No, it was Izabel.
He opened up the track on his laptop in the software Cerys had installed, just as she’d taught him over the weekend. When he looked back at the band, they were all staring at him. “Stop looking at me like I grew a fucking horn on my head.”
Alex shook his head. “Just surprised is all.”
The fast drum of Cerys’s intro started . . . he turned his back to the band while it played.
He couldn’t see their faces, their judgement. Not while his pain was pouring out into the studio.
Fear eats me
How can I forgive you?
Let there be a way to get away from you,
But pain is all I get,
And you don’t give a shit,
My mother, where the fuck were you?
Am I him or am I me?
Is his legacy all that I will ever be?
Did burying deep inside of me,
Make me a self-fulfilling prophecy
He kicks me,
I want him to kick you.
Let there be a net for me to slip through.
But pain’s all I get,
and you’re not aware yet.
My brother, where the fuck were you?”
Am I him or am I me?
Is his legacy all that I will ever be?
Did burying deep inside of me,
Make me a self-fulfilling prophecy
So quick to anger,
I mirror you in so many ways,
But if anyone had given a shit,
This wouldn’t be it,
And my life wouldn’t be reduced to this.
So you see,
Am I him or am I me?
Is his legacy all that I will ever be?
Did burying deep inside of me,
Make me a self-fulfilling prophecy
Self-fulfilling prophecy.
The song faded out.
He tried not to worry about the waver in his voice, the imperfection he’d heard in his playing. The crescendo Cerys had been able to create.
Silence filled the room. His heart pounded with sickening thuds in his chest. He blew out a breath, heard somewhere in the recess of his mind Cerys encouraging him to just stand with it. To not give in to the jitters making his fingers vibrate, making his knees shake.
A hand squeezed his shoulder, and he jumped. From the black nail polish and rings on the knuckles, he knew it was Alex.
“Holy shit, Jase.”
Jase nodded. “Yeah.” He let out a breath, and then another. Then he turned to face the others. “I’ve been a complete dick. For a long while. Self-preservation. I’m sorry. I can’t guarantee I’m not going to be a dick again. But I’m working on it.”
Matt leaned forward with one hand rubbing across his forehead.
Look up.
He needed to know Matt was okay.
“Jase,” Ben said as he walked over and hugged him. “Do you feel that way about all of us? Because I’m so fucking sorry, mate.”
Jase shrugged. “Yeah. I do. I know, logically, that’s unfair of me. You were all kids too. But I’d come home some weekends after coughing blood at Dad’s, and you’d all had a fucking amazing time. Down at the park, going to the cinema. Even fucking bowling. I remember how you were all complaining how you wished you’d gone to the footie, and I would have given anything to have gone bowling with you instead of going to my dad’s, getting a slap around the head every time he felt like it.”
Luke remained still, but his body language had changed, his arms no longer folded, the sneer gone. It was a step. It was enough.
He looked to Alex and Ben. “You sort of understand. That feeling of relief when your dad went back to the rigs, the relief you feel when you know he’s on his way out of Manchester. I felt that every other week I had to go stay with him. I’d start gearing up to go to his house on a Wednesday. Dread would creep in on Thursday. I’d probably puke on a Friday. Then not sleep for two nights, keeping one eye open, waiting for him to get drunk or beat me up for no reason. Then Sunday, I’d feel the relief, that home was in sight. Constantly riding that roller coaster of feelings. And Dad threatening to contest Nan keeping me if I breathed a word of it. Said if I told her, she’d fight him for custody and lose because it was my word against his, and he was my father. She didn’t have legal rights to keep me, and he only let her because it was convenient. I knew I couldn’t tell her. And I was fucking six, trying to make sense of why.”
He let out another breath. Letting the words leave his body, taking some of the buried emotions with them.
Matt stood, and without looking at him, crashed through the double doors.
Normally, he’d let him go.
Normally, he’d shout out, call him a pussy or some shit. Perhaps throw a chair in the direction he’d just left. Instead, he followed him. Jase felt Cerys’s concerned gaze as he passed her in the hallway. He gave her hand a quick squeeze, but he kept his eyes on his brother who stepped outside into a snowstorm so violent, it matched the churning in his gut.
Matt turned abruptly. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he yelled.
Jase felt the anguish on Matt’s face like a slap to his own. “Because one word and I’d have been taken from Nan. From you.”
“No. You wouldn’t. We’d have figured it out. Nan would have found Mum.”
“I was six, Matt. Six. He threatened to remove me from the only place I actually felt safe in the world if I told anyone. Would you have risked telling? Two days didn’t seem so bad. It felt like a fucking good deal just to be able to stay with you all for the other twelve days. And yet, I hated you all for it. I hated you, especially. Like, how many times did I beg you to switch bunks? Every other week, and you always said no. You want to know why I asked? Because climbing to the top bunk on a Sunday with bruises was torture. But what could I say?”
Matt shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at the snow.
Jase shivered, and it wasn’t just the cold searing through him. The thought struck him suddenly that he’d ripped a tear in the fabric of his family, created a schism that wouldn’t close. But bridges could be built over it. At least, he hoped they could.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to give Izabel a call. I owe her an apology.”
Matt looked up at that. “I don’t know what the fuck to say to all this. Beyond I’m really fucking sorry.”
“Why? You didn’t beat the shit out of me. You didn’t know. And you couldn’t stop it.”
Matt looked up at the sky and blew out a breath. “I think I did know, though. We couldn’t share a room that small and not know. I tried to convince myself that the bruises were just all the football and rugby Nan and school had us play, but I think I knew. And I’m really fucking ashamed that I did nothing.”
Jase couldn’t figure out whether the painful twist in his heart was a good thing or a bad thing. “We can’t undo it. It’s my truth. It is what it is. I’ve just got to stand in it and step forward.”
Matt grabbed Jase and pulled him into a hug. He couldn’t remember the last time it had happened. “I’m really fucking sorry.”
Jase held on to his brother for a moment. “This isn’t fixed. It’s going to take a lot of work.”
“What can I do to help?”
“I don’t know. I want to make it right with the band. I want to contribute more. Write maybe, play definitely.”