I had a feeling he was specifically talking about Kiera and me when he said that. Since I whole-heartedly agreed, I didn’t ask him to clarify. Mind made up, I pulled away from the stop sign and made a U-turn. Evan glanced around the area, his grin shifting into a frown. “Where are you going?”

Smiling wider, I nodded my head in the direction of Matt and Griffin’s place. “Matt’s. Might as well ask him now.”

Evan glanced at the sun. “It’s still kind of early. Why don’t we just wait and ask him at rehearsal?”

I bit my lip, not wanting to answer him. With my departure looming like a thunderstorm in the distance, Kiera and I had been spending as much time together as possible, which meant, I’d been slacking off on my duties as much as possible. I hadn’t missed a show, but rehearsals… Like Evan had mentioned, I’d been hit-or-miss on those. Okay, I’d been miss-or-miss on those.

Evan sighed after studying my face. “Kell…if you keep missing rehearsal, Matt’s gonna lose it. Like seriously lose it.”

Picturing my angry, control-freak of a guitarist, I nodded. “Yeah, I know. I won’t miss it,” I said, glancing over at him. “I’ll be there.”

An amused sound left him as he shook his head. “Yeah…I’ve heard that before.”

Smiling, I slightly changed my answer. “I’ll try to be there?” An attempt was better than nothing, right?

Evan laughed a little more. “Uh-huh, sure.”

We drove along in silence for a minute, and I tried very hard not to picture Matt’s head exploding from the stress I was about to cause him in a few hours. But I knew, without a doubt, he was going to be pissed at me. Again. Because after Evan and I were done with errands, I was picking Kiera up from school and staying glued to her side all night long. Matt be damned. And I was pretty sure Evan knew that.

After another moment of silence, I glanced at him again. “You know I’m not actually going to be there, right?”

Head laid back on the seat, Evan smiled over at me. “Yep, I know.”

I let out a laugh. “Okay, just checking.”

When we pulled into Matt’s driveway, I was damn-near giddy. Doing something to make Kiera happy always put a grin on me, and I was going to make sure she liked this party. Every last second with her was going to be memorable, and I felt the fog of despair lifting from me.

Evan shook his head at me as we got out of my car. “Where was this guy twenty minutes ago? He might not have gotten smacked.”

Frowning at him, I started walking to the front door. “The other guy can come back any second, you know.”