The sunlight still filtered into the room, around the edge of the curtains. I wanted to get up and adjust them so I could have complete darkness, but I lacked the energy to even do that. Normally, my head buzzed with ideas on how to fix things, but this time, I had nothing.
I’d planned to wait until the last minute to meet the others in the lobby, but then I thought maybe Crow’s feelings had changed. He’d forgiven me, and everything would be okay. He couldn’t stay angry with me forever. He loved me. I had to hold on to that and believe this would work out. And, surely, when he thought about it, he’d see Cindy needed a chance, too.
He wasn’t in the lobby when I got there. There was only Lij and Rose.
“What’s wrong?” Lij said. “You look down. And where’s Crow?”
I tried to smile, but it seemed like a massive effort for nothing. That was exactly the question I didn’t want to be asked.
“I did something wrong,” I told Elijah. I sure wasn’t prepared to go into what.
“Well, that’s a given, if it’s you,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be a terrible thing. You have a heart of gold, Firecracker. Anyone who’s spent five minutes with you knows that.”
I sat down on the bench. “Maybe I went too far this time,” I said.
He rubbed my shoulder. “Cheer up. Crow’s a funny guy, but if he wants to be with you, he has to accept you as you are. You’re always going to go too far and be a little crazy. If you tried to stop that, you wouldn’t be you.”
Damo and Polly got to the lobby, and Elijah said no more. I let them talk around me while studied my hands.
What Elijah had said was right. Crow knew what I was like. I couldn’t help but interfere in things. That was my way. I wasn’t saying that he’d brought this on himself or anything like that, and I couldn’t absolve myself of responsibility. I’d stepped over the boundaries this time, for sure. But if something seemed wrong to me, I had to fix it. It wasn’t busybody interfering but a need to put things right.
When Crow finally got to the lobby, I looked up and smiled. If he smiled back, I’d run to his arms. It didn’t even need to be a big smile. A tiny grin would do. Hope burned strong within me. After all, we had something special. We just needed to work on things.
But Crow didn’t even look at me. He stood to the side, well away from me, until the van arrived.
Hope died inside me. A black nothingness replaced it. I tried to look like I didn’t care, but I didn’t have a face that hid my emotions. Polly gave me a couple of searching glances, but I ignored them. I couldn’t even talk. It took all my effort not to cry. I’d worked so hard to get us together, and it’d all crumpled.
We jumped into the van, and I made a move to sit next to Crow. If I did that, he’d have to talk to me. But maybe he wouldn’t. I couldn’t handle seeing him look at me that way again. I hesitated in the doorway. Sit with Crow or sit alone?
“What are you doing?” Jax asked, giving me a push.
Jeez, it was hard, being forced together like this when Crow was so angry with me. I jumped into the empty seat, and Jax sat beside me. I couldn’t even see Crow without glancing around, and I refused to do that.
The Freaks went straight up to do their run-though. While they did that, Polly took me aside.
“I’m not going to ask what’s going on between you and Crow,” she said. “If you want to talk about it, I’m here, but I’m not going to push you. But no matter how you feel, you can’t show it when you get up on that stage. You know that, right? People have paid a lot of money to be here. They’re super-excited to see their favorite bands. Not only that, there’ll be a bunch of new fans who saw that interview. They want to see us, and they want to us rock. You can’t let them down.”
I nodded slowly. “I know.”
I wasn’t sure how I’d do that, but I would, even if it killed me inside. It seemed deceitful to hide my feelings away like that, but even worse to show them to thousands of people. If I went to see a band myself, I’d want to know they were on top of their game.
I waited for Polly to say more about how she’d known this would happen when I started dating Crow. That this was the very thing she’d worried about. There was so much she could say, but she left it at that.