LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER TWO

      HE WAS GOING to lie to her.

      Three years, and Rosa could still see the tell in the way Jude glanced to the side before speaking.

      She supposed she couldn’t blame him. She hadn’t exactly done much to earn the truth from him.

      But on the other hand, this was her home, her place—and she’d never told him about it. Had he been stalking her, searching for her, these last three years? Had he come here to find her? And if so, why on earth now, not three years ago?

      No, that was ridiculous. She hadn’t known she was coming herself until two weeks ago, and she had a hard time believing that Sancia and Anna had teamed up to come up with some outrageous story to get her there, just to help Jude out.

      Unlikely as it seemed, this had to be some kind of crazy coincidence.

      Rosa wasn’t entirely sure if that made it better or worse.

      ‘Believe it or not, I came here to work on some new music,’ Jude said. Just the words conjured up memories of watching him composing, trying out new melodies on his guitar at the back of the tour bus, folded up to sit on the narrow bunk she lay in. Some of the most precious moments they’d spent together in that too-short month were times like that, when no one else was there or awake, when it was just them and the music.

      But she couldn’t think about that now. Memories weren’t going to help her figure out what the hell was going on here.

      ‘So you had no idea that this was my mother’s family home?’ Rosa asked, her eyes narrowing. It didn’t hurt to double check these things, right?

      ‘None at all.’ That, at least, seemed to be the truth. So where was the lie? He was a musician, of course he’d come here to work on music. Except where was the rest of the band, in that case? Or what was left of it.

      The memory hit her harder than she’d expected. An article online she’d caught by chance, that had left her crying in a foreign airport for a man she’d known and grown fond of. For another star gone too soon. And for Jude, left behind—the only time she’d let herself cry for him at all.

      The band she’d known, when she’d toured with Jude that summer, wasn’t the same band he was with now. Not without Gareth.

      No wonder he hadn’t come after her. He’d been dealing with his own tragedy, while she’d left to attend her abuelo’s funeral and had her whole world changed.

      But that didn’t change the truth of him being here, now. ‘So you expect me to believe that this is just a bizarre and unfortunate coincidence?’

      ‘If you like.’ Jude gave a small, one-sided shrug, but the smile on his lips told her that wasn’t entirely how he’d put it. ‘To be honest, it doesn’t much matter to me what you believe, any more.’

      It had once, though. For one brief, shining month in time, what Rosa had believed had mattered to Jude Alexander. And what he’d believed about her had mattered to her, too.

      Which had only made it harder to let him down when she’d walked away.

      Of course, that was how she knew it was the right decision, too. But that didn’t mean there hadn’t been moments since, days when she’d been lost and alone and confused, when she’d wondered how different things would be if she’d gone back to him when she’d left La Isla Marina, instead of hightailing it for the Middle East, then Australia, then the Americas.

      A whole life she’d thrown away and never lived. Of course she thought about it. She just didn’t let herself imagine it too often, or in too much detail. She didn’t want the regrets—not when she’d done the right thing, and found the life she’d always promised herself because of it.

      She wondered if Jude would understand that, if she told him. Or maybe he’d been relieved when she hadn’t come back. After all, he’d chased and caught his own dreams, too. But they’d come at a high price.

      Rosa picked up a few of her father’s Scrabble tiles, and began rearranging them on the rack, spelling out Spanish words he’d never use, for her own amusement, trying to find the words she needed to say.

      In the end, she settled for blunt. It was her style, after all.

      ‘I heard about Gareth. I’m sorry. You know how fond I was of him.’ It had been hard not to adore Gareth. His optimism, his openness, the joy he’d found in the world... It was hard to imagine the band without him.

      Hard to imagine Jude without his best friend.

      Jude looked away. ‘Yeah.’ The curt word told Rosa her sympathies weren’t enough. Of course they weren’t.

      Nothing could make up for Gareth’s death. Certainly not anything she had to offer.

      It wasn’t her place to ask what happened, to tell Jude he could talk to her, if he needed to. Wasn’t her place to comfort him for a three-year-old tragedy that obviously still cut him deep.

      She’d given up that place when she left.

      Time to move on. She was never good at the touchy-feely stuff, anyway.

      ‘So, where are the others?’ Always a good way of figuring out whether a person was lying to her—ask a question she already knew the answer to. ‘Jimmy and Lee and Tanya?’ The rest of The Swifts. After all, Jude hadn’t got this famous all on his own, whatever the gossip magazines seemed to think.

      And right now, the gossip sites didn’t seem to know what to think. Rosa didn’t make a point of following Jude’s every career move, or anything—in fact, she made a point of not listening to his music any more than she had to, which was made more difficult by the fact it seemed to be playing everywhere at the moment. Even in the rainforest, someone had brought speakers and been playing The Swifts when they’d set up camp the other week.

      But even she hadn’t been able to avoid the news that Jude Alexander had dropped off the face of the earth. The rest of the band had been photographed out and about in New York City, but there had been no sign of their lead singer.

      Not that Rosa had been concerned about that. Much.

      ‘New York, I think.’ Jude looked away again, down at his own tiles. He wasn’t lying, so maybe just hiding something? Rosa couldn’t tell, any more. ‘I’m working on some...different stuff.’

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