“No, Maribel would have been wearing nicer clothing.”

He laughed. It was a deep, rich, familiar sound, even though she didn’t remember when she’d heard him laugh before. Had he laughed on the night they met? She could only recall the sadness in his eyes—the quiet longing in them.

On that night, they had talked for hours in his suite. When it was closer to morning than night, he reached out and took her hand, pulled her slowly to him. He hadn’t needed to ask the question. It hung in the air between them, unspoken, while his eyes pleaded with her. In response, she had reached up and wound her arms around his neck, pressed her face into the soft skin at the base of his neck. They stood like that for a minute, just holding one another, until he titled her face up and kissed her.

Those memories sat in her mind with perfect clarity.

“That’s the other thing I remember about you,” he said, still smiling at her joke. “You made me laugh. I hadn’t done that in a long time.”

So he had laughed that night. Strange she didn’t remember it.

The car still idled without moving. It was wasting gas, but he didn’t seem to care. Alex’s voice dropped, grew serious. “I want to make it up to you.”

“Make it up to me?” she repeated. She couldn’t believe he thought it was possible. Memories flashed through her mind. Lexi crying every night during that first year. Sabrina had staggered out of bed to feed her. She couldn’t turn to a husband and say, “Can you get her this time?” Sabrina remembered combing garage sales for baby clothes and buying some boy ones because they were cheap and Lexi needed something to wear. Sabrina had told herself that babies didn’t care what they wore, but Sabrina had cared. She wanted her daughter to wear nothing except soft pastels, new and lovingly chosen from a store.

“I didn’t realize you were so young.” Alex’s voice was soft and full of self-recrimination. “I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you. I’m not usually like that. Maybe that’s why I never tried to find you. I had a chance to go back to Charleston the next year to do a concert and I turned it down. I think I was afraid I’d see you again.”

“You wouldn’t have,” she said. “Not after your manager told me to leave you alone.”

Alex looked out the window and swore before turning back to her. “He never told me you called. Alexia told you that, didn’t she?”

Sabrina nodded. She’d always wondered whether Alex knew or not. Back when she was a new mother, not knowing had hurt. Now she knew, and it still hurt, only in a different way.

Alex held up a hand and let it fall. His lips drew together in a tight line of frustration. “You could have found me and told me yourself. My concert schedule was always posted. I would have talked to you if I’d seen you. Or you could have gotten a lawyer and sued for child support. Instead, you hid Alexia away and told her I didn’t care. She’s got nothing except resentment for me now.”

Sabrina hadn’t expected this burst of anger. She’d been prepared for regret, embarrassment, indifference even. But it was anger he was showing her here in the car, raw and painful. It took her aback.

“Maybe I didn’t think it would matter that much to you,” she said.

He flinched enough to show that the words had stung. “I don’t deserve that. I had a daughter, and I had the right to know her. I would have made sure she had everything she needed. I would have made sure you had everything you needed. I missed her entire childhood.”

He would have made sure she had everything she needed? The sentence cut into her like it was slashing open an old wound. She leaned forward, shivering, even though she wasn’t cold. “You expect me to believe that? You didn’t even call me.”

He let out a sharp breath and gripped the arm rest at his side. The muscles in his arm pulsed. “I’m sorry I lost your phone number. I’m sorry I was messed up and only thinking of myself. I’m sorry you had to raise Alexia by yourself. I’m sorry. How many times do you want me to say it? A hundred? A thousand? Just let me know and I’ll say all of them, but you owe me an apology too.”

Sabrina felt tears pushing at the back of her eyes. Now that the veneer of pleasant banter was gone, it seemed all she had was emotion. Resentment mostly. He had no right to make her feel guilty. It was easy now to swoop in and say you would have been a parent. She had been the one struggling to do it. “Fine,” she said. “I want a sorry for every time Lexi asked about you, and I couldn’t tell her anything because I thought you wanted nothing to do with us. I want a sorry for every Father’s Day gift she made in school that I had to throw away. I want a sorry for every time I saw a man holding his daughter’s hand, and ached because Lexi couldn’t do that. And I apologize for not hunting you down and making sure you knew the truth, but don’t tell me you would have made sure I had everything I needed. You have no idea what I needed.”

She hadn’t meant to say the last part. This was about Lexi, not her. The words came out anyway though. Sabrina hoped Alex would ignore them, pass over them and push the conversation in another direction.

Instead he picked up those words like a shopper examining goods. “What did you need, Sabrina?” He said her name easily and, despite herself, it gave her the same jolt it had when she was younger. Her name on his lips. The syllables of her identity spoken in his smooth, rich voice.

She was obviously incurably foolish. Why not crack open her soul a little further and show him every wound that lay there? The tears were already pooling in her eyes and spilling onto her cheeks. It wasn’t like she could pretend indifference. “I needed you,” she said. “You weren’t about to give me that.”

Sabrina looked away as soon as the words came from her mouth. She didn’t want to see his expression. It would show pity or some sort of manifestation that he considered her too far beneath him, or worse yet, that she was delusional. All of which was probably true. Their relationship had only lasted one night for him.

Outside, the rows of empty cars looked like soldiers in a line, their headlights surveying one another placidly. Sabrina brushed the tears off her cheeks. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She shook her head wearily. “I’m a grown woman with a fulfilling life, but I get into the car with you and I suddenly feel like a needy eighteen-year-old.” She placed her hands in her lap. Her nails were short and unpolished. The hands of someone who was constantly working. “I used to believe we belonged together. Let’s just say it was a hard reality to wake up from.”

The hum of the engine was steady, not revving wildly like her heart. This was because the car knew when to keep its mouth shut. Something she wished she had done.

Alex stared at her silently then said the obvious. “It wasn’t real love. You didn’t even know who I was. Not really.”

It would have been easy to agree with him, to pretend she’d only been foolish back then. But doing so would have betrayed her eighteen-year-old self, and that girl, hurting and alone, needed fierce loyalty. Even if it was only in memory. “I knew everything about you,” she said.

“You knew my image,” he said. “You knew who I was when I was smiling for a crowd and what the tabloids said about me.”

She let out a little laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all. It was surprise that he didn’t realize his personality had always been clearly on display. It had shined out in the cadence of his calm voice, the directness of his gaze, his self-assured walk. “I knew you through your lyrics. When I listened to your albums, I could tell which songs you’d written before I checked the credits. The rest of your band wrote songs about drinking, chasing women, and breaking up. Your songs were about life.” Deep songs, meaningful words that repeated in your mind long after the music faded.