Baz didn’t expect her to go easy on him. He wanted to be treated exactly how he’d been treated before. Except now, he hoped, he had a little better handle on himself.

Hell, he’d nearly died and had his heart broken in the past year. That made you grow up pretty damn fast.

“And now you’re deflecting.” Zach paused the game and turned on the couch so he could look at Baz. The problem was, Baz didn’t want to be seen.

“Well, damn, look at you. You added a new word to your vocabulary.”

And as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to take them back.

“Fuck. Zach, goddamn it. I’m so fucking sorry. You know I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

Baz forced himself to look up at one of his best friends and found Zach shaking his head, a wry grin on his face but no hurt. Zach had still been in high school when they’d gone on tour. He was the only one of them who hadn’t graduated and Baz knew that was a sore spot with him. And he’d intentionally needled the guy about it.

Fuck. He was a total asshole.

And Zach just shrugged it off. “No worries, man. Didn’t I tell you? I finally got my GED last year. Guess your overdose was good for something, huh?”

Baz barked out a quiet laugh, then shook his head. “Damn, that’s great, Zachy Bear. Seriously. I’m glad something good came out of my fuckup.”

“That wasn’t the only thing, you know. If you hadn’t taken last year off, you wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to write that kick-ass score for Greg’s film. And you might never have met Tru.”

Yeah, the score was the one bright spot to come from his OD. But Tru . . .

Jesus, just thinking about her made his fucking heart hurt. Like it was trying to shrivel in his chest to get away from the pain.

Every time he thought about her, which was every other minute, he wanted to sit in a corner and bang his head against the wall. Or bang out stupid love songs on the piano.

The guys had gotten sick of hearing “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” and “More Than Words” the past few weeks during rehearsal. Hell, if he even made a move toward the piano now, they threw things at him before he sat down.

“She didn’t care about me enough to even try to keep our relationship going. Or maybe I just saw more there than there really was.”

“Nah.” Zach shot that down immediately. “We all saw how much she liked you. But you gotta admit, the lifestyle can be a problem. Especially for a girl like Tru.”

Baz frowned at Zach. “What? You think I should quit the band and score movies for a living?”

“I’m not saying you have to give up the band. I’m just saying maybe you gotta do more than tell her you love her. You gotta make the grand gesture and show her. She works in the movies, for chrissake. She’s used to a big finish. Like . . .” Zach’s brow furrowed and then straightened as he snapped his fingers. “Ooh. Like at the end of Valley Girl.”

Baz frowned at him. “You want me to go to her prom and punch out her boyfriend?”

Zach reached across the cushion and punched him on the shoulder. “No, asshole. You just need to do something like that. You know, show her you’re willing to do whatever it takes to get her back.”

“That’d be great if I actually had time to spend with her. We’re leaving for six fucking months.”

“I didn’t say it was gonna be easy, man. But you’ve gotta decide how hard you wanna fight.”

*   *   *

“Alright, Tru. I’ve had just about as much as I can take.”

Tru’s head shot up from where she was reading over the plans Talia had made for the opening night party. It was her second time through it, and for some reason, she couldn’t seem to retain any of the information.

She’d been like this for a week. She was attributing it to prerelease stress. She refused to believe it was related to anything else.

“What’s wrong?”

Greg dropped into the chair in front of her desk and lounged back into it, like he wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

“I’m pretty sure you know what’s wrong. You’re just ignoring the problem.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “I have no idea what you’re talking about?”

“Yeah, you do. So either snap out of this already or do something about it.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit.” Greg shook his head. “Time to admit you screwed up, Tru.”

Yeah, she had and she knew it. She just didn’t know how to fix it. And because Greg seemed to know exactly what had happened, she didn’t feel the need to go through it again.

Hell, every time she even thought about it, she felt sick to her stomach and wanted to sit in a corner and have a good cry.

“I admit I probably didn’t handle the breakup well.”

She immediately bit her tongue. Damn it, she hadn’t meant to say anything else. She really didn’t want to talk about any of this and she hadn’t even told anyone. Not her friends, not her parents, not her sister. And it was eating away at her until her concentration was shot. And ManDown couldn’t afford for her concentration to be shot right now.

Greg was stretched thin at the moment with everything related to the release and the overall business. He trusted her to keep the details running smoothly. She couldn’t let him down by missing something she would’ve caught at any other time.

“Probably?” That one word held a wealth of sarcasm.

She wrinkled her nose at her boss and considered telling him to go jump off the nearest building. Instead, she blinked away sudden tears.

“Well, it’s not like he’s pining away over me. He’s getting ready to go on tour. He’s got an album releasing in a month. He’s probably not even thinking about me.”

“Uh-huh. You keep deluding yourself, Tru.”

A sudden burst of anger made her glare at him. “What do you want from me, damn it? Why are you here? To make me angry? To make me cry? What? Yes, I could’ve handled it better but . . .”

Greg cocked an eyebrow at her and she wanted to pluck out each individual hair. “But, what?”

“But I don’t think I can handle worrying about what he’s doing every minute of every day. And missing him for weeks on end.”

“Ah.”

She threw up her hands in defeat. “Are you deliberately trying to piss me off?”

Greg’s mouth twisted in a grimace. “No, I’m not. I care about you, hon. And I’m worried about you. You look heartsick and I hate it. And when I talk to Baz, he sounds the same. I don’t want to see two people I love hurt like this.”

And here she thought she’d been doing a good job of maintaining a calm exterior. This is why she hadn’t become an actress.

“It doesn’t matter now. It’s too late. He’s gone. And we’ll both move on. And since when do you get to give me romance advice?”

“Since I’m the one who has an actual romance. You made a mistake. And I know you already regret it.”

“So now you can read minds?”

“No, but I know you. And you’re so fucking sad right now, you can’t even manage to fight with me. Just call the guy.”

“He doesn’t want to hear from me. Not anymore. I’m sure he’s moved on.”

“And now you’re not giving him enough credit. Don’t be a coward, Tru. Just call him.”

She wanted to believe him. And she didn’t want to believe him. She wanted Sebastian to move on.

And she was being a total ass because she was lying to herself.

Christ. How much of an idiot had she been?

A big one, obviously. She’d thought she’d be getting over him by now. It’d been a week. One really, really long week. She’d cried herself to sleep the first three nights. The next night, she’d only cried for an hour.

But instead of feeling a little better every day, she felt a little worse. She’d actually forgotten to update her calendar yesterday and almost missed an important meeting with the city fire marshal. And today, she couldn’t even read through a simple agenda without having to blink away tears.