He shrugged. “Sure. Though I usually feel guilty as fuck when it happens, even though I’m allowed to do it.” He rubbed his hands together to warm them and blew into his palms. “And not that this makes it any better, but it never means anything, you know? I follow the rules. What’s going on with October is different. She doesn’t just connect with random people. She’s not like that. I can count her friends on one hand. She’s pulling away from me, and I’m freaking out. I don’t want to lose her.” He came to a halt in the middle of the trail and said, “I’m sorry, but I have to ask . . .”

I braced for it. Because I knew that if Cal asked me straight up if something was going on between October and me, I wouldn’t have been able to lie to him.

He said, “Have you seen anyone around? Anyone coming or going that may be worth mentioning? Is she ever gone all night?”

Cal misinterpreted the look on my face and said, “Fine, fine, I know. It’s not fair of me to be asking you this. But the only other person I could ask is Rae, and I have no confidence in her. She’d tell October I was prying.”

“I haven’t seen anybody,” I said.

That wasn’t a lie.

“Thanks, man.” Cal stepped closer and put his arm around my shoulder the way you do when you trust someone. “You’ll keep an eye on things while I’m gone, right? Let me know if that changes?”

I told him I would.

But that wasn’t even the shittiest part. The shittiest part was that when I got back to my apartment, I didn’t sit around thinking about what Cal was going through. I thought about what it meant that October wouldn’t have sex with him. And while I came up with numerous possible conclusions, the only logical one seemed to be the same one Cal had come to.

She was thinking of somebody else.

Chapter 14

FOURTEEN.

Guitars are like people. Each one is an individual. Especially vintage guitars. And almost all of the guitars on Cal’s Wall of Dreams were older than I was.

The morning Cal left to go back on tour, he gave me a key to his studio and told me I was welcome to hang out and play the guitars whenever I wanted. In the days following his departure, I spent virtually all my free time doing just that.