Chapter Two
Some Things You Just Can’t Fix
Rowan
My emotions were all over the place. I attributed this to Nash Bostwick, the only person in the world I both wanted to strangle and kiss at the same time. Earlier today, as I stood in the doorway watching him say goodbye to his mother, I was flooded with memories of the months before my own mother passed away. The mind was a tricky thing when it came to memories. I remembered things like how her eyes scrunched in the corners when she smiled or the way her lips pursed when she was deep in concentration, but for the life of me, I could not recall her smell, or the sound of her voice. Not a day went by that I didn’t miss her and wish that she was here with me. Not. One. Single. Day. It should have been my dad. The second I thought it, I wanted to take it back.
“Is it med time already?” Maeve’s question jerked me back to the here and now, and the tiny cup of pills in my hand.
I held them up and smiled. “How did you guess?”
“I have no idea,” she dryly replied, and we both laughed.
Maeve Bostwick was one-of-a-kind. Neither cancer nor the fact that she was dying had dampened her spirit. If anything, it had only made her shine brighter. She reminded me of my mother, minus the sarcasm, which was the reason I’d broken my number one cardinal rule – no emotional involvement. Care, but don’t love. Nurse, but don’t need. As long as I followed these rules I had a chance of walking away with my heart still intact. This was easier said than done with Maeve. She was funny, willful… special, exactly how I envisioned my mother to be, had she survived. Not only was I was fully invested, but I was emotionally entrenched. My mother may have taken a piece of me, but at the rate things were going, Maeve would take the rest – Maeve and her beautifully exasperating son. Nash Bostwick was the keeper of my heart, only he didn’t know it. If I had anything to say about it, he never would.
“What was she like, your mother?” Maeve asked. My heart ached as I stared into her light brown eyes. Maeve’s organs weren’t the only things affected by the cancer. So was her mind. Slowly, she was forgetting. It started with simple things like when to take her meds, but had recently extended to entire conversations. I’d only seen this happen once before. It meant that the disease was spreading more rapidly than the doctors had predicted. Nash was worried enough as it was. The last thing he needed was another reason to abandon the tour.
“Don’t you remember me telling you how much you remind me of her?” I prompted. Over the years I’d perfected the art of avoidance. Always answer a question with a question. If that didn’t work, redirect. People loved to talk about themselves. Not Maeve. The moment we met she started digging. No bullshit was her motto and honesty her policy. I wanted to tell her my secrets, but couldn’t. Surprisingly, she’d never pushed too far, which only made me love her more.
“Lord, help us all if I remind you of your mama. Just ask Nash about my parenting skills,” she cackled. Her laughter ended with a wince of pain, which told me it was time for more pain meds, and bed.
“Time for bed, old lady.” As I reached for her arm, she wrapped her emaciated fingers around my wrist, and with a sudden burst of energy, she pulled me down to where her lips met my ear.
“Nash cares for you, Rowan,” she rasped. “He looks at you like he once looked at Rachel. He can be a stubborn ass, but he deserves to be happy.” Out of breath as well as energy, she let me go. “You deserve happiness, too.”
I jerked back to an upright position. Maeve had talked a lot about Nash’s childhood girlfriend. I couldn’t decide if it was her way of holding on or letting go. Either way, I tried not to let it annoy me, when in fact, it really annoyed me. I was a horrible person because I was jealous of a dead girl. There was no competition because the game had long been won. The infamous Rachel would always be the keeper of Nash’s heart. “Nash and I are just friends, Maeve.”
“Yeah, and I’m a monkey’s uncle. You may have him fooled, but you don’t fool me, missy. Now, help me get to bed.”
Once Maeve was settled for the night, I cooked myself dinner and parked my tired butt in front of the television with a glass of iced tea. I’d be a liar to say I wasn’t waiting up for Nash’s call. I may be sailing down that river called deNile with a hole in my boat and only half a paddle, but I wasn’t stupid. When the time came, I would do the right thing, even if it killed me.
I jerked awake to the sound of my phone ringing. It took me a minute to find it buried between the sofa cushions.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Ro. Did I wake you? If so, I can call back tomorrow.” Nash’s voice rolled over me like a downy soft blanket. I loved when he called me Ro.
“No. I’m good. Your mom is already asleep, but I can go wake her if you’d like?”
“Let her sleep. I can catch up with her tomorrow before our show. How was she after I left?”
“She was fine,” I lied. If I told him his mother had cried for a good hour after he left it would only upset him. This was the part of the job I hated the most. I was the gatekeeper, the keeper of secrets, which sometimes made me a liar. Maeve made me promise not to tell Nash how bad off she really was. I disagreed, but it wasn’t my life nor was it my choice to make. He would find out soon enough. He laughed at something someone on his end said and I couldn’t help but smile. “You can go if you need. We’ll still be here tomorrow.”
“And miss talking to you? No way. I was just laughing at Grant. He and this guy, Gage, were doing shots and the dumb ass completely missed his mouth.”
“Did you play tonight?” For some reason I thought they weren’t performing until tomorrow.
“Do you remember me talking about Hank’s friend Dillon, and how we played a short set at his bar in Charlotte while we were on our last tour?”
“Vaguely,” I replied.
“Well, Dillon was how we ended up hooking up with LASH. You remember Cas from a few months back? You met him at Grant’s house. He just got married and we played at his reception tonight.”
My mind wandered back to the time just after Luke’s death. Grant’s house was a media circus. Nash’s gunshot wound was superficial, so he was in and out of the hospital in a matter of a few hours, but he refused to leave Grant’s side. Each time Nash called home he sounded more and more exhausted. Apparently, Grant’s house was overrun with police, security, and reporters, in addition to the band members themselves. That’s when Maeve came up with the idea of feeding the masses. In truth, she really just wanted an excuse to check on her son. I didn’t blame her. I was worried about him, too. When Nash saw us heading through the police barricade carrying trays of lasagna, I thought he was going to cry. Once he handed off the trays to Grant’s housekeeper, Ava, and girlfriend, Mallory, he pulled me into his arms. It was the first time he’d touched me.
I shook the memory from my head, and asked, “So where do you go from there?” As Nash began telling me about his schedule, I settled into the cushions, and slowly let myself sink into his words.
I never fully understood what “borrowed time” meant. I now did, because I was living it.