Page 42 of Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree
“It’s not my story to tell.”
“Well, you’re the only one here right now.”
He shakes his head. “You need to ask Evan.”
“I doubt he’s fucking speaking to me right now.”
Asshole. Screw him.I’mnot speaking tohim.
“Just give him time.”
I throw my hands up with a growl. “That’s been your advice for months, Chris. Six fucking months of ‘give him time’ and ‘he’ll come around.’ And where are we now? Six months down the road, and I’m still in the same boat I was on that first day.”
But worse. Like that boat’s sinking and taking me down with it, because I know who Evan is now. The real Evan and not the asshole he pretended to be for so long. I’m in lo—Shit. I can’t go back to dealing with Asshole Andrews.
“If that asshole comes back, tell him he can come find me when he’s ready to explain his behavior. I’ll see if I’m ready to listen.” I spin and head for the door, exhausted from the whiplash I’ve experienced over the last twenty minutes.
I ignore Chris’s request to stop and skirt the bathroom where I assume Finn is helping Milo clean up.
I’d give anything to wake up in bed next to Evan and discover this was all a bad dream.
But Santa doesn’t give presents to girls who claim their coal.
And it’s time I accepted that fact.
CHAPTER 11
EVAN
“Where the fuck are you, you jackass?” Chris’s voice echoes through the entryway of my house. I never should have given him the code to my door.
But we’ve been best friends since we were eleven, so he has my shit like I have his shit. There’s no hiding. Even when I want to.
I don’t respond from my prone position on the couch, but the bastard has a sixth sense and steps into the dimly lit room like I have a homing beacon implanted in my ass.
“Have you been lying here in the dark like a damn vampire since you left Cornerstone?”
I grunt and pop one eye open, following his movements as he makes his way to the windows and cursing when he throws open the curtains and bright sunlight streams in.
“Fuck. No, I haven’t been lying here since I got home.” My discarded guitar next to me should prove my point.
But everything I tried to play had Lilah’s voice drilling into my head like a goddamn woodpecker. Her soft alto skimming notes written only for her, weaving itself into the melody moving from my head to my fingers.
“You writing?” Chris nods to the pen and paper I never got out of the habit of having nearby. The pen scratching against the paper is part of my creative process.
“Maybe.” Snatches of music keep floating in and out of my mind, but nothing has made it onto the scribbled page.
“Been a while.”
He and I both remember the last time I wrote—the day after I caught my newly ex-girlfriend in Milo’s bed. My first reaction had been to punch him. Turns out, I should have asked questions.
Exactly what I did today. But this is different. It was obvious once I calmed down and stopped letting the past collide with the present.
“Before you say anything else, I know I fucked up,” I say, moving until I can sit up on the couch with my elbows resting on my knees.
“Exactly how do you think you fucked up today?” Chris asks.
I groan. Father Chris came to hear my confession.
