The lingering question: If I hadn’t cheated and broken her heart and trust, would it have been me today instead of my brother?
I hear her sniffle, her body starting to tremble against mine, and Jesus, how many different ways can I fuck up one woman?
“Aww, Vi. Shit. Don’t cry, babe. I didn’t mean to upset you, sweetheart.” I spin her around in my arms, and she shakes her head furiously, sucking in ragged breaths and forcing out a watery smile.
“No. It’s fine. It’s just hormones, right?”
Except a tear falls, and I didn’t think I could feel worse. Hurting this woman, again, after all I’ve done to her, is like the ultimate knife to the gut.
She lets out a self-deprecating laugh and asks, “Dance with me?”
“I would love nothing more.”
I take her into my arms, tucking her in against me, my hands on her lower back, hers around my neck. “Just like when we were kids,” she laughs as I start to sway her a bit on the outskirts of the dance floor.
“I remember a lot more grinding, actually.”
She laughs some more, smacking the back of my head. “Always with the dirty mind.”
She has no idea.
I open my eyes and immediately lock on my brother, who is standing by the bar talking to Lyric Rose, but his eyes are on me. And in them, I see so much. So much love for me. For the woman in my arms. So much hope that one day I’ll have this too.
Just not with her.
And that’s what I have to tell myself. Because it’s one thing to know it, another to see it, but finally accepting that the one you love is lost to you forever is a brutal, crushing reality that defies logic and rationalizations.
“I love you, Gus.”
I smile, turning away from my brother so I can kiss his bride on the cheek. “I love you, Vi. Always.”
She pulls back and meets my eyes, her hand sliding along my head until she’s cupping my jaw. “No, Gus. You won’t,” she states simply, but the conviction in her voice pulls me up short. “Not the way you think you will. You don’t love me that way now. The woman who will truly own your heart will tie you up in knots.” She rolls her eyes. “Knowing you, probably both literally and figuratively.” I smirk, despite the serious mood and tone she’s pushing on me. “This woman will consume you. She’ll be the one you fight everything and everyone for. That’s not me, babe. It never was.”
Something in her words, in her quiet truth, hits me hard. Steals the breath from my lungs. Forces a shudder from somewhere deep within.
No one has ever consumed me like that. Not even the woman in my arms.
She smiles brightly up at me, almost as if she’s reading my thoughts. Leaning up on her toes, she plants a small kiss on my lips. “Go find her, Gus. You’re ready.”
Chapter Two
Gus
Two Months Later
* * *
“I can’t sing that song.” I stare at my brother and think, I sorta already knew he was going to say that. But it’s a song I had to write, and writing is not my thing. Singing one isn’t exactly either. It’s why I handed it to him in the first place. Jasper is our lead singer. Our lyricist extraordinaire.
That’s never been me.
I can write the hell out of some notes though.
“It’s shit, right?”
Jasper leans back in his chair, rubbing at the beard he felt the need to grow. I guess when you get married and have a kid on the way, you can start to let things like that go. It’s not the best look on him, but he doesn’t seem to care what I have to say or think on the matter. Viola likes it, and whatever Viola likes, he delivers.
“It’s not shit,” he murmurs absently, staring at the words on the half-crumpled paper in his hands. I think I gave him the right draft. I only wrote ten. “That’s not why I can’t sing it.”
“It’s not shit,” Keith, our drummer, agrees earnestly, swiveling around in the rolly-chair behind the soundboard in our studio in Jasper’s music room. He knocks into it and Jasper growls out his annoyance, leveling him with a what the fuck glare. Keith throws his hands up in surrender, but like a little kid, keeps going the second Jasper’s focus drifts back to the paper.
Honestly, we’ve been sitting here too long without a break, and I think at this point, we’re all just a bit nuts with it.
“Then why can’t you sing it?” I ask, a touch of frustration in my tone as I run my hands across my face and through my hair. I want him to lay it out for me. I’m hoping, praying, he’ll reconsider.
Jasper stares me down as if I’m speaking to him in Russian, which is one of the few languages he actually can’t speak a word of. “How about because it’s a love letter, an apology, and a goodbye, to my wife written by my brother?”
“Right.” I shrug. “So, it’s a little awkward?”
Jasper rolls his eyes, an incredulous chuckle bursting from his chest. “A little?”
“A lot, brother.” Keith points at me with his drumstick. “That’s actually a lot awkward if Jasper sings a song you wrote for Vi.”
“I didn’t write it for Vi. I wrote it for me about Vi.”
I wrote it for me. I wrote it as my goodbye. My I’m sorry I fucked up so many things for you. For me. For us.
Three sets of eyes land on me, and I bluster out a sigh. They’re right. I know they’re right, but this song… I want this song. No, scratch that. I need this song. How can these bastards not know that when they know me so well?
I need to move on already. I’m ready for it, I think. But it’s like it’s not possible unless I put this out there. Set the words and sentiment free. Let them drift off and become the words and notes for someone else to take in and make their own. There is no closure for me otherwise. It’s the only thing I can think of to end this crazy shit that shouldn’t still be crazy shit, so here we are.
I thought maybe writing it would be enough, but it wasn’t. Like I said, I’m not a writer. I’m the farthest thing from a poet. I make music. That’s how my mind makes sense, and until I put this down with the band, it will remain unfinished.
And so will I.
Dramatic? Maybe a bit, but isn’t love dramatic? And heartbreak? Come on, man. Doesn’t get any more dramatic than that.
The fact that I even showed it to my brother, felt comfortable enough to share it with him and the guys, says I’m ready to try to move beyond my now sister-in-law. No more lies between us. About anything. Including this. Especially this.
Viola and I dated for four years in high school. But it’s more than that. I stole her from my brother before they even got started. In my head, in my heart, she was always mine. Even though I knew Jasper loved her as much, if not more, as I did. Then I fucked up the best thing to ever happen to me by cheating on her the second we started to get famous and girls looked in my direction.
Losing her was the mistake of my life.
She went her way and we went ours.
It wasn’t until seven years later, and we were set to go on tour, that all the pieces of my past with Viola Starr fell into place. She’s a special education teacher, and Jasper needed a nanny for his daughter, Adalyn, who has autism. And the moment Viola stepped foot in his house, I saw how they looked at each other. The way they both secretly felt, though they did everything they could to try to hide it.