“You’re entitled to it. You watched a horror movie tonight and you’re sleeping alone in an unfamiliar house.”
She looks up. “You’re being too nice. They’re just dolls.”
My head tilts back and forth a little. “The eyes are a little much.”
She reaches for the final tote box and lifts the lid, where two cushioned dolls and their glassy eyes are staring into our souls. Bree shudders. “Okay, I don’t regret it. But maybe wait to tell Colby their fate until I’m safely back in New York.”
My body freezes at the way she talks about slipping out of my life as easily as she slipped into it. I try to read her face, searching for any clue to how this makes her feel, but come up empty. “Is that where you live?”
“Most of the time. Sometimes I stay in Sunset Harbor, where our family house is in Florida.”
“The one you grew up in?” I’d been out there with her a handful of times while we were dating. But by then, she spent a lot of time in New York and LA, too.
“Yeah. My sisters and I went in on the house together after my parents got divorced, so we co-own it as a vacation home. But my main apartment is in New York.”
I lift the last box and slide it into place, then dust my hands off. “That’s it. Your house is now doll free.”
“To be clear, I don’t have anything against the dolls.”
“Right.”
“I couldn’t sleep thinking about them being in there, stacked like a little glass Victorian army.”
My grin is hard to suppress. “After watching a really old movie about birds.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense.”
“Good, because it doesn’t.”
“Hey!” Bree nudges my chest. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
I capture her hand. “I boxed them up, didn’t I?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
I tug at her hand. “Come on. I’ll walk you back home.”
We head for the side door to the garage and slip into the dark.
“You want to come over in the morning and practice?” I ask. “We’ll have the studio sometime next week.”
Bree stops on the lawn between the houses and faces me, her brow puckering. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Because I’m usually such a jerk?”
“No. I know you’re a good man. But it doesn’t…this is just…I want to understand what’s happening here, I think.”
You and me both. I’m desperate to know where her head is at and how quickly she’s planning to drop me once she returns to her life. “If you want full credit for the song, that’s fine?—”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m not speaking on a professionallevel, Benny.” She shakes her head, frowning. “I don’t care about any of that right now.”
“Really? Because it seems like you care a lot about your career. You traveled across the country and hid to ride out a scandal because you do care so much about your career. Which, youshould. You’re good at what you do.”
“Was.”
“What?”
“Iwasgood at what I did. Now there’s nothing to go back to. I’m not an idiot. I know I crossed a line. The public might forget eventually, but I’m canceled. Once you’re canceled, you can’t come back.”