Hector had never hugged me before, except when we’d been celebrating our on-stage victories, not like Kyle and Jared who gave their hugs freely. I held him for a minute, my eyes watering up again. It seemed like the guys had missed me as much as I’d missed them.

He finally let me go. “Thank god you’re back. I’ve been barely keeping this band together without you.”

“It’s true,” Kyle said.

I laughed at the idea of Hector, of all people, keeping them together. “You’re okay with me staying in the band?”

Hector grinned. “Hell yes. We need you.”

My shoulders slumped with relief. “I wasn’t sure after the other night…”

He groaned. “Jared said you heard all that. Listen, I didn’t mean I wanted to replace you. I just assumed you’d leave like Becca did.”

“And you were right.”

“Yeah, but you came back.”

Someone knocked on the door, and Kyle slipped out to talk to whoever it was, leaving me alone with Hector. Was Jared on the other side? I wasn’t sure I could deal with him yet.

“I’m really sorry about everything that happened,” I said.

“Don’t worry about it.” He grabbed a drumstick from the back of his pants and twirled it in his fingers. “You know, I wouldn’t be in this band if not for Jared.”

“Oh, yeah, he made you learn the drums in high school?” I remembered Jared saying that in our first interview for the show. Why was Hector bringing this up now?

“Sort of. He and Kyle were always playing music, and one day I tried out their drums and was hooked. I spent every day at their house after that, just so I could play with them. When we started the band, I was living with my grandmother and we didn’t have much money, so Jared bought me a drum kit for my eighteenth birthday.”

“Wow, that’s a pretty big gift.”

“It was nothing to him. Changed my life though. And you know their mom is this famous songwriter and their dad is a big shot lawyer for, like, every big musician out there, right? But Jared refuses to let them pull any strings for him. He said if we succeed, he wants it to be on our own, without any handouts. He wants to know we earned it. That’s just the kind of guy he is.”

A lot of things about Jared clicked into place. How hard he worked, how much he pushed himself, how he would do anything to make sure we won. Not that it excused his actions, but I understood him a tiny bit better. “Why are you telling me this?”