He opened his eyes and looked into Marissa’s. “She’s wrong, you know,” he breathed. “I never believed him. I never really believed that he loved me. But I believed that he— I believed that he liked me. I knew he needed me, and I thought—I thought, when he realized he didn’t need me anymore, that he would be kind.”

He was crying. He was making a giant scene in a hotel lobby, on the floor, surrounded by strangers, but he couldn’t stop crying. His heart hurt so much.

Marissa held him. Victor wrapped his arms around his shaking shoulders.

“I hate crying,” he sobbed into Marissa’s neck.

“I know.”

“Why do I always cry? It doesn’t help.”

“I know,” she soothed, stroking his hair. “I know.”

Chapter 30

“So, are you coming home?” Marissa asked him over breakfast the next morning.

Ángel’s head still felt clogged with grief, but Marissa wasn’t letting him wallow. She’d harassed him out of bed, made him take a shower, and was now sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room, tapping a reggae beat on her plate with her fork.

“I guess I should,” he said, cutting up his pancakes into small pieces, not eating them.

His unlikely family—Marissa, Victor, and Chandler—was all assembled, along with a mountain of room service food. Victor had found a local NPR interview program on the hotel’s clock radio. It was soothing. Victor always listened to NPR during breakfast.

She put an arm over Ángel’s shoulder and gave him a little shake. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand. We can be in Jacksonville by lunchtime.”

How can I just leave? He stared at his mutilated pancakes, his eyes blurring with useless tears. But how can I stay?

“I need to call the DOR,” he temporized. “I need to . . . end my contract, I guess. Get paid. Find out if I have a place to live.”

“You can do all that from the road.”

“Yeah.” He tried to think ahead. “I guess . . . I should update my website too. Call people and let them know I’m open for business again.”

“You’ll be in huge demand,” she said encouragingly. “Everyone’s gonna want Ángel Cruz on their record.”

He smiled at her weakly. “You’re an optimist.”

“I’m really not. You’re going to be so hot, you might need to hire an agent to filter out the lookie-loos.” She jostled him again. “You’re going to be busy. You’ll make good music, and meet lots of people, and you won’t have time to be sad.”

He leaned on her. He couldn’t imagine not being sad. The idea of leaving without even speaking to Oberon, just because of a secondhand kiss-off on his phone—it felt wrong.

He opened his eyes and saw Chandler watching him.