Hands cupped around her coffee mug, Kit said, “You have any specific plans for the new album, or are you just going to jam and figure it out?”
“We want to stretch ourselves.” It was time to go back to their roots, dig for the music that made their souls burn.
Frowning in concentration, Kit turned her body toward him. “A change in direction?”
“No, just… growing.” It was the one way in which Noah could grow. Music had always been his freedom, perhaps because he’d found it afterward. There was no taint to it. “Did you know Fox and I started to learn music together?”
Pure delight in Kit’s smile. “At boarding school?”
“Yeah. It was the one class in which we always behaved. Mr. Denison was convinced the other teachers were making up lies about us being troublemakers.” He chuckled. “We send him tickets to our concerts when we pass through Houston—that’s where he lives now—and damn if he doesn’t always attend.”
Sitting cross-legged on the picnic blanket, Kit peeled the wrapper off a cupcake and gave it to him before taking one for herself. “He must be proud of you.”
“I think he is.” Far prouder than either one of Noah’s parents. “Last time he came backstage, he brought his wife and told her how Fox and I were the only two students he’d had who wanted to learn to read music so much that we used to haunt his office.”
“You didn’t meet Abe and David till later, right? When you were thirteen? I think I remember David saying something like that once.”
Noah nodded. “Yep.” Unlike Fox and Noah, David and Abe had families who loved them. They hadn’t been shipped off and forgotten… or hidden.
In Abe’s family, boarding school was a proud tradition; his folks had come to see him every visitation weekend, had taken him home each vacation.
David’s folks hadn’t been able to visit that often—Alicia and Vicente Rivera hadn’t had the funds for it. But David had received the best care packages, full of home-baked goodies, a letter, and articles his family had clipped for him from neighborhood papers. Those care packages had grown bigger after the four of them became friends, Mrs. Rivera including enough for Noah, Abe, and Fox as well.
She’d even written them all.
If Noah’d had a choice, he’d have gone home with Abe or David come vacation time. Either one of his friends’ families would’ve opened their doors to him and Fox. But he hadn’t had a choice. Noah’s father couldn’t stand to look at him, but he wasn’t about to be accused of neglect. So Noah had to go home.
The only thing that had made it bearable was having Fox with him—his friend would’ve rather gone to David’s or Abe’s too, but he’d always said he wanted to go home with Noah.
Noah would never forget that act of loyalty.
“Did you like boarding school?” Kit’s husky voice cut through the memories.
“It was better than home.” Kit knew he had a dysfunctional relationship with his mother and father. “That was how I thought of it at first, but after a while, yeah, I did enjoy it. Mostly because of the friendships.” Quite frankly, he wouldn’t have made it the first month, much less the first year, without Fox.
His need would’ve made him feel unequal in the friendship, except that Fox had needed a friend just as badly for different reasons. If Noah had parents who, in public, acted as if he mattered, all the while ignoring him in private, Fox’s mother had flat-out abandoned him for her shiny new family.
So they’d become one another’s family, brothers not by blood but by choice.
“Your classmates must’ve pulled a few interesting stunts,” he said, and, when Kit answered with a wry nod, he asked another question. He wanted to hear her speak, see her smile… fix what he’d deliberately broken.
It had been a strange, oddly wonderful, and terribly painful day. Kit didn’t know quite how to process it, so she just shoved everything aside as she’d been doing since the moment Noah picked her up. Living in the moment was the only way she could deal with this.
“Thanks for the flight,” she said as they headed to the car early that afternoon. “It was beautiful.” No lie there, no need to watch her words.
“Anytime,” Noah answered with a smile before his phone went off. “Give me a sec.” His expression darkened when he saw the name on the screen, his answer a brusque “Yeah?”
Walking on to give him privacy, Kit was nonetheless aware of the curt nature of his conversation. He’d unlocked the SUV using the remote by the time she got to it, so she climbed inside and put the picnic blanket and the detritus of their meal in the back.