“Do you remember why we became friends?” Melanie asked her.

Nikki sniffed. “You mean when we were little?” she said in a tiny voice.

“Yeah. We met in the park. You were sitting under a bush, sobbing. Remember?”

Nikki swallowed and nodded. Melanie lifted a hand to brush Nikki’s hair back, but thought better of it. She clenched her hand into a loose fist and dropped it to her side. Melanie did love Nikki as more than a friend. She loved her like the little sister she’d never had. Someone to take care of. To defend. To cherish.

“I went over to see what was wrong and you had this huge bruise on your face,” Melanie said.

“My stepfather was an abusive son of a bitch.”

“But that wasn’t why you were crying. Do you remember why you were crying?”

Nikki nodded again. “I had found a beautiful blue butterfly. I held it so gently and stroked its velvety wings. And it died right there in my hand.”

“We spent the rest of that summer chasing live butterflies in the park.”

Nikki smiled. A slightly watery smile, but a genuine one. “And every time you caught one, you’d put it in my hair and say I was beautiful. No one had ever told me that before. Or made me feel beautiful.”

“You are beautiful, Nikki. Not just on the outside, on the inside. I knew it from the moment I saw you crying over a dead bug.”

“Butterfly,” Nikki corrected. “I wouldn’t cry over a beetle. Well, maybe if it was a lady bug.”

Melanie laughed. She so wanted to give Nikki a hearty squeeze, but a line had been crossed, and Melanie knew she had to be careful not to give Nikki the wrong message.

“I was sad when you moved away,” Melanie said.

“Yeah, well, sometimes abusive sons-of-bitches beat your mother to death and you’re sent to live with your alcoholic father.”

The alcoholic father who had sexually molested her for six years, but Nikki didn’t have to say it. Melanie was very aware of Nikki’s past. She just wished she could have been there for Nikki at the time, to help put her back together.

“I thank God that we ended up going to the same college,” Melanie said. “It must have been fate.”

Nikki dropped her head. “Not fate so much as me stalking your social media pages.”

“So you went to Wichita State—”

“To be with you. I never forgot you. Mel, the little girl with the kind eyes and the uplifting words who put butterflies in my hair.” She touched her hair as if she could feel wings flapping against her. “Memoires of those butterflies got me through a lot of very dark nights, Mel, even when you weren’t there.”

Nothing could have stopped Melanie from hugging Nikki then. She crushed her against her chest, squeezing until her arms began to tremble.

“Do you hate me for loving you?” Nikki said dully.

Melanie drew away and cupped Nikki’s face in her hands. She tried not to look at the scab on her lip, because it was a harsh reminder of even more pain that Nikki had suffered, and Melanie couldn’t allow herself to be wishy-washy about this.

“I don’t hate you—at all—I’m just not attracted to you. I don’t love you that way. Do you understand?”

Nikki lowered her gaze.

“I do love you unconditionally,” Melanie said. “I do. Nothing you do will change that. So stop testing it, okay? I’m not going anywhere. You’re my baby sister for life.”

“Are you sure?”

“If I haven’t given up on you by now, it’s not going to happen.”

Nikki laughed. “I’ll try to behave.”

“Just keep yourself safe,” Melanie said. “And if you kiss me again, I’m going to tell my boyfriend to kick your ass.”

“Okay. I don’t want an ass-kicking from a guy with a bad haircut.” She was laughing when she said it.

Melanie glanced around the empty interior of the bus. “Speaking of Gabe, shouldn’t he be back by now? He said sound check wouldn’t take long.”

“You should go look for him. I’ve been hogging your attention all day. I’m sure you two would like to be alone for a while.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” she said. This weekend hadn’t quite been the endless love-making session she’d envisioned. “You okay now?” she asked Nikki.

“I’ll get over you,” she said. “Eventually.”

Knowing Nikki the way she did, Melanie figured it would take her no more than twenty minutes or so to move on. “Stay out of trouble.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Backstage, Melanie asked several people if they’d seen Gabe. The rest of the band was in the dressing room, bull-shitting. Gabe was not among them, and no one had seen him since sound check. They all said he’d been headed to the tour bus with instructions not to disturb him. Melanie knew that he’d never made it to the bus. At least, she hadn’t seen him. Maybe they’d crossed paths somewhere.

When she saw Jordan in a hallway and asked if he’d seen Gabe, he pointed toward the stage. “I think he’s rehearsing.”

Rehearsing? Rehearsing what? When she concentrated, she could hear him playing, sticks hitting skins with such powerful, rapid percussion that it couldn’t have been anyone but Gabe.

She hurried to the stage and climbed the steps to watch him. She stumbled over a cord not yet taped down and then stood to the side of Gabe’s drum kit. His instrument was tucked away behind the equipment for the opening bands, far to the back of the stage where the overhead lights didn’t quite reach. His eyes were closed as he punished the drums; there was no other way to describe how he was playing. His face held none of the rapture, none of the fervent concentration she’d witnessed at the concert three nights before. There was only anger and retaliation.

She was afraid to interrupt him and would probably have stood gaping all day if the skin on his snare hadn’t ruptured.

“Fuck,” he said. He flung his ragged sticks between two of the drums and dropped his elbows to his knees. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, his fingertips digging into the wicked-looking dragons on his scalp. Gabe looked anything but wicked at that moment. He looked… broken.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” he yelled. And then he kicked one of his bass drums clean off the riser, taking a set of crashing cymbals with it.

Melanie was stunned and half-tempted to back away and pretend she hadn’t seen him. “Gabe?” she said quietly.

He tensed and turned, searching for her in the shadows.

“Is something wrong?”

“Yeah,” he said in a harsh, raspy tone. “Everything is wrong. Get the fuck out of here. I don’t want to talk to you.”

She sucked in a breath, certain she was hallucinating. Who was this guy? Definitely not the Gabe she’d come to know over the weekend.

“What?” she said breathlessly.

He glared at her. “You heard me. Go back home to Kansas! And take your fucking girlfriend with you.”

“Well, yes, I’ll be taking Nikki when I go home,” Melanie said, still more confused than insulted, hurt or angry. Though she could feel those emotions quickly taking hold of her. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you, Melanie? How many guys have you done this to? Did they think it was sexy to be caught up in your kinky little triangle? Well, I don’t want any part of it. Take your loser friend and fuck off. We’re through.”

She obviously wasn’t registering words correctly, because his made absolutely no sense.

“Gabe, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t want to be with me? Where is this coming from?”

“You can’t have us both, Melanie. It’s me or her.”

She gaped at him, unable to believe her ears. She knew some people were naturally jealous—hell, she happened to be one of them—but what kind of asshole slapped down that kind of ultimatum out of the blue? He knew what Nikki had been through. He couldn’t possibly expect Melanie to desert her.

“Are you asking me to choose between you and Nikki?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw set in a harsh line. “Yeah, I am.”