“I, uh, I’m,” I started, but I began to get choked up. I grimaced and then scolded myself for grimacing because that would be picked up on camera. “I’m sorry, Brad. Can we take a break?”

Brad looked at the cameras, then to the producers off in the wings of the stage, who were furiously shaking their heads. But before Brad could reply, I was walking off set toward my dressing room. I yanked at the collar of my shirt, trying to take in deep breaths.

I swung the dressing room door open and cussed at the top of my lungs the moment the door shut behind me. “Fuck!”

“Fuck!” was echoed behind me as Tyler walked into the room. His face couldn’t have been redder if he tried. I couldn’t tell if he was pissed off, scared, or felt bad for me. Maybe a little of all three.

He paced for a minute before he stood still and took in a deep inhale. Then he looked to me. “Okay. It’s okay. Shit,” he muttered before taking a few more deep breaths. “Okay. I’m going to go talk to the producers, apologize, and let them know we’ll have to reschedule.”

“This is going to make me look worse,” I muttered in return, sitting down and rubbing my hands against my face.

Tyler didn’t respond, because he knew it was true.

He cleared his throat and patted me on the back. “Don’t worry, buddy. We’ll get it figured out. Not a big deal.”

Translation: a big fucking deal.

I bet the moment this news got out, Cam would be smirking with pride, knowing she’d kicked a dog that was already down.

There was a knock at the door, and Tyler called out, “Yeah, give us a minute!”

“Sorry,” a calm voice said. “I’ll wait.”

Emery.

“Let her in,” I said with a nod.

Tyler moved to the door and opened it. Emery stood there with a sad smile and Kelly’s backstage pass around her neck. That explained how she’d gotten past security.

“Hi,” she breathed out.

I couldn’t even form a word to greet her.

Tyler looked to me, then to Emery, then back to me. “Okay. I’m going to do damage control. Emery—don’t let anyone else come in here unless it’s me. No pop-up interviews, all right? You stay here with him and guard this door until I’m back.”

“Will do.”

Tyler left and closed the door behind him. Emery walked over to me and sat down in the chair beside mine.

“You okay?” she asked.

“You really need me to answer that?”

“No. But still . . . at least you almost did the interview. That’s a step closer in the right direction.”

“I was never good at this. I don’t do well under that kind of pressure. That was Alex’s ball game, not mine. I’ve just made everything that much harder for my PR team too. I keep fucking up, which in turn fucks things up for other people.”

“It isn’t your fault. This is too much pressure for anyone. I couldn’t imagine going out there and having to defend myself to garbage statements that were being made about me. It’s not fair that you even have to deal with this petty stuff after the year you’ve had.”

I shut my eyes and placed my hands on the sides of my temples. “I just need the world to slow down for a minute. I need my brain to slow down. It feels like I’m spiraling.”

“Okay,” Emery said. “Come here.”

She moved to the floor and sat down, patting the spot beside her.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going to take a minute to slow down. Now come on.” She lay down and grabbed her phone. Within seconds the song “Chasing Cars,” by Snow Patrol, began to play. She tilted her head in my direction and gestured for me to join her.

I did as she said, lying down beside her as the music played. We lay shoulder to shoulder, and she laced her hand with mine, sending that wave of warmth through my system.

How did she do that?

How did she help make me slow down my madness?

The song played on repeat, over and over again, as my thoughts began to slow.

She tilted her head to look at me, I tilted my head to look at her, and I swore somehow I felt her heartbeats.

“Thank you, Emery.”

“For what?”

“Existing.”

26

OLIVER

“What were some of your victories this past week?” Abigail asked at our next meeting together. I took comfort in knowing that after my meltdown on the set, I’d be able to work through some of the bullshit in my head with Abigail. It helped knowing that each week, I had someone assisting me in unpacking my heavy baggage.

Each week, before we dived into my mind, she asked me that. She said it was a way to switch the narrative in my head that every week was a bad week. It was a way to rewire my mind. Some weeks it was easy to come up with the good things that had happened to me. Other times, like said week, that felt almost impossible.

“I don’t know,” I muttered.

“You do. So tell me.”

I blew out a cloud of hot air and sat back on the couch, searching my thoughts for any positive thing that had happened in the past week. Still, I struggled.

“I finished a song.”

Abigail’s eyes widened with joy as she wrote that down in her notebook. “That’s fantastic. What else?”

“Nothing.”

She smiled warmly and shook her head. “No. What else, Oliver?”

She never let me get away with simply one good thing. It was kind of annoying, honestly. “I left the house and didn’t have a complete panic attack when I went to the store, thinking people would spot me.”

“Even bigger than the first thing. What else?”

“Kelly has been eating regularly. Something she hadn’t been able to do since Alex passed away.”

“Good. This is so good, Oliver. What else? Just one more victory.”

“Emery.”

Abigail’s eyes flashed with instant comfort as she paused her pen. “Anything specific about her?”

“No . . . just her as a whole.”

“Beautiful,” she breathed out as she wrote down Emery’s name. She sat back in her chair and reread the good things that had happened to me. My miniature victories. “See? No matter what, there’s some good. Even in the worst times, we have some victories.”

“Can we talk about the failures of the week now?”

“No failures. Just opportunities to learn about yourself and your triggers more. But yes, do tell me.”

I told her about the interview. About how Cam had made it her mission to ruin me out of spite due to me ending our already failing relationship. How I was making everything harder for everyone on my team. How I felt like every time I tried to step forward, I’d stumble back.

“Alex would’ve handled it better than me,” I told her as I reached into my wallet and pulled out his heart necklace. “He would’ve never gotten himself into that situation to begin with.”

“Maybe. Or perhaps, he would’ve handled it worse. Who’s to say? Regardless, it’s not your job to compare yourself to your brother. You shouldn’t be comparing yourself to anyone, because at the end of the day, even though we are all human beings, none of our situations are close enough for us to even compare. Not even you and your brother’s lives were the same, because you were both living uniquely different realities based on perspective. It’s like comparing Picasso to Van Gogh. They might both be artists, but their work is solely theirs. The good, the bad, and the painful. And one doesn’t cancel out how great the other is. There’s space in the world for everyone to be extraordinary.”

“But with Alex—”

“How many times a day do you do that?” she asked, interrupting me. That was the first time Abigail had ever cut me off.

“Do what?”

“Compare yourself to him?”

Too many times to count.

She shifted around in her seat and crossed her legs. “Do you think your brother was better than you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Why?”

“Where do I even start?” I snickered sarcastically. “There’s a million reasons.”

“Just give me a few.”

“He was good with people. He always knew what to say and how to handle a situation. He never twisted his words or thoughts and fumbled them during interviews.”

“Do you think you were a burden for him?”

My brows knitted as I sank deeper into the couch cushion. “Sometimes, I think he would’ve been better off as a solo artist, instead of feeling as if he needed to carry me alongside him.”

Abigail did that therapist thing where she stared at me as if she was examining every inch of my being. Then she reached into her oversize purse and pulled out her laptop. “I need you to watch something for me.”

She pulled up a video and set the laptop on the table in front of me. Then she hit play.

It was a video of Alex being interviewed by some person. Whenever Alex did solo interviews, it was normally because I couldn’t manage to bring myself to join him because my anxiety was fucking up the situation. Still, he went and performed by being the charming person he’d always been.

“What was the question again?” Alex asked as he puffed on a cigarette, sitting relaxed in a director’s chair.