I take the stairs, my feet pounding upward. Flight after flight, my pace never drops off as I ascend to the second-highest floor, where Francesca arranged an apartment for me to crash in.

I’m so fucking furious I can hardly see straight.

I didn’t come back here for you, Ryder.

I came back because I was contractually obligated.

I knew seeing her again would be tantamount to torture, but I didn’t expect this — didn’t expect her to have changed so vastly since I last clapped eyes on her. It’s not just the blonde hair or the new sharpness in her cheeks, the drawn look on her face or the wan pallor of her skin. It’s the way she looked at me. The coldness in her stare that was never there before. The distance in her tone that told me, in no uncertain terms, I am a stranger to her now. One who cannot be trusted or allowed to get too close.

We have nothing to say to each other.

Oh, baby, but you’re wrong. So, so wrong. There’s a fuck of a lot to say.

No, not to say — to scream at the top of my lungs.

Things like I’m sober. And I’m sorry.

Things like I missed you. And I can’t live without you.

I’d yell till I was blue in the face, if I thought she’d listen.

As soon as the tour is done, I’m gone. So there’s no need for some big, dramatic discussion. No need to dredge up ancient history.

Since the first day we met, she’s had her walls up. But now she’s got a fucking fortress around herself, so damn high I can’t see her at all. So thick, so fortified, I can’t find even a trace of the girl she used to be, with those liquid gold eyes, full of light despite the horrors she survived as a child.

That’s the thing I always loved most about Felicity — somehow, the pain she went through, all that damage her parents inflicted, didn’t make her hard or cold when it would’ve ruined just about anyone else. She walked through that darkness and shined bright in spite of it. She was strong without being severe. Filled with a quiet resiliency most people made the mistake of overlooking. A steel magnolia, like her grandmother before her.

My fragile-winged nightingale, singing in the shadows.

But now, there’s a new edge in her voice that wasn’t there before. A shield of grief and pain over her eyes, hiding things away from view. As I stared at her just now, looking like a stranger instead of the girl I love, I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake the answers from her about where she’s been, why she left without ever giving me a chance to explain. To yell until she was forced to listen. To explain away the past two years with a few reckless words.

It took every ounce of strength I possessed to contain the urge. Every bit of self-preservation to stand there, watching her sing through a barrier of glass, her shattered lyrics echoing through the speakers all around me, each verse slicing a little deeper: death of a thousand cuts, delivered in the form of a song.

Now the kingdom’s torn up at the seams

And this is too much pain, too much pain… for nineteen…

Her twentieth birthday passed weeks ago, so whatever she wrote that song about happened sometime in the gap between now and when I last laid eyes on her. Much as I’d like to think it’s merely about our break up… about the aftermath of my arrest and the downward spiral that followed… I know her too well.

There are secrets she’s not sharing. Things she’s not yet telling.

But she will.

Before this tour is over, before she walks back out of my life… she will tell her truth and she will hear mine. No matter how hard she tries to push me away or keep her distance.

I shove my way into the dark apartment, not bothering to flip on the lights. The craving for a few fortifying gulps of whiskey is so strong it nearly cripples me, but I shut down the urge and light a cigarette instead. Walking out onto the terrace, I stare down seven stories at the strip below. Music drifts through the open window of the apartment next to mine — Aiden tuning his bass, from the sound of it. I hear a familiar laugh and wonder if Lincoln is in there with him.

I’d knock on their door, but given how pissed they were at me the last time I saw them, there’s an equal chance of getting a cold beer or a cold shoulder. They’ve never forgiven Felicity for bailing on the tour, or me for refusing to head out on the road without her, despite the label’s urging six months ago when I finally got out of rehab. A clean bill of health and a green light to get back on stage, if I wanted to.

But I didn’t — not without her.

The guys couldn’t understand that. Couldn’t fathom why I’d throw all our dreams away, just because she walked out on hers.

Fuck her, man. She’s gone. Let her go.

Linc got a punch to the face for that comment. And I got on a plane, flew to Hawaii, and haven’t seen either of them since. Which should make tomorrow’s rehearsal pretty damn interesting.

I’m not mad at Linc. Not anymore. But there was a long time — mostly during that blurry stretch after Felicity first left, before I’d crashed into rock bottom hard enough to shake some sense back into me — that I held him responsible for everything that went down at The Viper Room that fateful night we both got arrested. For being the catalyst in a chain of events that forced her to leave in the first place.

It was easier to blame him than to admit the truth.

But once the shit was out of my bloodstream, a surfboard in my hands instead of a pill bottle and a sea breeze in my head instead of a drugged haze… I knew the only person I could be pissed at was myself. Even if Linc pulled the trigger, I loaded the gun with my own shitty decisions.

And Felicity is the one who took the bullet.

What was it she said, earlier?

We have nothing to talk about. We have a job to do. Then we’ll go our separate ways.

I take a deep drag of my cigarette and blow twin tendrils of smoke through my nose in a snort.

The past can stay right where it is, she insisted, her delicate chin jerking in defiance. In the past.

If I were a better man, I’d let her go. If I were a stronger man, I’d let her keep hating me. Let her keep thinking I’m the asshole she believes me to be — the guy who broke every promise he ever made, who loved his addiction more than the woman at his side.

But I’m not.

I can’t.

She may think changing her hair color is the same as rewriting our history… She may believe she can make it through this tour pretending we’re nothing more than strangers… She may even be content acting like two years without talking is enough to erase the fact that I’ve held her soul in my hands while she traced her name across my heart in irreversible ink.

She’s never been more fucking wrong.

We’re not staying in the past. We are the present, the future, and every goddamned moment in between, whether she realizes it yet or not.

I’ve got four months before she disappears on me again. Four months to prove to her we weren’t a mistake. To show her I can be the man she used to believe I was.

Felicity Wilde is mine.

And she owns me in return.

All sales final, sweetheart.

My smirk is full of dark determination as I smile into the night.