Free A Seductive Melody (The Kelly Brothers Book 5) by Crista McHugh Page A

face to face with the truth, you can never move forward.”
    He stared at her hand in his, wondering how she could touch him after learning so much about him. And yet the small gesture was a lifeline that was keeping him from drowning in his guilt and anger.
    He filed through the past five years, taking each turning point and putting it in perspective. And when he reached the end, he said, “I wish I’d had the balls to tell him no.”
    She ran her thumb over the top of his hand, returning once again to the quiet listener.
    He pulled up his sleeve to show her the tattoo with Ty’s name. “I wish I’d said something sooner. Looking back, there were so many times I saw things getting out of control, and if I hadn’t been so scared that I’d ruin our friendship and the band by speaking up…”
    His eyes burned, and he blinked back the tears. She’d managed to rip him to the core, but he wasn’t ready to cry in front of everyone on the pier. The emptiness gnawed at his chest. “There are just so many things I wish I’d done differently.”
    She nodded and cupped his cheek in her other hand.
    This time, he allowed himself to savor the comfort she offered. He leaned forward until their foreheads touched. In and out, he matched her meditative breaths. Within a minute, his pulse had returned to normal, and the tension in his muscles unraveled. “Thanks, Bec.”
    “I’m not finished.”
    His gut clenched, and he pulled back. She’d already managed to send him to his private hell and brought him back. What more did she have in store?
    Her grip held firm around his hand as she rose. “Come with me.”
    She led him back to the end of the pier, holding his hand the entire time. When they reached the railing, she pulled out a plastic bag of breadcrumbs from her coat pocket. “Here, take some of these.”
    Confusion replaced his trepidation. “Are we going to feed the pigeons or something?”
    “No, we’re going to have our own little Tashlich .” She poured some of the crumbs into his palm before grabbing a handful for herself. “It’s a Rosh Hashanah tradition. Every year after morning services, we go to a river and sprinkle these crumbs into the water.”
    She demonstrated it to him with a pinch of the crumbs. “At the beginning of the new year, we cast off all our sins from the prior year. These crumbs are meant to represent all our faults, our shortcomings, our mistakes. And one by one, we rid ourselves of that burden while asking for forgiveness so we can start over and become better people.”
    She emptied out her palm and turned to him. “Now it’s your turn. Let go of the anger, the guilt, the regret so you can move forward.”
    At first, he wanted to laugh and tell her that sprinkling bread crumbs into the Hudson wouldn’t cure him of the emptiness inside, but with every pinch, his mood lightened. He couldn’t change the past. He couldn’t correct his mistakes. And he couldn’t bring Ty back.
    But he could move forward.
    His palm was empty before he realized it. “Got some more?”
    “Absolutely.” She handed over the bag.
    “Good, because I have a whole lot of shit to get off my back.” He tipped the bag over and shook it until the very last crumb fell into the water. Then he watched them flow away while holding her hand.
    “Feeling better?” she asked.
    He rubbed his chest, noting how the hollowness inside seemed smaller than before. “Yeah.”
    “Good.” She stepped back from the railing. “Ready to go?”
    He nodded, but there was one more thing he needed to do. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the bag of heroin Ace had given him last night. “I don’t need this anymore.”
    He hurled it out into the Hudson. The breeze caught it and whipped it into a few dizzying circles before it hit the water and finally sank beneath the waves.
    “If we hear reports of a massive number of fish washing up on shore, we know who to blame,” she teased, but the admiration in her eyes