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He leaves, and I stand in the kitchen listening to his footsteps cross the porch toward the other side of the duplex.

A few minutes later, I hear his front door close.

Then nothing.

No guitar. No music bleeding through the wall. Not even the faint movement I’ve gotten used to hearing when he’s home.

Months ago, I would’ve called that perfect.

Tonight, the silence feels nothing like peace.

Chapter twenty-six

ZANDER

By the time the manager looks around the rehearsal room and asks if we’re all in, I already know my answer.

“I’m in.”

It comes out without hesitation.

The drummer glances over at me, then grins. “That was a lot less dramatic than I expected.”

“Disappointed?”

“A little.”

I flip him off and reach for the pen sitting on top of the paperwork.

For the last week, I’ve managed to turn four months on the road into something complicated enough to require its own engineering degree. I’ve worried about Ruby, Jack, my family, the duplex, what happens when I’m gone, what happens when I come back, and whether I’m capable of wanting two lives that seem to move in opposite directions.

None of that changes the fact that I want this tour.

So, I sign, and relief is almost immediate. Not because everything else suddenly makes sense. It doesn’t. But one question is finally answered.

I’m going.

The manager collects the paperwork and starts going through dates again. Production rehearsals. Travel days. Press around the album release. The first show is close enough now that the whole thing has shifted from something we’ve been talking about to something we actually have to prepare for.

I start ticking things off in my head.

There are songs we need to tighten. Transitions we need to change for larger stages. A couple of older tracks we haven’t played much since Europe that suddenly make sense in the new set. By the time we start running through everything, I’m back where I know what I’m doing.

Music is easier than the rest of my life.

Give me a song that isn’t working, and I can usually tell you why before we finish the first chorus. Give me a crowd, and I know when to push, when to back off, when to let them take over. I understand how to build something one sound at a time until it becomes what it’s supposed to be.

Relationships apparently don’t come with the same system.

We’re halfway through the set when I look toward the folding table near the door and see the newest print of the album cover.

Ruby’s artwork.

The dark redwoods rise behind the band name, the coastline worked through the lower half, with the route and waveform she pulled from the Europe tattoo threaded into the design so naturally most people probably won’t understand what they’re looking at unless they know the story.

I do.

I also know exactly which night that waveform came from and how it felt standing onstage in Amsterdam hearing a crowd sing our chorus back to us.