“If you’re going to talk about me, at least make sure I can’t hear you.”

“Were you listening at the door?” I ask her. “Because I thought you were napping.”

“The bed’s uncomfortable.”

I stare up at the ceiling, needing some kind of divine patience and finding none. “Seriously, Karma, for one freaking second, can you stop being so damn negative about everything?”

Her glare intensifies. “Why should I? To make you feel better about the fact that all our lives revolve around you and always have? Am I supposed to be happy you finally get something for spreading your legs for Lincoln Riscoff?”

“Karma!” Aunt Jackie snaps out her name.

I take a long look at my cousin. Her blousy shirt is wrinkled and dark circles line her eyes.

“I’m sorry for whatever I did to you. I’m sorry that I’ve interrupted your life. I’m sorry that because of me you’re forced to stay in the nicest place you’ve ever seen.”

“You’re not sorry for anything, Whitney. But you will be someday.” She shuts the door in our faces and disappears inside.

“I don’t know what I did to make her hate me so much.” I release a long sigh.

Jackie’s expression turns rueful. “I think you got the life she wanted—out of this town, with a man who wrote you love songs. She’s bitter because she feels like she never got what she deserved.”

“Too bad she’s got it all backward,” I say with a shake of my head.

Karma and Jackie have no idea that I wrote all those love songs myself, wishing someone would actually feel that way about me. But they don’t need to know.

Fourteen

Whitney

The past

“Baby, please. I know it’ll help. I swear. You’ve been keeping everything bottled up, and that’s not healthy. You won’t even talk to me.”

There were a lot of reasons I hadn’t talked to Ricky, and while the biggest one was that I was drowning in my own grief, I was also still fucking pissed at him.

But if he hadn’t cheated, I wouldn’t have met Lincoln.

Immediately, I wanted to slap myself for the thought.

Stop, Whitney. That doesn’t matter. It’s over. It never should have happened to begin with.

“Come on, Whit.” Ricky held a pencil near my hand and pushed a spiral notebook toward me. “Just start writing down words like you used to when we’d drive around. It doesn’t have to make sense now. You’ll fix it later.”

When he wrapped my fingers around the pencil, I squeezed it so tightly I thought the wood would snap, but it didn’t.

Because it wasn’t a pencil. It was a pen.

That’s how out of it I was. I couldn’t see anything clearly through my haze.

“Baby, I’m worried about you. You just need to let it all pour out of you. Music is the best way to do it. You know that’s what I did when I thought I lost you.”

When I thought I lost you?