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“Wait, like a divorce?” No fucking way did I want a divorce. Did I want to be married to Jordan? Did I want to be a domestic partner with a dissolution process?

“Less messy than a divorce as long as you don’t own property together or have children. You’d need to have been together for less than five years.”

I sighed. “So really, if I marry my partner, do I get more rights?”

“Not under California law, but under federal law, married partners have more rights.”

“Can I still add him as my emergency contact if we don’t register as domestic partners?”

Ms. Benson nodded. We filled out the paperwork, and she gave me a copy of it along with the information sheet regarding domestic partnerships and the rights of married couples. I turned to her as I leafed through the pages and winked. Ms. Benson smirked and nodded, giving me a lot to think about.

I walked out of headquarters and straight into Battalion Chief Curtis White. “Hey, Ember. What brings you to our neck of the woods?”

“I, uh, came to add an emergency contact to my personnel file, sir. May I ask you a question?”

Chief White grinned. “Sure, Ember.”

“When you met Mrs. White, did you think you’d marry her immediately?”

Chief White cocked his eyebrow before he smirked. “Are you having an existential crisis, son?”

I gulped in air. “I think I am, sir. I love my partner, but I’m not sure if he’s ready for marriage.”

White chuckled. “Have you asked him?”

That was a very good question, and no, I hadn’t.

Chapter Twenty-Two

JD

Kit stood at the island in Thatcher’s kitchen with a big grin on his face at seven-thirty in the morning. He and River were kind enough to come to the blue bungalow to help me with breakfast for Thatcher. Kit taught me to make eggs Benedict, and I wanted it to be perfect.

It was comforting to know they were nearby if I needed someone to change the battery in the smoke detector or whip up a delicious hollandaise sauce for my boyfriend. They were the best friends I could ever hope to have.

“Try it,” Kit said, removing the lid from the blender and handing me a spoon.

I dipped the spoon into the blender where Kit had made the hollandaise sauce, then tasted the most amazing thing I ever had. Kit was a fucking chef without the title. I had no idea why the man was driving a truck for a living instead of winning a James Beard award.

River’s and my attempt at making a frittata the previous day fell quite flat, just like the eggs in it that didn’t fluff up like the picture in the cookbook. It was a sloppy mess when the timer went off, and after reviewing the recipe again, we found that we’d added too much oil and too few eggs. We could write and perform chart-topping music, but apparently, following a recipe was out of our wheelhouse.

Riv stood from the island and turned to his boyfriend. “So, Kit, tell JD what you and Nate talked about yesterday.”

Kit turned to me and grinned. “Uncle Nate wants the band to come to Santa Monica for the weekend. He wants to discuss your future, and you can bring a plus one.”

I turned to River to see him nodding. “Yeah. It’s time we make some decisions, JD.”

I took a swig of my coffee and stared at my best friend. “I think I’ve mentioned this a time or two, but I hate performing. I hate the nerves and anxiety I feel before we arrive at a venue and how I look for the closest exits in case people don’t like our music. I puke nearly every time I have to go out in front of strangers and entertain them. I hate everything about it.

“I love playing for the recording sessions, but doing the music live and being petrified if I fuck up is the most awful feeling in the world. It’s torture, Riv, and I don’t want to do it anymore.

“I want to write songs for others to perform. That’s why I get high before a show. It’s the only way I can play without running off the stage. I feel like I’m a total phony. Nothing about me says I should be on a stage anywhere.”

Riv stepped closer and hugged me. “That’s bullshit, JD. We love you, and you are crazy talented. Look at all of the songs on this album. They’re brilliant, and you wrote them. You bring something to the band that makes us special. But if you’re ready to leave, then we all need to talk about it. After that fucking bus accident, I don’t know that any of us are ready to go on tour again. Will you stay with us until Black Rock? We need you for that.”

“What if I can’t play? I’d feel like a fool just standing there, singing and not playing.”

Before I continued trying to persuade him to support me, I heard the garage door rise and Thatcher’s truck pull into the garage. “Can we table this for a bit? I’ve got a man to impress.”