“My cousin got married last year,” he said after taking a sip of his coffee. “You know, Keira.”

“Crazy Keira?”

“Yeah, she lived up to her name. Serious bridezilla, and apparently she was psycho about the dress. Emily told me Keira threw a full-on tantrum in the bridal salon because the pearls on her dress were a size too small or something.” His smart, sweet, funny sister had considered recording the incident for Noah but had been scared off by the wrath of the bridezilla.

Fox looked at Molly, his expression softening in a way it only ever did when he looked at the woman he adored. “You planning to go nuts on me, baby?”

“Maybe a little.” Molly winked. “But not about the dress. Once Charlie arrives from New Zealand, she and Thea and I are doing a girls’ trip to that vintage wedding-dress shop I saw.”

Charlie, Noah remembered, was Molly’s best friend, Charlotte. As for Thea, she wasn’t only the band’s publicist, but Molly’s sister through their shared father, a hypocrite of a man who’d died while Molly was a teen. In Thea’s case, the paternal relationship had been merely biological—she considered her stepdad to be her true father.

“I’m going to ask Kit too if she’s not on location,” Molly added.

“We all still heading to Bali for David and Thea’s wedding?” Noah asked as the simple sound of Kit’s name made his entire body ache with a need that wasn’t ever going to go away.

“Yes!” Molly beamed. “It’ll take longer to put together though—her parents and David’s parents both want a big ceremony.” She flicked on the cooktop. “Food coming up pronto.”

It was over an hour and a half later, after a breakfast from the heavens, that Noah and Fox walked out to take seats around the metal table beside the infinity pool. Molly was inside, on the phone with Charlotte; her laughter occasionally drifted outside.

“You’re a lucky man,” Noah said to Fox, his hands hanging between his knees as he leaned forward with his forearms braced on his thighs, staring out over the clear blue waters of the pool to Santa Monica Bay in the distance.

“I know.” Fox strummed the acoustic guitar he’d picked up on their way outside. “What do you think of this?”

Noah listened, made a suggestion, the music easing the scars on his soul as it always did. Didn’t matter what kind. As long as it was music. Listening to Fox’s strumming, he watched the sunshine glitter on the water and tried to let his mind drift, go empty.

It proved impossible.

He kept seeing snapshots of the past twenty-four… no, it was closer to twenty-nine, thirty hours: Kit’s scared face as she asked him what was in the syringe, waking up on soft white sheets with tiny blue flowers, watching Kit drive off with a scowl on her face.

“You going to tell me what happened?” Fox said about ten minutes later. “And don’t bullshit me, Noah. I’ve known you too long.”

The fact was Fox knew more about Noah’s demons than anyone else in the world. They’d been assigned as roommates at boarding school, both only seven years old at the time. Fox had heard him scream at night, had found him huddled, shivering in the corner, more than once, a stolen kitchen knife in hand.

Fox hadn’t told on him then, and in all these years, he’d never once betrayed Noah’s secret. Not even to Molly. Noah had worried about that when the two first became serious, but Fox had been blunt: It’s not mine to tell, and Molly understands that—just like I understand there are things she can’t tell me about Charlie.

Certain in his trust in Fox, Noah said, “I hit rock bottom.” He had to admit it, had to get the pathetic, dangerous nature of his actions burned into his brain cells. “Ended up in a no-tell motel with a fifty-dollar hooker and a vial full of poison to pump into my veins. I thought it would make the noise in my head go quiet.”

Fox stopped strumming the guitar. “Fuck.” His voice was like gravel, his hand fisted on the polished wood of the guitar. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I called Kit.”

A long silence. “And?”

“And she came, saw me at my worst again.” He gave a harsh laugh. “I’m such a prince I dragged her out of her house at half-past-who-the-fuck-knows o’clock in the morning.”

Starting the music again, Fox didn’t speak for another five minutes. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m going to say it anyway—you need to talk to someone. It’s getting worse, not better.”

Noah clenched his jaw, his teeth grinding against one another. “I can’t talk about it. Not to a stranger.” He had enough trouble talking about it to Fox, and they never actually talked about what lay at the root of all his problems. He’d told Fox when he’d been a child, alone and scared, but that boy was long gone. “Fuck man, I don’t even want to think about it.”

“But you are thinking about it. Every night,” Fox pointed out. “If you’re serious about Kit—”

“No.” Noah sliced out a hand. “No, Fox. I want her in my life, but I won’t pull her into the hellhole that’s my messed up head. She doesn’t need to know.” He held his friend’s eyes. “She never needs to know.” He couldn’t bear it.

“You know I won’t say a word.” The other man thrust a hand through the dark brown of his hair. “But it’s eating you up from the inside. You sleep even less now than you did when you were a kid, and you’re drinking so much it’s worse than with Abe.”

Noah couldn’t dispute either charge. He might not have ended up in a near-coma like Abe, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. “I poured all the liquor at my place down the drain.” He’d done it in the middle of fixing the blinds.

“You know it’s not that easy.”

“Then I’ll do it hard.” Because no way was he ever checking into rehab or any other place where they could fuck with his head.

“Damn, you’re a stubborn asshole.” Fox passed him the guitar. “Play something while I get us more coffee.”

Losing himself in the music, Noah stayed at Fox and Molly’s until almost five in the afternoon. At which point he got in his car and drove not to his own home but to the studio lot where he knew Kit was filming the superhero flick. Thanks to Noah’s own contacts, he had no problem getting past security or finding his way to a park outside the right sound stage.

He waited for an hour by her car before he saw her walk out with Casey. Kit sometimes rode with the slender black bodyguard and driver, but she generally preferred to live her life as normally as possible. And in a stalker-free world, Kit wasn’t the kind of woman to have guards and chauffeurs.

She froze for a second when she saw him.

Shaking off her surprise as Casey nodded to him and peeled off to get into his own car, she walked over, her glorious hair damp and plaited into a loose braid. “What’re you doing here?” No expression on her face.

It wasn’t Kit standing in front of him, he realized, but cool, sophisticated Kathleen Devigny.

His gut clenched. “I was hoping I could take you out to dinner to say thanks.”

Opening the car door, she dumped in her purse. “I’m exhausted. I need to get to bed.”

Gripping the top of her door as she got into the driver’s seat, he drew in the fresh scent of her. “Tomorrow?”

“Wrap party’s right after we shoot the final scene. Will probably go late.”

Noah knew he shouldn’t keep pushing when she was giving him a large, flashing “go away” signal, but he couldn’t make himself leave. “What about the day after?” he said. “We’ll go someplace where you don’t have to think about green superheroes or four-a.m. makeup calls.”

“No, Noah.”

When she pulled at her door, he released his grip on it, well aware he’d already pushed far beyond the point where he should’ve stopped. He couldn’t blame her for her response; he was a bad bet even as a friend. He’d only stuck with Fox, David, and Abe this long because the three were as stubborn as he was… and in different ways, they needed him as much as he needed them. Kit didn’t need him, and so he didn’t know what to offer her to make her come back into his life.