place between hopeful and worried. I miss the days when I could look into her eyes and know exactly what she was thinking and feeling.

“Remember a few weeks ago you were talking about getting the guys together? Doing a short tour of small venues?” Her voice rises with supportive interest. “You were really excited about it—especially about having Tor and Talon join you.”

“It’d be cool to have them play some gigs with us. We’d pop in and play a few songs in smaller clubs and bars, surprise the crowd.”

“I think you should do it.”

“We will. I just have to talk to the guys, coordinate everything. It’ll probably happen early next year. There’s no rush.”

“Oh,” she says, with a slight flicker of disappointment in her eyes. “I was thinking it might be good if you did it a little sooner.”

I lean forward and gently squeeze her thigh. “Why sooner?”

She fidgets with the ring on her finger, her eyes downcast, hidden behind the hair falling across her face. “I think if we had a few weeks apart, so we could both kinda think and regroup, it would be good for us.” Her gaze darts up, then quickly away from mine again. “You’ve been working so hard on your new songs. Being back in your element, singing, being with the guys, will be good for you. I don’t like that you feel you’ve had to babysit me since I came home. It’s not fair for either of us. I need to see you doing what you love, living your own life. I want you to see me living my life too. So we can make decisions about how we want to live our lives together from here. Like do you want to step away from the band like you told me you planned to do right before I fell? That’s a big decision. I’m thinking about maybe taking some art classes.”

Closing my eyes, I shake my head and force down the massive wave of fear roiling up from my gut.