“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” Brogan said first.
“How?”
“When?”
“Dude, how?”
They pestered me like a crowd of rabid fans rather than my three bandmates.
“Calm the fuck down,” I shouted.
“How am I supposed to calm the fuck down when you drop that bombshell,” Oren asked. “It’s fucking Nova.”
I shook my head, still unable to believe my luck last week. “I was doing my usual Instagram live with some fans, and I randomly picked a person. At first, it was someone else—her friend—and then she flipped the screen, and there she was.”
“Oh, shit,” Brogan said.
“Dancing in some bridesmaid dress.”
“What?” Oren screeched.
“Remember that one house party we went to, and she danced,” I reminded them.
“Oh, fuck yeah, I do,” Ash said with his devious trademark smirk.
“She was dancing like that.”
“Fuck,” Ash shouted. “You should have come and got us or screen recorded it or something.”
“How is she?” Brogan asked.
“Where is she?”
“Do you have her number?”
“Did you actually talk to her or just watch like a perv?”
“Are you talking to her again?”
“Does she miss us?”
“Did you ask her why she left us?”
“Jesus, you guys,” I said, holding my hands up to slow the barrage of questions. “One at a time.”
“Well, stop pussy-footing and speak,” Ash ordered.
“She’s…good. And yes, I actually spoke to her. I may have had to threaten to contact her friend for her number if she didn’t give it to me.”
“Is her friend hot?” Brogan asked.
“Is she single?” Oren added.
I pinched my lips and gave them a hard stare. They held their hands up in surrender before motioning to continue.
“So, I call her, and we talk. It was short, so I didn’t get to ask where she was or anything.”
“But you have her number?”
“Yeah.”
All three of them moved at once and swarmed me. Next thing I knew, Oren held my phone up in victory and entered my password, quickly scrolling for Nova. Before he could hit her name, I snatched it back.
“I talked to her last week, and she hasn’t picked up when I’ve called or responded to any messages since.”
Some of the excitement dimmed, and reality crashed back in. The guys sunk back to lean against the stage, searching the ground like it held the answers about the right way to feel. In reality, we all hurt and didn’t want to see it mirrored back at us when we looked at each other.
We’d been a family—an immature one that made mistakes. Mistakes I knew clung to each of us in different ways. However, even when you made a mistake, it didn’t make the consequence any less difficult to deal with.
Like losing part of your family. Or for me, losing everything.
“I don’t really blame her,” Brogan muttered, digging his toe against the ground.
“It still would have been nice to see her,” Oren added.
“How did she look?” Ash asked.
I smiled softly, remembering those green eyes lowered seductively as she danced toward the camera. “Amazing.” I recalled how many times she’d looked up at me with those same heavy eyes, only this time, they held a wealth of understanding that they hadn’t when we were teens. “But I didn’t get to see much of her. As soon as she realized what her friend had done, she’d looked like a deer in headlights and left the live video.”
“Oh, man,” Oren laughed, slapping his thigh. “I bet it was epic.”
“It was pretty funny.”
“Remind me why you haven’t talked to her again,” Brogan asked.
“She hasn’t picked up. According to her Instagram, she’s on a trip. But I also think she’s avoiding me.”
“She has Instagram?” Ash asked, pulling out his phone. “What’s her name?”
“Psithurism.” His brows shot up, and I spelled it out. “Apparently, it means the sounds of the wind in the trees.”
The guys crowded around Ash, and I already knew what they’d find since I’d scrolled through each picture a million times.
“Dude, she’s got a million followers,” Brogan said.
“Are you sure this is her?” Ash asked. “She doesn’t show her face at all.”
“Yeah, it’s her.” I had no doubt. I’d know that red hair anywhere. I’d dreamt of those long limbs almost every night. Then there was one of the photos that showed part of her profile, and I noticed the beauty mark just behind her ear that always sent chills down her back when I kissed her there.
“Daaaaaamn,” Oren crowed. He didn’t have to explain. I knew they stumbled on one of the many that she posted of her naked back as she lounged in a lake or on the edge of a cliff.
“All right, ladies,” Aspen, our manager, called from the stage. “Equipment is setup, so let’s get going.”
She stood taller than her five-foot-four frame, her attitude and confidence adding a few more inches—the black stilettos helped too.
Ash shoved his phone back into his pocket. “If you hear from her, let us know.”
“Sure.”
Once upon a time, I’d worried Ash also had a thing for Nova, but in one drunken confession, he admitted he would flirt with her to push my buttons because it’d been the only way to make me take what I so obviously wanted. It’d just been hard to take when that someone was your stepsister.