His eyes stung, from the sweat running into them or the sting of tears, he wasn’t sure. Either way, he felt stupid.
“What the fuck?” he gasped.
“Yeah. Luke. You’re not fine. Talk to us, mate.” Ben removed his hand and Luke sat upright, too ashamed to look his friends in the eye.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. Can barely describe what I’m feeling. My head’s like it’s filled with fucking soup, sloshing around, filled with shit. I don’t know if I’m alright. How can this be so polarising?”
Matt sighed. “Tell us.”
Luke got up and began to pace on unsteady legs. He took a gulp of tepid water. “I can’t think about it all at once or I’ll blow. Can we go get a drink?”
Jase shook his head. “Mate. I don’t think alcohol is going to help beyond letting you forget for a couple of hours. Getting pissed isn’t going to help anything.”
It would. Anything to take the edge off the rawness he felt, to remove the fear at the way panic had descended over him like a dank, black mist. One of his dealers could drop something by when they left the studio. A line and he’d be fine, right?
“What’s going on?” Alex asked.
“What do you want me to say, Alex? You’re here with this stupid fucking intervention because you see the problem. Willow is pregnant. I didn’t plan on ever having kids. She’s American, I live in the UK. She’s been let down by every other fucking man in her life and needed a contract in place to make sure it didn’t happen to her again. This is no one’s fault, and yet I have all this . . . anger, frustration . . . shit, I don’t know.”
“You’ve not yelled at her, have you?” Ben asked.
“Jesus. Fuck. No. Of course not. I might be a dick, but she’s carrying my kid. I’m not going to yell at her. But I need to . . . fuck. I don’t know. I want to tear this place apart with my bare hands. Rip my nails off. Make something hurt. I don’t know. Make me bleed to stop this. FUCK.” His words reverberated off the walls of the studio. Luke took a breath before he continued. “I’m a pressure cooker. I’m doing the right thing. I’m doing what’s expected.”
“You’re taking a million fucking dollars. How hard can it be?” Alex snapped.
Luke stepped up into Alex’s face. “You’re kidding me, right? Have you any idea how hard it is for me right now?”
Alex shoved him away. “How fucking hard? Willow has all the worries you have, plus she has to grow a baby, in a strange country, with a guy saying he doesn’t really fucking want her or her kid. It fucking sucks growing up with a dad who doesn’t want you. You try to figure out how to change yourself, to bury who you are so you can live up to some unreachable expectations. You take up rugby, because it’s his favourite sport, but he never comes to your games. You get great fucking grades, but he doesn’t give a shit. You wear jeans and a hoodie so you can look the fucking same. But it doesn’t matter how you change yourself, he’s never going to want you, you selfish fuck.”
“Alex,” Luke said, his tone softening.
“Don’t fucking Alex me, this is about you. You’re building an unbearable future for your kid. You had a dad who loved the shit out of you. You need to love the shit out of yours. And the mum. No one is asking you to shotgun marry her. But make her your priority and your kid a priority in your life because all this . . .” Alex gestured up and down Luke’s torso. “All this angst and fear and panic and shame doesn’t change that one iota. But you don’t ever want that kid to feel the way I do about my dad.”
Ben threw his arm over Alex’s shoulder, then whispered something into his ear that Luke couldn’t hear. Alex nodded, then gave his brother a weak smile.
Luke took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’ve been thinking about me, not my kid. I just don’t know how to get over the fact that the future I saw for myself just got blown to smithereens.”
“It’s not your kid’s fault. You and Willow did this.”
He thought about the baby. A child. His child.
And beneath all the emotions he felt, there was a flicker of something soft. Something that made him think of his dad. The kind of father he’d been, and he wondered if he had it in him to follow in those footsteps.
And what it would do to his soul to form any kind of real connection with Willow and Cletus before they left him for good. Just like everyone else. His mum. His dad. Even fucking Matt, now Jase was properly back in his life.
“You’re right.”
“You’re giving that baby a job before it gets here,” Alex said. “Its job is to not disrupt your life. It’ll never be able to do that. You’re setting it up for failure. Just love the little one. That’s all it wants, Luke. Everything else, money, opportunities, access, the country it lives in . . . it’s all a bonus. But what they need to know is that both parents love them.”
The words were important, but it was the look in Alex’s eyes, the one that showed all the hurt he’d suffered at the hands of his father, that hit Luke hardest.
Matt put his arm over Luke’s shoulder. “If we start with that. That Cletus needs to know you love him; how do you get there from here? And what can we do to help?”
Luke walked over to the wall by the radiator and lowered himself to the floor. He was suddenly chilled to the bone.
When he looked up, his friends had followed suit. “What do I do?”
Ben tapped the floor twice. “I think you have to separate things. You can’t cling on to things you know you can’t have.” The tone of his voice said it was personal.
“Chaya?” Luke asked.
Ben shook his head. “We’re talking about you. Plan A didn’t work out. Maybe plan B didn’t, either. But pick a letter and build a new plan.”
Alex shoulder-checked his brother. “Go speak to someone, Luke. A professional. Get help figuring out what’s going on.”
Luke studied the floor. The very idea of doing that made him feel ill. He didn’t need some overpaid mind monkey ferreting around in his head. Even sharing with the guys felt like too much.
“Think about what was good about your childhood. What bits of it do you want your kid to experience? Get excited about the good in this,” Matt said.
“You made a fucking life, mate,” Jase said, squeezing his shoulder. “It’s amazing. A fucking miracle.”
Luke looked up at him. “Sounds like you should have one.”
Cerys took that moment to pass the doorway, and Jase yelled, “Sunshine, did you hear that? Luke said we should have babies.”
She backed up and pointed at Jase. “Do not. Get. Baby fever.”
Jase shrugged. “Hey, I’m here for it all with you. You know that.”
Cerys grinned and disappeared.
“Fuck, I love that woman,” Jase blurted.
And perhaps therein was the problem. Perhaps he could have something more with Willow.
But he was sitting in his own way.
7
“What are you reading?” Luke asked her as he packed the last of his things in his bag on the sofa. Cables for his phone and two packs of gum she’d picked up from the store for him while he showered. He’d been chewing a lot of it. She hadn’t asked why, but she assumed it was to do with the changes she’d asked of him. There had been no sign of coke, and while he hadn’t quit smoking completely, he wasn’t smoking around her or in the apartment.