He ain’t good at this. He doesn’t date. At least not long-term.
Sal’s theory was that he never found the right girl, and she was right, but only because he never tried to find the right girl. Seth kept his life free and easy. Tried not to take anything in it too serious, because if he did, he usually fucked it up.
He could count the things he cared about on one hand. Luke. Sal. The music. Bars on Saturday nights. Sunday Supper.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to settle down. Hell, he wants what Luke and Sal have—that real, honest friendship and love—he just doesn’t know what love is because he never had it, never worked hard for it.
And with Lacey, he doesn’t have to try. He doesn’t mean that in a lazy way. He means it in an easy way. She’s always been in the periphery. Sal’s lanky baby sister, who he teased mercilessly. Someone he saw every holiday, every summer, someone he had a foe-to-friendship with first, someone he’s realizing he now knows better than anyone he’s ever dated. No one can match her for banter, wit, ice-cold glares, and goddamn gorgeous looks.
He don’t got a clue how to act around her anymore.
Besides, who’s to say she even feels the same way he does? They agreed to call it quits back in Nashville. And Lacey’s clearly keeping her distance. But still, what if she—
Christ, he’s overthinkin’ it. What would Luke say? Not like his brother knows anything about him and Lacey, but still, what would he do?
Shit.
Seth chuckles.
He’d say write her a song.
Luke’s MO since the dawn of time.
The way Luke even got Sal to go on a second date with him after she realized he smoked. He sang her a love song in that bar on his third beer of the night, and two months later they were getting an apartment.
He could. What if he did?
Seth smears a hand down his face.
Sal’s sister, he thinks. Sal’s sister. Sal’s sister. She’s Sal’s goddamn sister.
And that’s when he hears it.
Crying.
Soft, sniffling sobs trickling out from beneath Lacey’s closed bedroom door.
His stomach flips over. “Fuck,” he whispers to the ceiling. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Seth resists the urge to smother himself with his pillow. A girl crying is his kryptonite. It threatens to detonate everything inside of him. He feels so fucking helpless.
He weighs his options. Go in there and get his ass chewed out, or sit out here and listen to the worst sound he’s ever heard in his life.
Finally, he can’t take it anymore. He shoves up from the couch, pounds down the hall, and, without knocking, enters the room.
The curve of her thin hip. Her golden-blond hair tangled around her. Lacey, her face tear-stained, her eyes red, lifts her head from the mound of throw pillows she’s nestled in.
“You’re cryin’,” he states like an idiot.
Her face clouds, her red-rimmed eyes glistening. “So?”
“So ...” He strides across the room and sits on the edge of her bed. “You wanna tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it?”
“You can’t fix this.”
Like the snap of an old guitar string, Seth watches her break. Lacey’s face scrunches up and she’s sobbing into the pillows again and all he can do is sit there and make a fist. Her pain pries open his heart like a rusty crowbar.
The words that come next are a whisper. “He took my necklace.”