Down to My Soul (Soul Series Book 2)(15)

“There’s a lot to figure out.” I shake my head even though he can’t see me. “It won’t be easy.”

“What are you saying, Pep?” His voice lowers and hardens, and I see how easily this could become a fight.

“I’m just saying the hurt doesn’t simply disappear. The issues behind what you did don’t just go away. Don’t make assumptions, Rhys.”

“What exactly do you think I’m assuming?” He doesn’t check his frustration before it leaks through. “That you’ll still love me even though I screwed up? ‘Cause, yeah. My bad. I did assume that.”

“Love’s not our problem. It takes more than love, Rhyson.”

“Since when?”

“Since always. There’s lots of people who love each other and don’t make it because it’s not enough.”

“Well, I feel sorry for those people. We’re not them.”

“We’re no different.”

“We’re no different? Oh, so their private arguments are put on blast for millions of people on TMZ? These people that we’re just like, they have to disguise themselves just to hang out with their girlfriends, too? They face the same pressures we do?”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“What I know is that I’m fine with not being these people who think love isn’t enough. Whatever it is that gives me the capacity to do what I do, to manage this impossible life I live, it makes me all kinds of not normal. And I’m fine with the fact that I love you in a way that isn’t normal. I love you so hard and so much that it makes me do dumb shit sometimes. I just need you to forgive me when that happens because I don’t know another way.”

He draws a quick, shallow breath.

“Baby, I don’t know another way, and I need you to tell me I can come to you. That we’ll work this out because the prospect of not having you . . .”

The very real possibility that we might not overcome it all thickens between us across the miles like quicksand, and I feel us sinking. Maybe he does, too.

“Shit, Pep.” His voice shakes a little and it unravels my resolve and my anger and anything that would hold me back from him. I want to comfort him even though I’m the one causing his pain. Even though he’s the one who caused mine. “Tell me what I have to do to make this right and I will. Just tell me when you come back, it’ll be to me. I need to know that.”

“Rhys, I . . . we . . .” The emotion soaking his voice short circuits my thoughts, and I can’t form words. It doesn’t help to have Dub barreling toward me from the stage, sporting a wide grin. As soon as he gets close enough he dips at my waist and hauls me up and over his shoulder. My legs dangle across his chest and I almost drop the phone.

“Dub, I’m on the phone,” I screech, banging lightly on his back. He always does this, but it’s the absolute worst time for his horseplay, as Aunt Ruthie used to call it.

He gently lowers me to the floor, the shock of platinum hair bright against the rich caramel of his skin.

“Sorry.” He grins and holds up two fingers. “We’re back in two minutes. Get that fine little ass of yours onstage so we can run through that last number.”

“Okay.” My answering smile is stiff and unnatural because I know as soon as he walks away, I’ve got a mess to clean up. “I’ll be right there.”

The silence on the other end of the phone weighs about two tons. So heavy I’m not sure how to move it, how to break it.

“Rhys, I—”

“What the f*ck was that?” Anger powers Rhyson’s words across the distance, and I feel it like he’s standing right here, scowling at me.

“Um, well . . .”

“Don’t ‘um well’ me, Pep. What’s happening on the road? I will crush him. You know that, right? If he touches you, I’ll have his Irish ass on a boat back home before he knows what hit him. I didn’t believe the rumors about Dub because I know you wouldn’t do that to me, but if you’ve let that motherf*cker touch you—”

“Then what?” I fire back, finding my own anger. “You’ll do what? You did this, Rhys. You’re the one who broke us, and we aren’t together. That’s what I’m telling you. We aren’t mended. We aren’t fixed, and we have things to work out.”

“The hell we aren’t together. Even when we’re apart we’re together,” he says. “I’m all for mending and fixing and whatever shit you think it takes to get us back, but in the meantime he does not touch you.”

I don’t answer. Not because I want to deliberately torture him the way the thought of him with Petra or some groupie has tortured me for the last two months, but because I don’t know what to say. Our first conversation has blown up in my face, and I’ll be picking shrapnel out of my heart for the next two days. Somehow I thought just hearing his voice would make it better. Would make it right, but it won’t happen that way. And I’m so afraid the next thing I say will only make things more wrong between us that I don’t say anything at all.

“Pep, have you and Dub . . .” Rhyson draws and releases a stuttering breath. “Has he . . . did you let him?”

How could I when all I’ve thought about is Rhyson? Can I forgive him? Who’s blackmailing me? How will I resolve this without Rhyson ever finding out? Will it even matter if we can’t fix what’s broken between us? It’s a never-ending equation of x’s and y’s, and nothing adds up, but I know I don’t want anyone else.