While Aish had also stayed silent, struggling with his own feelings of guilt, shame, and righteous pissed-offedness, her speeches hadn’t gotten less academic. But she did seem more present, more real. Which shone a big fucking spotlight on the fact that he needed to listen to her more.
“I’ve got to take some of the blame, too,” he told her. They were both hunched over, looking at each other. “That wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t chased you down there.”
“I...” She cocked her head at him like she was trying to figure him out. “Thank you,” she said finally.
Her eyelashes were so pretty and long as she watched him. Her mouth curved down. “What I said, though, about you...about John...”
Aish clenched his fingers together.
“That was unnecessarily cruel. I didn’t mean it. I shouldn’t have said it.”
I wish you were the one who’d died.
She might not have meant it, but he had. He’d considered it a couple of times during the worst days, an option that was good enough for John. And he’d veered away from it, instantly, when he remembered that he had unfinished business with her.
“It’s okay, Sofia,” he said. Both of their voices had gotten quieter. “I’m sorry for pushing you. You’ve got enough going on. I’m not gonna push anymore.”
Her lips fell open—surprise?—and, God, her mouth was soft and pink.
“This...this is going much differently than I imagined,” she said. “I thought I was going to have to grovel. I was angry at you for it and you weren’t even here.”
He huffed a light sound of amusement, not wanting to jar this space between them where their words floated like clouds.
As miserable as their fuck had been, part of his shame was that he wasn’t entirely sorry that it happened. There’d been something honest in the way their bodies had punished each other, working out a senseless decade of frustration. There was equal honesty in the gentleness of their apologies now.
They were separated by two leather cushions and ten years of getting it wrong.
“There’s other stuff I need to apologize for—”
She straightened like he’d slapped her.
“More recent stuff,” he fumbled quickly, sitting straight. “Non...breakup stuff.”
She looked a second from yelling for her brother.
“The song. ‘In You.’ That was a private song and I shouldn’t have let the label release it.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. But she didn’t kick him out.
Ten years ago, she’d walked into a bar to find a girl on Aish’s lap with his tongue down her throat. And instead of apologizing, he’d told Sofia that maybe a breakup was for the best. He’d told her—after he’d promised that he needed her and that she could trust him—that he needed to focus on his music before he settled down.
Every time he’d tried to apologize for that now, it ended in disaster.
If he was really going to stop pushing her, he had to stop trying to force forgiveness out of her when she wasn’t ready to give it.
He couldn’t tell her, for example, that he’d written ‘In You’ during the rush of preparing for their first tour, a surprise invite that instigated the breakup. He couldn’t tell her that he wrote it already suspecting he’d made the worst mistake of his life.
Moonlit as I slide inside you
Back in the earth, you glow like a star
You call me your fuego, I call you my baby
Take me so deep, girl, I’ll never go far
“Why did you release it then?” she asked.
He ran his hands through his hair. “When we turned in our first album, they said we didn’t have a hit. ‘In You’ was on my laptop. It...was discovered. By the time I showed up for the meeting the next morning, they were already freaking out about how great the song was and adding to our tour dates and John was so fucking happy...”
He grabbed his nape and squeezed. “Regardless, I should have pulled it. I should have said no.”
She looked at him closely. He stayed still and let her look, let her take him apart with her serious scientist eyes. As a kid, he’d never hid from her, but he’d never believed he had anything to hide. Now, he just wanted her to believe him. Being under the intensity of her gaze again also made him want to lower her to the Turkish rug and show her what fucking after ten years was supposed to look like.
“Yes. You should have pulled it,” she said simply. “Did John have anything to do with its discovery?”
The needle skipped on his dirty thoughts.
John had panicked and gone through Aish’s laptop to find a song to give to the label. Aish had planned on looking himself, or even recording overnight, but had been felled by a bout of food poisoning. When he’d walked into the label offices the next morning, still nauseous but prepared to beg for another day, he hadn’t known the laptop was out of his apartment.
He shrugged off her question now. “That doesn’t really—”
“John didn’t like me very much.”
“What?”
“I didn’t like him very much either.”
Equal and opposite emotions spiked in Aish: the fierce desire to defend his now-dead friend and the equally fierce desire to hang on to this moment with Sofia.
“What happened to him was a tragedy,” she said softly, as if she knew the words would hurt. “But I never trusted him. Maybe he wasn’t as good of a friend as you think. Are you sure he did nothing to bring about the plagiarism claims against you?”
Heart hammering, Aish stood. “He’s dead, Sofia.” He was not discussing this with her.
She kept her relentless eyes on him. “Yes. And people have accused
