Recovery by Nicole Dykes (best time to read books .txt) 📗

my best to get some distance from his heart and mine, but it feels nearly impossible now. His touch is my addiction. His laugh and smile are my cravings. And I get a hit any time I can.

“So, why don’t you sing anymore?”

I gape wide-eyed at Quinn, who’s just kicked everyone out of the bar and locked up. It’s just Jase, Tommy, her, and me inside the bar as the guys situate the tables and chairs back into their places.

“I just don’t enjoy it like I once did.”

She nods her head sadly, and I sense Tommy and Jase are listening. “I’m sorry. I know what that’s like, but don’t forget how much you once loved it.”

I loved Quinn’s music lessons when I was a kid. Loved. Them.

It was one of the rare times I would feel like smiling when she’d play her guitar and teach me the notes. New songs.

But then I grew up. Had to get jobs to help keep the lights on, take care of Trey. And singing became a useless hobby that went on the backburner.

“It was just something to do.”

Her eyes slide to the small stage at the back of the bar. “Wanna do it now?”

My whole body feels tense at her offer, and I shake my head quickly before moving to wipe down the sticky tables.

Of course, Jase heard and is by my side in a second. “Wait? You’re gorgeous, funny, just enough of a ballbuster to keep me on my toes, and you can sing?”

I roll my eyes at his over-the-top ridiculousness. “No. It was just something I did with Quinn when I didn’t want to go home.” I shrug my small shoulders, dwarfed by his large presence and feeling uncomfortable by the subject. “Trey liked to hear me sing.”

His face turns less enthusiastic now, and his voice gets quieter, “I bet he’d still like to hear it.”

“Your voice was effortless, Mya,” Quinn is hesitant to add.

None of them really push people into doing something they don’t want to do, but hell if they aren’t the most charming people on the planet.

I look back at the stage with the single microphone standing in the middle. I love the simplicity of that stage. I toss the rag on the table and look over at Quinn.

“One song can’t hurt, but I’m extremely rusty.”

She grins at me, already jumping on the stage. Quinn sells out venues all over the country, but she seems incredibly eager to hop on that tiny stage in her bar. Jase gives my arm a simple squeeze, but the gesture is all I need.

I walk up on the stage with Quinn as she grabs her acoustic guitar and strums the chords gently, a huge smile forming on her face, one I feel all the way down to my toes. Music has healing properties that nothing else in this world holds.

She starts playing a song familiar to me, one she taught me so long ago that I would sing over and over on my walk home, in the shower, and in the halls at school. I wanted to perfect it.

As the opening notes to “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac sound, I feel a warm feeling drift through my body that I haven’t felt in a long time.

A tear threatens to escape as Quinn nods toward the microphone. Tommy and Jase sit down in the chairs right in front of the stage. My heart is thundering, but I take a deep breath and the lyrics come to me in an instant.

I think about Trey and the way he would calm down when I’d sing to him. I think about all the fucked-up times our mom would get high and abusive or worse, or when one of her boyfriends would, and we’d lock ourselves in the small bathroom in the apartment and I’d sing to him, soothe him the only way I knew how.

And he’d calm down, lean against me. I wanted to do that the day he died, sing to him and make it better. But nothing could make it better.

I choke out the first note. And then another. And before I know it, my eyes are closed, and the room is filled with the sound of Quinn’s guitar and my voice. She doesn’t sing with me. She just provides the background music as I sing my heart out.

Thinking about Charity and how happy she was when we were growing up, how I used to give her a hard time for being so damn bubbly. And then the first time I saw a bruise on her arm, then on her neck. How pale and malnourished she looked. I saw the light slowly seep out of her. And then she was just gone.

I think about my mother and walking in on her, dead to the world with needles hanging from her arms, her clothes dirty, and her body weak and worn, letting drugs and horrible men into her body. How numb she always looked. I think about how maybe she had that same light once but let it all go.

And I just pour every single feeling into every note I sing. I push my vocal chords to expel the hate I have for her, for the person that took my brother away, for whoever hurt Charity. The bitterness I feel toward her for not talking to me. I let the music cleanse my soul with every single beautiful word.

And when Quinn stops playing and my final note ends, I open my eyes to lock onto Jase’s hazel one. He’s watching me like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. And when he smiles, I feel it deep inside.

I have no idea how I’m going to get out of his hold.

Her voice.

Holy shit.

I’ve never heard anything like it. Sweet and soulful, but full of sultry gravel. Fucking perfect.

When she said she used to sing to her little brother, I could understand why the subject of her singing hadn’t been brought up, but I can’t