No doubt about it, he’d been a doll then and he still was now, just…a little scarier-looking doll.

The next photo to the right was obviously his parents. He looked like them both, and their big happy smiles almost brought tears to her eyes. Every little kid’s nightmare. She had the sudden urge to call her parents right then…though of course they would ask what she was smoking to call them at nearly five in the morning if she wasn’t dying.

Sweeping her gaze across some of the other pictures—more of him, his sister’s family and an older woman who could only have been his nana—she realized his brother must be absent from them all. No guy resembling him or near his age was to be seen anywhere.

“What are you up to in there?” he called from the kitchen.

“Just looking at your pictures.”

“Ugh. Don’t get too acquainted with that guy.”

“Who, you? I like that guy. Then and now.”

He chuckled and came into the living room bearing chips and a couple sandwiches on a plate. “I eat out a lot,” he told her apologetically. “It’s just me, so…”

“This is fine. Thanks.”

He put the stuff on the coffee table. “I forgot drinks. Hang on.”

She continued her perusal as he trotted back to the kitchen, moving to his massive CD collection. It took up an entire bookshelf. He’d even begun stacking rows on top of rows. Some of the band names…they made her cringe. “Oh my God.”

“What?” he asked, coming back in behind her.

“This stuff…” She started laughing. “You have it alphabetized.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I don’t know, I just find something funny about having your death metal in alphabetical order. Bringing order to chaos, I guess? I mean, God forbid you get Cannibal Corpse and…Cattle Decapitation out of order or something.” She turned to him, her eyes wide. “Cattle Decapitation? Seriously?”

“Don’t hate. There’s a lot I could say about that twangy yee-haw shit you listen to.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Yeah but nothing.”

“Fine.”

“If it makes you feel any better, that’s just stuff I’ve accumulated over the years. I don’t necessarily listen to it all the time…or even like all of it.”

“Oh. Good.”

“But Corpse is f**king awesome.”

“Great. So how do you ‘accumulate’ this many CDs?”

“By finding them littered around someone’s house after a night of drunken carousing.”

Since she was slowly but surely learning to take everything he said with a grain of salt, she shrugged that one off. “Who’s your favorite band? Not that I’ll have heard of them or anything.”

“In Flames.”

“Hmm.”

“And it’s not chaos.”

She moved to sit by him on the couch and popped the top on her drink. “It sounds like it to me. I just don’t see the appeal. It gives me a headache.”

“It’s raw power. It’s brokenhearted and pissed off about it. The music itself brings order to chaos. Listening to it, playing it, for me helps me work out all the ugliness. It lets me vent. It helps me control my emotions—I can step back and view them from a distance, look at them and explore them without doing something I’ll regret. It’s like…a controlled burn.”

He spoke so passionately, so earnestly about it, she couldn’t help but be transfixed. “That’s…interesting, I guess. It’s therapeutic for you.”

“Exactly. But not just that. I enjoy the hell out of it. I’m sure I would no matter what hand I’d been dealt.” He bit into his sandwich, and she stared across at his collection, a little jealous that he’d found an outlet. She had none. Her emotions had been bottled up for so long she didn’t know what would happen if she pulled the cork. But given her unbidden tears and her lashing out at him earlier tonight, she had an idea now.

“I would listen to some of it.”

“You don’t have to. I was just explaining my reasons, not trying to push them off on you.”

“But if it means so much to you, if it’s such a big part of you…” It would help me know you. “You could play me your favorite song; how about that?”

“I could never pick only one.”

“A few, then. And tell me about your band. Do I dare ask the name?”

“In the Slaughter.”

“Cheerful. But not so bad, considering.”

He laughed. “Well, the guys rejected my proposal of Misanthropic Motherfuckers. I can’t imagine why.”

“Me either.”

He jumped up. “Let me get my laptop, and I’ll play you some Flames. There’s this one song of theirs we cover a lot. It’s called ‘The Jester Race’. You’ll get an idea of what you’d hear if you ever came to a show.” He reached down and flicked her nose. “Which you should do. We’re playing next month in Austin.”

“Oh, ah…I don’t think I could do that.”

“Why not? Brian and Candace come out and see us when they can. Maybe they could come too. You wouldn’t be on your own.”

“It’s not my thing. Really. It is so not my thing. I’d listen to it but having it live in my face is another matter.”

He scoffed. “Yeah, but…it’s a little different. I’m asking you to watch me perform. You’d probably never get me on a horse, but I’d still watch you race.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, do you?”

She dropped her gaze when his face darkened, staring down at her hands while her fingers fidgeted anxiously with one another.

“I wish to f**k I did,” he said with such sharpness it snapped her head back up. “I wish I’d known you back then, Macy, because you wouldn’t have given up shit. The doctors cleared you to ride, didn’t they?”

“You don’t know—”

“I’m asking. They cleared you to ride, didn’t they?”

She glared at him, her pulse pounding in her temples. “Yes.”

“You said yourself it was your identity; it’s who you are. Who let you throw in the f**king towel on yourself?”

“No one! It was my decision, and everyone around me respected it.” Everyone she’d let stay around her, that was.

“And you made that decision out of fear, didn’t you?”

“There’s nothing wrong with being afraid. Are you going to tell me there’s nothing you’re afraid of?”

“There’s plenty I’m afraid of. But there’s nothing that would stop me from doing what I love to do. Nothing.”

“Then I guess that’s where we’re different,” she said. “I don’t even know why this is an issue. It was years ago. It’s done. I still ride, it’s not like I’m phobic. But no one’s going to make me do what I don’t want to do.”

“Only, you want to do it. You have to want to do it.”

“If I wanted it that bad, I’d do it!” But the betraying tears were filling her eyes. Shit! She didn’t want to call his attention to them by scrubbing them away, but neither did she want to let them spill. She dropped her chin to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut. Go back, go back…