Read Online Mirrored (Follow Your Bliss series Book 4) by Deirdre Riordan Hall - Free Book Online Page A

figured into it. “I have an idea,” Alex said, abruptly turning around on
the sidewalk. The paparazzi following them scattered. “Let’s pay someone a
visit, have dinner, and then get back. I feel like crowding my head with music
tonight.”
    Minutes later, Alex banged loudly on a metal door. “It’s me,”
he hollered. There was no answer. “Wish I still had some of that spray paint,”
he muttered, scanning the ground. He grabbed a piece of rubble from
construction work on the corner. “Can I have your hair tie?”
    Brighton tugged it out of her long hair.
    “Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?”
    She tore the back off a magazine and proffered a sharpie from
her bag. Her look of suspicion cut with impishness.
    Alex scrawled, Last chance Finn. Talk to me or bite it.
    He chucked the rock through a second floor window. On the
opposite side of the street, a passerby looked at him disapprovingly,
    Brighton asked, “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
    Walking away, Alex considered how to explain, but her phone
rang.
    “I totally forgot, today she gets the results,” Brighton said,
fumbling around in her bag.
    “Hi,” she said, breathless with anticipation.
    She stopped on the sidewalk by a row of newspaper boxes. Her
face lit up. “Benign,” she said. Her eyes filled with relief. Then her
expression fell.
    “You can’t do that. Forget that it’s a precaution. That’s horrible.
Mom, no.”
    Alex watched her face sink deeper into itself in layers of
disapproval and disappointment. It showed the kind of devastation that happens
when finding out something that’s better left a mystery. The mask came off;
identities and entire worlds were revealed in the greens of her eyes. “When?”
she said after listening for a time. “I’ll be back then. Okay. Uh, huh. Love
you too.”
    Brighton leaned against Alex. He struggled under a veneer of
consolation, but irritated that someone, from a dark window or around a corner
was capturing that moment on film. He sped her along the sidewalk, ushering her
into one of his favorite restaurants.
    The hostess seated them in a private corner. Brighton
declined a beer.
    “The biopsy came back fine. No cancer,” she said, exhaling.
    “What a relief.”
    “But she’s having a double mastectomy because she’s at such a
high risk for future malignancies.” Brighton swallowed hard.
    “How’d she sound?”
    “Fine. Like it doesn’t matter. She said they were getting too
saggy anyway.”
    Alex tried to suppress a smile, but Brighton caught it. Her
frown turned thin, and then as Alex tried not to laugh, she let out a chuckle,
a valve released for all the tension she’d carried.
    “I’m relieved, but I shouldn’t be laughing.”
    “Claire would so want you to be laughing right now,” Alex
said, assuring her. The woman who’d married El Holmes was not an innocent
flower. She may have preferred the finer things in life, but she was tough, had
a sense of humor, and wouldn’t let a precautionary procedure stop her from
living life vibrantly.
    “You’re right. She said I have to take her bra shopping for
her new boobs. She said she was tired of simple, nude, padded bras. Too much
info.” Brighton made a gagging face.
    “But she’s going to be fine.”
    “And so will I,” Brighton said, her eyes glittering with
tears of relief.

 
    Chapter Fifteen
     
     The next day Alex and Brighton kept to the house, listening
to Chaz’s endless well of stories, looking over memorabilia collected from
years on the road, concerts, fan art, and world travel. But mostly they spent
time in the studio, fooling around on guitars and experimenting with sound.
    “You were lucky,” Brighton said.
    “I am lucky,” he corrected, leaning in for a snog.
    “I mean as a kid, I imagine your dad never told you to keep
it down, be quiet, or stop making such a racket.”
    “No one said that to you either.”
    “Just the neighbors.
    “My gran sure did,” Alex said. His