Jenny thought about all the times they made love before they’d flown home as she watched Nik hang the floating shelves in her small apartment. The ones she’d mentioned she’d seen at IKEA that would be perfect in the kitchen, the ones her landlord had agreed she could add but that she had never gotten around to buying and installing. The ones he’d just shown up with when she’d gotten home from work, asking her where she wanted them.

And he’d learned. They weren’t some fancy shelves. They were practical and inexpensive and exactly the ones she’d picked out. More importantly, he’d gone to buy them for her, which had involved borrowing Dred’s Range Rover to bring them home.

It had taken a day for her to reconcile her feelings as she fought the flickering sparks of love that threatened to engulf her if she let them. But the more time she spent with him, the stronger they got.

The mail sat unopened on the small table by the door, and she was at risk of chopping her own finger off because watching Nik’s back flex under his dark Henley was way more interesting than the chicken she’d picked up at the grocery store. As were his shoulders as he slid the final shelf over the floating bracket.

“Less staring, more chopping,” Nik said as he turned to pick up one of the fixings and caught her staring.

Confidently, she held his eyes. “Thousands of metal heads across the world would probably hate me for saying this, but I think I prefer construction-worker Nik to rock-star Nik. It’s like one of those fantasies, you know the ones where a hot handyman comes over to fix the boiler and strips off his shirt and the woman can’t stop drooling over him.”

Nik laughed as he walked toward her. “I think you’re confusing that with porn, babe.”

She tossed the tea towel at him and scoffed in disgust. “I am so not confusing it with porn. First, Kings of Leon are playing, not some bow-chicka-bow-wow soundtrack, and second, if it was porn, there’d be a whole less talking and so much more doing.”

He lunged for her, sliding her hands up inside her cream blouse. “You want more ‘doing’? I can totally get behind that. Or on that. Or under that,” he said as he pressed kisses to the side of her neck, making her shiver and giggle in equal measure.

“Nik,” she gasped. “I was teasing, we need to be over at the Four Seasons Centre for Lexi’s opening night in ninety minutes.”

Nik pulled her close and groaned. “I’m being cock-blocked by Nijinsky, a dead Russian schizophrenic ballet dancer.”

“No. You’re being cock-blocked by me because I really want to see the rest of the guys.”

Nik pouted. “I can be quick, I promise.”

Gently, she shoved him away. “Well, I can’t when I get in bed with you.”

“That could be the sweetest thing you ever said to me.” Nik grinned. “What can I do to help if you aren’t going to let me anywhere near that magical pussy of yours?”

She blushed, couldn’t help it. “Chop veggies. The stir-fry won’t take long to cook.”

Nik began to sing old classics as he chopped. She’d avoided listening to Preload’s music after they’d split up. It had been too painful. But now, with the sound of Nik’s voice filling her apartment, she realized she’d forgotten just how wonderful his singing was. No reverb, just clean crisp notes.

After dinner, Nik insisted on cleaning up. While she waited, she opened her mail, wondering why she’d scheduled for all her bills to come at the end of the month. It was hard to believe it was nearly December, and she wondered what Nik’s plans were for Christmas.

The final envelope held her attention. It was from her lawyer. She ripped it open, and found another envelope inside addressed to her in her father’s handwriting.

Nik had his back to her as he rinsed the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher.

Quickly, she tore into it before she could back out.

Dear Starburst,

I have no words to express the pain I feel at seeing my name instead of “Dad” at the top of your letter. I know I don’t deserve the privilege and honor of that title, but knowing you no longer use it hurts immeasurably.

This will be my last letter to you, but I needed to take one more chance to make amends before I disappear from your life completely. You see, I am dying and will not live to step outside prison walls again. I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two months ago and unfortunately, as a simple internet search will show you, it is one of the most aggressive and least treatable forms of cancer.

My hope in telling you this is not to command sympathy, for I know I deserve none.

But I live daily with regrets. They eat away at the insides of me. In some ways, this diagnosis is a blessing and will put me out of my misery. I worry that if we don’t connect, regret may consume you at some point in the future.

So I encourage you to come see me. Ask me the questions you want to know, however difficult they are, and I will answer them as best I can. Come and yell at me, take any remaining anger and frustration you may still have out on me. I will take everything you wish to throw at me if it means I get to see you one time before I die.

Dad

As she tried to process the letter, everything suddenly felt out of balance. As a victim of his crimes, she couldn’t find an ounce of compassion. But the finality of it was heartbreaking. Questions had haunted her for nearly twenty years. Why had he insisted her mother go first? How had he persuaded so many people to join him? How could he stand there while people drank the poisonous concoctions? When had he planned to get her to drink it? How close had she been to dying before the police had raided the property? Did he still believe the things he had believed back then . . . that a comet was truly going to save them all? That it would kill only those who fell afoul of the cult’s beliefs, leaving the true followers to inherit what was left of the Earth?

“You okay?” Nik said, slipping the letter out of her hand. “You’ve gone gray.”

She couldn’t answer but tipped her chin to the letter to encourage him to read it. There was silence while he did so.

“Fuck,” he said when he placed it back down on the counter.

“Yeah. Fuck,” she repeated and rubbed her hands over her face.

“What are you going to do?” he asked, opening his arms to her.

Jenny walked into them and allowed him to hug her, to be there for her. It was an unusual feeling, knowing there was someone she could turn to. “My head says burn the letter and move on. But . . . I don’t know. He’s right. I do have questions. And I don’t want the answers to die with him.”

“You don’t need to make a decision tonight. Sleep on it. He might be ill, but I doubt anything is going to happen this week.”

Her phone was plugged in on the kitchen counter. “Could you pass me my phone, please?”

Nik did as she asked and she quickly typed “pancreatic cancer prognosis” into the browser. The answer wasn’t promising. “The American Cancer Society says survival rate at one year is twenty percent, five years is seven.”

“Then we make a list of all the questions you have and we’ll figure out how you get answers.”

“We.” “We’ll.” Not you, or I, but we. It felt positive. It felt like everything. It felt . . . too good to be true. It had been four weeks since he’d shown up in her garden, nowhere near long enough for her to be certain that he wasn’t going to shatter her whole world all over again. But she let him wrap his arms around her anyway because she needed the comfort and she needed him, even though her trust in him was still shaky.

“Do you still want to go out tonight? I can call Jordan, let him know.”

Jenny shook her head. “Didn’t you say he gets mad if you miss it?”

“He does, but at some point he’s going to have to realize that what’s best for him and Lexi isn’t always what’s best for me, for us. It’s time they all realized that,” he muttered.

“Well, since we can still make it, we should go,” she said, kissing him gently.

After Jenny had changed out of her work clothes into her favorite gray dress and they had taken a ten-minute taxi ride to the theater, they entered the lobby of the impressive glass and chrome building. Nik took her hand as he led her to the bar. She noticed that he wasn’t wearing any kind of disguise. Normally he wore his hair tied up, usually beneath a hat, but here he was simply himself.

“How come you aren’t, you know, trying to blend into the background like you normally do?”

Nik stopped by the bar. “Look around,” he said. “No one is really looking at us, and those who are with their snooty noses turned up are trying to figure out why a thug in jeans and combat boots is at the ballet. There isn’t a huge crossover between our fans and these people. So nobody really bothers us.”

Jenny grinned. He was right.

“Jenny,” a male voice shouted, and then she was scooped up into Dred’s arms. “We missed you.”

“I missed you too. Congratulations on becoming a dad. I hear Petal is a firecracker.”

“That she is,” Dred said with a grin.

Nik rolled his eyes. “Put her down before I kick your ass.”

“Dude, I’m practically married,” Dred said and then laughed. “Jenny, this is my fiancée, Sarah-Jane.”

“But everyone calls me Pixie,” the tiny woman with bright purple hair said as she stepped forward. It was the woman from the photograph, the woman Nik had been shot trying to save. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

She wore a fitted black dress and purple-and-black striped tights, and had a multitude of gorgeous flowers tattooed up her arms.

“And you. How far along are you?” Jenny asked, looking down at the bump that Dred had his hand resting on protectively. The gesture warmed her heart.

“It feels like three years. I feel like I’ve been pregnant longer than that damn giraffe that hit the news, and look just as big.”

Dred gave Pixie a warning look. “She’s thirty-three weeks along, Beansprout is between three and four pounds, and she’s never been more beautiful.”

“Oh my God, I think I may vomit,” Lennon said as he joined them. “Did you know he spent part of last week plotting traffic curves from his house to St. Joe’s hospital for different times of day?”

“And none of us are allowed to turn our phones off, day or night,” Elliott said, “just in case. Jenny, this is Kendalee. Kendalee, this is Jenny who we all grew up with.”

Jenny couldn’t help but grin. “Pleased to meet you, Kendalee. You have a son too, right?”

“I do. Daniel. But the ballet is so not his thing.”

Lennon snorted. “It’s so not our thing, but we don’t get to get out of it. The kid wants in on this fucked-up family, he can show up at the fucking ballet like the rest of us.”

Jordan appeared behind Lennon, his large frame dwarfing all of them, and slapped Lennon across the back of the head.

“What the fuck, Jordan?”

A couple of ladies nearby moved a little closer to the exit, their faces looking like they needed an extra-large glass of prune juice.

“All right,” Nik said, calming them all down. “Where are our tickets, Jordan?”

Jenny wondered if Nik realized the effect he had on them. Everybody fell in line as he spoke and handed out the tickets Jordan passed to him. And they all took their chance to have a quiet word, ones she didn’t deliberately try to overhear but couldn’t miss.

“You gotta figure out a way to rein Lennon in at rehearsal tomorrow,” Jordan said, taking his ticket.

“Hey, Nik,” Elliott said, looking over his shoulder to watch Kendalee walk to the toilet with Pixie. “I need you to come with me tomorrow. I wanna start looking at rings, man. Even if she doesn’t want one.”

“I’m terrified Pix’s gonna go and have this baby early,” Dred said, “and I’m going to be on stage in fucking Vancouver. Can you talk to the label tomorrow and see if we can get a plane on standby for those west coast concerts?”

“You know as well as I do that this album is shaping up to be too predictable,” Lennon said. “You need to convince the others.”

By the time he had two tickets in his hand, Nik looked tense.

“You okay?” Jenny asked.

Nik took a deep breath and slid his hand into hers. “I will be.”

* * *

Taking the day off from rehearsing to just jam together had been Nik’s idea. He’d hoped it would help bring back the spark. Hanging out, playing songs they loved—not necessarily their own, but songs that meant something to them. Anything to take the pressure off, open the tension valve a little. Plus, there was a mounting pile of things that were unsaid between them, and they needed an air clearing. It was affecting their rehearsals, it was affecting their friendships, and it was affecting the brotherhood between them that he valued way more than any number of platinum records.

And it wasn’t as if they couldn’t walk on any stage anywhere in the world and pull off a half-decent gig at a moment’s notice. They’d toured Europe already . . . thirty-three dates . . . with the show they were supposed to be rehearsing. They knew the staging front to back. The only reason to change the playlist was to prevent their performance from becoming stale and routine. Worst case, they didn’t mess with the lineup and just took the exact same show across Canada.

Which was all just as well, because it was all going to hell in a handbasket in the recording studio at Elliott’s home, the same place they’d written their first platinum-selling album.

“You were too fast on the entry, dude,” Elliott said to Lennon. “We said slower, right?”

Lennon switched out his sticks. “If you want to sound like a bunch of fucking old ladies on stage, yeah, we can go slower.”

“We haven’t galvanized around what we want this album to be,” Jordan said, lifting the strap of his bass from around his neck. “It’s number ten . . . feels like it should be significant.”

“I think we keep it nu-metal with a hint of hard rock. Like the last one,” Dred said. “But I don’t mind the odd slower song.”

“Fucking power ballads. That’s what we’ll be writing next. Whitesnake circa 1989.” Lennon spun his sticks between his fingers and broke into the drum intro for “The Deeper the Love.”

“Dick,” Elliott said, shaking his head.

The bickering had been constant since they’d arrived. From who got the last donut to who sat on which stool. They’d started out playing early material and just messing around, but somehow it had morphed into an impromptu songwriting session for the album they’d record when the tour was over.

“Nik?” Jordan asked. “What do you think?”

He took a deep breath. Four pairs of eyes looked at him expectantly. They didn’t even realize they were doing it. At one time, Nik had needed that. Needed to be the responsible one. Needed to create the illusion of a family, for himself and for them. To give them all something they’d never had. He knew he’d built this rod for his back, but it was crippling him. Instead of feeling thirty-one, he felt like he was fifty and the best years of his life had come and gone.

“You know what? I don’t fucking care.” He took his guitar off his shoulder and took in the looks of confusion on everyone’s faces. “Why don’t we put album ten on hold?” There. He’d said it. Well, not all of it. He hadn’t said how long they should put it on hold for.

Lennon stood. “Why the fuck would we do that?” To the rest of the world, Lennon sounded pissed off and angry most of the time, but Nik had always heard the underlying tremor of fear. There was an undertone of panic when anything to do with the band, its direction, and its survival were discussed.

Nik’s chest tightened, but he couldn’t regret what he’d said or what he was about to say. Once what he wanted to say was out, there would be no way to suck it back in. For a millisecond, he reconsidered sharing what was on his mind, but then he realized just how much he meant it. “Because I think we need some space from each other.”

There was a choir of disagreement. “You don’t mean that.” “It’s just teething pains.” “We can figure this out.” “I won’t be a prick anymore.” They were so loud that he could barely make out who said what.

“You actually mean it,” Dred said in the quiet that followed.

Nik looked up to face his friend. “Yeah. I do.”

Never had silence felt so heavy, so loaded.

“Like a couple of months of space, or the kind of space that goes on for fucking ever?” Lennon asked.

Nik shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know that we’ve been in each other’s lives every day for the last decade and a half. We’ve lived together. Worked together. Vacationed together.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” Jordan asked.

Nik felt sick at the guilt he saw on Jordan’s face. “No, Jordan, it was never a bad thing. But think about it. We finish the tour in May. Then what? Straight into the recording studio? Jordan, you and Dred have fiancées. . . . You telling me you aren’t going to want weddings and honeymoons at some point next year?” He got up to pace. He’d started to say what was on his mind, so he might as well finish it. “And Dred, you are going to have two kids under two. You think touring is going to be easy with them that young? Look at us. We still have Canada and the U.S., and we are exhausted. Elliott, Kendalee is back in school. You want to tell me you don’t want to do something special with her and Daniel through the school holidays?” His stomach clutched as emotions began to take over, running too high to control them properly. He saw the guys lower their instruments and look at him with concern. Yeah, well, he was losing his shit for once, like they often did, and they were going to have to deal with it. “And then Jenny came back into my life, and I had the best fucking day and a half with her up north, and now I have to do the one thing she is fucking dreading. . . . I have to get on a fucking tour bus without having spent enough time with her to convince her I’ve changed.”

Dred walked toward him and placed his hands on Nik’s shoulders. “Bring her with us?”

“How, Dred? How the fuck do I do that without asking her to give up her career for me? A career she loves, is damn good at, and one we completely understand the value of? But that’s not the point. Our lives have changed. Our priorities have changed. What we love about music has changed. Fuck, I don’t know if I can even face recording another metal album. I’ve changed.”

“How long have you felt like this?” Elliot asked.

“About what?” Nik snapped.

“About metal.”

Nik breathed deeply. “Since we formed the band. How did we go from being eclectic music lovers . . . fans of Nirvana, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and REM to metal anyway?” He shook his head.

“It’s because of me, isn’t it?” Jordan asked quietly.

Fuck. “No. Yes, you loved it more than any of us, Jordan, but it’s not your fault.”

“Are you saying we quit?” Lennon’s voice was so choked that Nik could barely understand what he was saying.

“No,” Dred said. “That’s not what you are saying, right? Because that would be all kinds of fucked up. We couldn’t do this without you. You know that, right?”

“I think we owe it to ourselves to think about it. Or maybe I quit.”

“No. That’s . . . you’re just . . .” Lennon began to pace. “You’re tired. I get it. Let’s just go back to the Europe set. Let’s kill rehearsals. We know this shit.”

“Lennon,” Nik said firmly, knowing he was on the verge of lying, of backing down and agreeing with Lennon that exhaustion was all it was and that he shouldn’t have said anything. But if he was going to make a start at living up to the promises he made to Jenny, he needed to start by being himself. All of him. And that meant confronting the fact that he might not be enough, or might not be what everybody else was expecting. “I want to try something different. Very different. And it may suck, I don’t know. I love recording and being with you guys. You’re my brothers and nothing changes that, but I need a break from it when we get back from the U.S. leg of the tour in May, or I will quit. The idea of going back to the recording studio makes me ill.”

“So, what?” Lennon said. “You guys get your fucking happily-ever-afters. You get your families and your fucking kids. You get your homes. All I have is this fucking band. It’s all I’ve ever had. And it’s not even really mine, is it?” He turned and kicked his drum kit.

“Lennon,” Jordan warned.

“What, you want to stop me, big guy? Go fuck yourself. I don’t see you fighting to make him stay.”

Elliott looked at Nik, disappointment etched painfully across his face. “You had to know this was going to happen. You are the fucking glue. You are the one that keeps us together. Where you go, so we go.”

Voices began to escalate, blame being leveled across the room. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d all fought when he hadn’t stepped in to solve it. There was a loud crash as Lennon’s large bass drum hit the glass of the recording studio, putting a huge crack in it.

“Fuck you, Nik,” Lennon said as he stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him, causing the furniture to shake.

Nik rubbed his hands over his face. “I thought you guys would understand,” he said sadly as he looked at each of them in turn. Dred, who tugged a hand through his hair; Elliott, who sat with his head in his hands; Jordan, who looked shell-shocked. Then he looked at the broken glass that covered the floor of the recording studio from Lennon’s fury. “Every single thing you’ve ever wanted to do, I’ve had your fucking backs. From breaking into the LCBO to steal vodka when we were kids to running into a room and taking a bullet to save your kid as an adult.” He picked up his guitar and slung it over his shoulder. “I guess I thought that by now, you might have figured out how to have mine.”

He left by the same door Lennon had, only he didn’t have the energy to slam it.