Page 60 of It Happened on a Sunday
“The song?” I ask, trying desperately to remember what was playing when Sloane freaked out. But I was so busy being with her and thinking about the song that had just played—her song—that whatever random song came on next hadn’t even registered.
Except it obviously wasn’t random to her.
“What was it?” I ask, taking a step closer. But she just moves farther away, grows just a little bit smaller, and I hate it.
She’s been holding those walls up so long, I don’t think she knows how to let them down, even when she’s breaking behind them. And fuck if I wouldn’t deconstruct them by hand just to help her breathe. If she would only give me the word.
“Don’t act like you don’t know.” Her voice is trembling so hard that it scares me. Just like the rest of her.
“I don’t. I swear.” I rack my brain, trying to figure out what would cause this reaction. Then it hits me. This isn’t about the song. It’s about theartist.
Acid burns in my stomach at the thought. “Was it a Jarrod Bowers song?”
She laughs, and the sound is so harsh that it’s hard to hear. “It wastheJarrod Bowers song.” She looks around, at the carousel that doesn’t run anymore and the observatory in the distance. Basically, anywhere and everywhere but at me.
And I hate that, almost as much as I hate my own ignorance right now. Despite abuela Ximena’s deep and abiding adoration for Sloane, until very recently I’d never paid much attention to her beyond listening to my abuela talk about her. Now that I ampaying attention, I figured that if things worked out with us, it would be up to her to tell me what she wanted me to know about her history.
I mean, I know the basics. She was dating Hayden Jeffries when he died in a car accident, and a few years later, she was engaged to Jarrod Bowers when he drowned. That’s how she got her Black Widow moniker, which seemed cruel to me, even at the time, considering how much their deaths must have hurt.
“I’m sorry.” It’s the most mundane thing I can say, but I truly can’t think of anything else to tell her. “You must have loved him very much, and it sucks that his music brings all that back to you. Is there anything—”
“Are you serious?” she demands. She’s gone from hugging herself to putting her hands on her hips as she stares at me incredulously. “You really don’t know what song I’m talking about? And why it hurts too much for me to hear it?”
Chapter 26
Sloane
Sly looks like a deer in the headlights as he searches for what I’m sure he considers an appropriate response to my question. It’s obvious he can’t find one when he finally settles on a simple, “I’m sorry. I don’t.”
Part of me thinks he’s lying because he doesn’t want to deal with such a difficult subject in the middle of a date that went south half an hour ago. But then I look at him—really look at him—and realize he’s just as clueless as he says he is.
How is that possible? How the hell can he be twenty-seven years old and not know what I’m talking about? He was in college when it happened, at a time when a huge percentage of Jarrod’s fan base, and my own, were eighteen-to-twenty-five-year-olds. I know he must have lived and breathed football to make it this far, but it’s hard to imagine he was so dialed in that he never heardanythingabout how my entire life went up in smoke. God knows, just about everyone else on the planet did.
As I stare at Sly’s concerned but clueless face, I don’t know whether to laugh or scream or cry at how fucking unfair this all is. Here I was, beginning to think Sly actually liked medespitemy past. And notbecauseof it, either, like some of the creeps I’ve met through the years. Now I find out it’s neither. He simply knows nothing about it.
No wonder it was so easy for him to decide he was interested in me. He missed all the warning signs screaming at him to hightail it in the other direction.
I probably should have paid more attention that first night, when he told me he only knew the lyrics to a few of my songs.Apparently, he actually meant it—not just about the songs, but about the whole pop culture that surrounds them. It boggles the mind, but it’s also…refreshing.
For a moment, an incredible sense of freedom tears through me, making my heart pound and my blood sing.
Freedom from my past as a siren who lures men into danger. Freedom from my present as the Black Widow, the pop star who kills the men who love her.
And maybe most importantly, freedom to pursue a future with someone who doesn’t have a clue about the darkest days of my past.
Who wouldn’t be tempted?
The bubble bursts as soon as I acknowledge it. Sly’s ignorance about my past doesn’t change its existence any more than it changes who I am because I lived it.
“The song was ‘No More,’” I tell him, because surely he’s heard the title even if he doesn’t know the meaning behind the lyrics.
After all, the song shot to number one as soon as it was released and stayed there for months, even racking up a posthumous Grammy for Jarrod—his third. The fact that I was also nominated for Best Song that year didn’t exactly go unnoticed by the musical world, and neither has the fact that I haven’t been nominated even once in the five years since.
“Okay.” Sly nods like it’s no big deal. What the hell? Apparently he really was living his best party life back then.
“Do you know what it’s about?” I ask.
“Umm… A relationship gone bad?” he asks and answers. “The singer is asking for forgiveness from the woman who’s left him.”
