Chapter 22

Aria was already asleep when her phone started ringing. She had waited for his call, occasionally grabbing her phone at every sound. At one point, she decided that she wasn’t going to keep fooling herself over a guy who may not even have her in mind. She tried to concern herself with something else: her mother, her singing life that she had left behind in Ohio. She worried if she would ever settle down enough in Manhattan to give her singing career expression or be able to raise a new band.

She was able to get rid of the anxiety of the call out of her mind, but it was then replaced with a new anxiety: the anxiety of her never finding true love, the anxiety of her losing her mother and never being happy again. She drifted into sleep, and it wasn’t up to fifteen minutes before Nick’s call woke her up.

She stirred and hissed, then sat up and reached for her phone. Immediately, she saw that the number had no name on it. Two guesses ran through her mind; the first guess was t