My Heart's Beat (Hard Love & Dark Rock #2) by Ashley Grace Read Free Book Online

tobacco, hand grown by Native Americans in Virginia.  Wanna taste?"
    "Thanks, but I'll pass.  Hey, you know the girl I brought back from the show?  Anne?"
    She nodded her head, her smile growing brighter.  "Yeah.  I like her."
    That surprised me.  I paused for a moment, processing it, before I asked my next question.
    "Do you know where she is?"
    She furrowed her brow just slightly, a small wrinkle appearing between her eyes.
    "I thought she went to find you," she said.
    "That's what her friend Becca said, too.  But I haven't seen her.  I was at Joey's room with Bernstein and his doctor buddy.  I told her I was coming right back, and she said she'd wait for me.  But now I can't find her."
    "Maybe she went to your room?"
    "My room's past Joey's, at the end of the hall," I said, considering it.  "I guess she might have slipped by while we were all in with Joey, but we weren't in there for very long.  The doctor only examined him for like ten minutes, and then he and Bernstein went out to wait in the hall.  I was probably only in there for another ten minutes or so."
    "Maybe she got lost?"
    "Maybe," I said.  "She didn't say anything to you before she left, did she?  Becca said the two of you were talking."
    "Yeah, we talked a little," she said.  "I told her about Lucy."
    My ears pricked up at that, a queasy feeling coming to life in my belly.
    "What—" I stopped myself, and then spoke the next words carefully.  "What did you tell her?"
    "I told her that Lucy was my sister, and that you and Lucy were together, and that she died.  I told her how much I missed Lucy, but how I worried about you.  I told her that I worried you might not get over Lucy's death, that it had killed something inside of you, and that the band wouldn't survive."
    The queasy feeling in my stomach abruptly intensified, and suddenly I felt sick.  Sick, and afraid.
    "But then I told her that tonight was the first night in a long time that I'd felt hope, and that she was the reason."  Her big blue eyes were fixed on mine, as clear as a cloudless sky.
    "How did she react?" I asked, my voice low.  "What did she say?"
    "She didn't say anything, but she looked like she was about to cry.  I thought she was moved.  I thought she'd gone to find you."
    A rush of feelings swept over me, fear and shame and panic.  I put my hand on the coffee table to steady myself.  I took in a deep breath, trying to draw on the numbness I'd learned to use as a shield since Lucy's death.
    "Trace, is something wrong?"
    I took another deep breath, and then looked back at Sara.
    "No.  Nothing's wrong.  She probably just got lost trying to find me.  I'll go see if she's at my room.  I'll talk to you tomorrow.  Don't let these folks get too crazy."
    She looked around at the crowd, the people nodding off on the other side of the couch.  She snorted.
    "Not much chance of that," she said.  "It's barely after three in the morning, and people are already crashing and burning.  Not like the parties we had in our old days, right Trace?"
    "Right, Sara," I said.  "Goodnight."
    I made my way back to the door, opened it and stepped out into the hallway.  And then I fell back against the wall, holding my head with my hand.
    Sara had told Anne about me and Lucy, and Anne had ran off so quickly she didn't even stop to tell her friend she was leaving.  She'd fled me like I was a house on fire, or a plague.
    I looked down at my wrist, at the ghostly scar bisecting the tattoo there.  Had Sara told Anne about that, too?  About me trying to kill myself.  About me being locked up in the psych ward?
    Suddenly, I realized that Anne was right to leave.  One woman I'd loved had already died at my side, in my bed.  I didn't deserve the chance to infect someone else's life with my own.  I didn't deserve to be with anybody.
    For a year I'd taken pills and gone to therapy and tried all sorts of treatments, and for a year those efforts had been moderately successful.  I'd