The Invisible Thread (The Unbreakable Thread Book 2)

by Lisa Suzanne

  “So are you saying you two are an item?”

  I pause—mostly because I don’t know how to answer that. Were we? Yes. Are we still? I don’t know. Everything hangs in limbo.

  “I’m saying we’re having a lot of fun on this tour.”

  Griffin lets out a breath of relief, and then we wrap up the interview. The whole thing leaves me with a ball of nervous energy in the pit of my stomach, though, and I’m not sure how he’ll react when—if—he hears my words about us.

  Turns out he doesn’t react at all. Maybe he never heard it, I don’t know.

  When I leave the stage after my set, he isn’t there. When I go out for the final encore with Vail, he doesn’t make eye contact. He’s pissed, and I sit in my hotel room alone once again as I try to figure out this godforsaken puzzle.

  I laugh to myself as I think about my fans who make assumptions about my life. I should be hitting the town tonight after my show, attending some after party or getting drunk or high or finding a man to take home to my bed. I should be living the high life of a badass rock star. I wonder how many people think even for a second I might be sitting in my hotel room putting together a fucking puzzle.

  Zero. The answer to that question is zero.

  It’s a little after five in the morning when the puzzle is finally complete. It didn’t take me long to realize what it is—it’s not a note at all, but it’s lyrics. Once I got the middle part of the puzzle together, I figured out that much. It’s a song written by Ethan, and only when the puzzle is complete do I allow myself to read the words he wrote then cut up for me to put back together.

  Puzzled

  When we’re together we combust

  You leave all the others in the dust

  I’m sorry I can’t seem to win your trust

  [REFRAIN]

  The way I’m feeling has got me all puzzled

  Locking the pieces is worth our struggle

  You’re holding the pieces of my heart

  The colored cardboard’s been torn apart

  Latch the pieces to give us a start

  [REFRAIN]

  The way I’m feeling has got me all puzzled

  Locking the pieces is worth our struggle

  The only one to revive me from dead

  I’m so sorry for the words I said

  I need your warmth back in my bed

  [REFRAIN]

  The way I’m feeling has got me all puzzled

  Locking the pieces is worth our struggle

  No more time to waste, no more being lazy

  It’s not just your body that drives me crazy

  Your heart and your mind make shit hazy

  [REFRAIN]

  The way I’m feeling has got me all puzzled

  Locking the pieces is worth our struggle

  Because of you this dog is muzzled

  I want these words to be true, but he gave this to me before I told him the truth about my past. I know I still feel the same way, but based on the way he totally ignored me tonight when I took the stage for the final Vail song, based on the way he has totally avoided me for the entire day...I’m not so sure if he does.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  MACI

  As we board our buses Saturday morning to travel to Philadelphia, where our next show will take place tomorrow night, I glance around the lot for Ethan. He might already be on his bus. He once told me he sometimes skips the hotel since his bus is basically his second home, but I was hoping to run into him.

  Griff had the good idea to break the puzzle into smaller sections to carry it more easily to my bus, and I had the idea to take some measurements and find a frame for it. Maybe I’ll even frame it and give it back to him—or maybe I’ll send him a puzzle of my own. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m ready to write something magical as a way to harness the irrational emotions I’m feeling as I search for a way to get him back. It might be futile, but I refuse to give up on us.

  I get settled on my bus and I’m sitting at the table ready to bang out some words in my notebook when I hear a knock on the front door just before the buses are set to take off. My heart lifts with hope as Griff goes to open the door, and to my surprise, Mark’s wife Reese appears on my bus. She carries her purse and a bottle of water. “Can I ride with you to Philly?”

  “Of course,” I say. “Come on in. Can I get you anything?”

  She shakes her head and I want to ask the obvious question about why she’s here, but I don’t want to be rude. Once the buses get on the road, though, I don’t have to ask.

  “Are you doing okay?” Reese asks.

  I shrug. “In what respect?”

  She waves a hand in the air. “Just everything.”

  “Not really.” I close the notebook in front of me.

  “I didn’t think so. I heard your interview yesterday.”

  “It didn’t go well.”

  She shrugs. “Don’t worry about it. Mark told me what happened the night of the fire.”

  I exhale a deep breath.

  “What were they like in high school?”

  I can’t help when my lips tip up at her question. “Honestly? Pretty much like they are now, just younger and less experienced.”

  “Were they band nerds or were they popular?”

  “More popular than nerdy, I guess. Definitely not band nerds. Ethan was kind of the bad boy rebel, and Mark was just always trying to keep him on track even though all the girls chased after him, too.”

  “Some things never change,” she says, rolling her eyes.

  I stand up to get some water from the refrigerator. When I’m looking in the fridge so she can’t read my expression, I ask, “Is he okay?”

  “Ethan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’ll be fine—well, his arm will be fine, anyway. His head is just buried so far up his ass it may hurt when he attempts to get it out.”

  I giggle. “So how do we get it out?”

  “We have to just let it play out. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but I swear to you, he’s a different man since you came along. He’s hurting right now, but I know he’ll do the right thing.”

  “What’s the right thing?” I ask. I sit back down at the table across from her.

  “Being with you and the baby. Duh.”

  I should feel surprised she knows about the baby, but I don’t. “I hope you’re right.”

  “You want to talk about it?” she asks.

  “Are the other guys mad about why I’m here?”

  She shrugs. “I can’t speak for them, but I was there when Ethan told Mark.”

  “And?”

  “He didn’t care. He said this is Vail’s most successful tour, and it doesn’t matter why you’re here. All that matters is that you are.”

  I fiddle with my water bottle. “That was nice of him to say.”

  “He reminded Ethan how he felt about Dani. I think he was getting through to him, but Ethan is so damn stubborn. He holds things against people and he doesn’t forget. I don’t know how else to get through to him other than to just give him time to cool down.”

  “Do you think I should leave him alone?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t have the answers, Maci. He knows how you feel, but he needs the time to sort out how he feels after the shock you gave him.”

  I let that settle between us for a bit, and then I change the subject. I don’t want to talk about Ethan for a little bit—but there is something else we’re both going through I need to start learning about.

  “What can you tell me about caring for a baby in the early weeks of a pregnancy?”

  She lights up as she delves into her answer, and it feels good to finally talk to someone who gets it—to someone who can answer all the questions that I’ve been locking away in my mind since I found out the news a little over a week ago.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  ETHAN

  The cities are starting to run together and I just want to be off this fucking bus and for
this nightmare to end.

  I was waiting for her to give me the truth, but I never expected it to be paired with such hatred. She’s lived an entire life aiming that hatred at me. I trusted her and I fell for her. She was the one woman I was ready to hand myself over to, and she took the weak pieces of my heart I gave her and obliterated them with her lies and her manipulation.

  How can I ever believe anything she ever says to me again? How can I trust that every look of love, every heated bit of passion, every moment we share isn’t based on some lie, that she isn’t going to make me fall harder only to crush me again?

  What a fucking dumbass I’ve been.

  I knew all along the Fullers don’t get the same kinds of happy endings everyone else does, yet I allowed myself to hope it could be different with us.

  I was wrong.

  I probably deserve it. She pins the start of some of her hardest life events on me, and while that might not be fair, the actions she took were a direct result of the words I don’t even remember saying about her.

  I remember being an asshole back then, and memories of the single night when I broke the girl who I never deserved flood through me. I’d been fighting so hard against the truth about my feelings for Dani that I fucked some girl whose name I can’t even recall now. It doesn’t matter anyway.

  But Maci—Dani—whoever the fuck she is...she does matter.

  I just have no idea how to get past the thought that she spent the last twenty years hating me so much that she built her entire life, her entire being, around getting back at me for the stupid and immature words I spoke to a friend as a defense mechanism.

  What a colossal bit of misunderstanding and miscommunication.

  She was too innocent back then to confront me. Even I know that. So instead, she harbored the pain and let it build. Who knows what else she blames me for? Probably every damn thing that’s gone wrong in her life, including her mother’s death and the loss of her relationship with her father.

  Well I have a solution. I’ll make it real fucking easy for her. After this tour, she never has to see me again. She never has to deal with me again.

  I’ll give her exactly what she wanted from me in the first place, and I’ll consider it my final gift to her. The baby throws a wrench into that plan, and my chest physically aches as I think about what to do.

  Unfamiliar emotions stab at me. Anger. Fury. Pain. Heartbreak. Sadness. Things I don’t allow myself to feel by keeping myself unattached—the exact reason I keep my distance from women and avoid commitment.

  I once told her she had the power to break me, and as I lie curled in a ball on my bed, I realize that’s exactly what she did. She broke me and the invisible thread I clung to.

  * * *

  “Dude, get the fuck up.” Mark’s voice wakes me from sleep.

  “Go away,” I mutter into my pillow. I’ve been sleeping all day. I haven’t showered in two days, haven’t moved from bed except to take a piss. I haven’t watched porn, haven’t eaten much except when Chuck makes me. I’ve smoked a lot, mostly because my arm still hurts like a bitch, and I feel like the bottom of a shit barrel.

  “Soundcheck’s in ten minutes,” Mark says. “Get your ass out of bed.”

  “Fuck off. Do it without me.”

  He sighs. “Because the last time you missed check, the night went so well.”

  I throw my covers off and onto the floor without responding. I’m wearing just my boxer briefs.

  “Put on some clothes,” Mark says.

  “Yes, mother.”

  “I know she hurt you, but you’ve got to snap out of this. The answer is simple, man. Just go talk to her.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  I shift tactics. “Aren’t you pissed about her motivation behind why she’s here?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s in the past. She told you because she loves you.”

  I press my lips together and nod as I pull on my jeans. “She spent twenty years hating me. Chew on that for a minute. You think we can just find our way to happily ever after with the snap of a finger?”

  “She wants to.” He makes it sound so simple, but there’s so much more at play here.

  I just can’t get past what she did to get to me. Everyone knows I hold grudges. It’s sort of my thing.

  And right now, my grudge is against her.

  I hate that I put her on a pedestal my entire life. I hate that I wondered where she vanished to, that I spent a morsel of a second on thoughts about her. I hate that she affected me so much even back when I barely knew her. I hate how much my own life shifted and changed all because of her.

  I hate how different things could’ve been for us, but I’m at a loss as to figure out how to ever get there again.

  “How’s your arm?” he finally asks.

  “Still hurts, but getting better every day,” I say. It’s sort of the truth. If I didn’t have Chuck around nursing me and forcing me to change bandages all the time, I’d probably be in a lot worse shape.

  I find a shirt on the floor, give it the sniff test, and pull it over my head even though it smells like it could use a wash. I have no one to impress, and I’ll just change after soundcheck anyway.

  As we step off my bus, I force my eyes straight ahead. I want to look over in her direction with every fiber of my being, but I can’t. I won’t. I’m too angry as I try to process what she did to me. I wouldn’t be able to control my mouth if she was standing in front of me, so it’s best to avoid her altogether until I figure out what the hell I’m going to do.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  MACI

  I stare out the window as we drive past the nondescript landscape that makes up the Midwest nineteen days after I admitted the truth to Ethan. Cornfields, empty lots, long stretches of open fields—everything I escaped when I moved west to California. At least everything’s blanketed in snowy white, making it a bit more interesting as well as a bit more treacherous, but as the buses barrel on toward Chicago, this strange feeling of homesickness bears down over me. I want to be back in Los Angeles with a balmy winter breeze whispering in my hair. I want to be back by the ocean.

  Or, if I’m really wishing for things, I want to be back in Ethan’s arms. It’s been nearly three weeks since my big confession to him, and he won’t talk to me. I thought telling him the truth about my motivations would only bring us closer after his near-fatal experience our first night in New York, but all it did was throw a giant division between us and I have no idea how to get him back to me.

  I’ve tried. I’ve gone to his bus only to find him absent. I’ve gone again only to be blocked by Chuck. I tried calling and texting, but he ignores me. I’ve talked to Mark and Reese, but their advice has consistently been that he just needs some time to cool down.

  So, for the moment, I’m giving him what he supposedly needs. I feel like I’m giving up, like I’m not fighting hard enough, but I understand he’s mad at me and he might just need the time to sort through the shocking reason why I’m here on this tour in the first place. So, as much as I don’t want to, I give him that space.

  Maybe it’s the hormones talking or maybe it’s something else, but I just feel sad all the time. I’m living in this haze where I have no motivation to do anything, so I stay on my bus and sleep the days away unless I’m forced out to an interview or if Griffin has something planned for us. He’s done his best to cheer me up, but nothing he does ever really works.

  I tear my gaze from the window to snuggle under my covers and stare up at the ceiling while I wonder for the millionth time if it’s over for Ethan and me. It can’t be, can it? Would he really allow me to deliver his baby and have no part of her life? He may be a dick most of the time, but I don’t see him abandoning his child. And I may be a strong woman most of the time—or at least play the part of one—but I’m terrified to do this alone.

  We played New York a second night, and we’ve been through two gigs in Pennsylvania, plus st
ops in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. I thought about seeing Joss while I was in Michigan, but we were only there for the night of our show, so I didn’t have enough time.

  Not once through any of those states has Ethan Fuller spoken a single word to me. He hasn’t been standing side stage at the end of my set. He hasn’t made eye contact with me when I come out for Vail’s final song. He didn’t even sit in the room with me when Mark came over to give me the details of our completed collaboration, set to be released in just a few days. We should be celebrating together, and instead I’m wondering what the hell he’s been up to, whether he’s had a different woman in his bed every night, whether he’s pining after me the way I’m pining after him.

  And now we’re in Chicago for nearly an entire week. Mark and Ethan are from here, so they’re set to visit with family and friends. Mark mentioned to me he always plans for a week in Chicago as a mini-tour break. Nice for him since he has a place in the city. Not so nice for me, the paltry opening act, who has to sleep in yet another hotel while the others enjoy the comforts of home.

  Maybe I should visit Dad while I’m here. He’d probably have a heart attack at seeing his daughter after so long, but my secret’s out now. It’s not like I have to rely on him not to let Ethan know who I am anymore. The rest of the world still doesn’t know, but the one person I worked so hard to keep it from does.

  That email subject line that had something to do with my father runs through my mind again. I never bothered to read the email, and in fact, I deleted it a few weeks ago. It’s gone forever now, and I’ll never know what it said. But that’s okay. I don’t need to know. If my dad needs to tell me something about him or his health or his life or whatever, he’ll find a way to let me know.