by Keren Hughes
“Caleigh, I swear to you, the only lie I told you was my name. You know the real me. The way I acted, the things I told you, that was all the real me. I had to lie about my name, I had to.”
“Oh, you had to, did you? And why would that be?”
“To protect myself. I needed to take time away from the band, but I couldn’t go anywhere where people would know me. I dyed my hair. I got on a plane to the smallest, quietest town I could find. What I didn’t foresee was meeting you. You changed everything.”
I suppose I understand his wanting anonymity, but what I can’t get past is the lying to me after we started seeing each other.
“You lied to me, Brent. That’s what I don’t get. Okay, you wanted to protect yourself, but didn’t you think you could trust me to keep a secret?”
“Please, Caleigh, would you just sit and talk to me over a cup of coffee?”
His eyes plead with me, and although I might come to regret it, I find myself giving in. Brent follows me into the kitchen and sits at the breakfast counter as I make some coffee. I add a nip of whiskey to mine and offer him some, but he declines.
As I pull out a stool on the opposite side to him, I look at the breakfast bar—a place where not so long ago, he gave me a part of himself as he made love to me. At least that’s what I thought at the time. Sighing, I cradle my coffee cup between my hands and sit silently, waiting for him to explain.
“It’s not that I didn’t trust you, Caleigh. It’s because I’d already lied for so long and I was scared of the fallout. I knew that something like this would come of it and I didn’t want that to happen.”
“So, what were you planning then? I mean, did you think we were going to live happily ever after? Were you going to legally change your name to Rhett Butler? Where did that name come from in the first place, anyway? I mean, were you telling me the truth about anything at all? How did you think this would go, Brent? The longer this went on, the harder it would have gotten to tell me the truth.”
“First of all, the name came from my mum’s love of the actor. I never lied about that.”
“Wait, it was your name on Tinder, so that means you planned to lie all along.”
“Yes, my profile was under Rhett. But that was because before I met you. I used the app to hook-up. I’m not proud of it, and I’m not defending that stupid decision. I’m an asshole who lied about his name. But I swear, when we met in that airport, I-I haven’t used the app since.”
“You wanted anonymity from fans, I get that. I really do. But I’m not some groupie that would have hung you out to dry. I wanted you, Brent, the real you. And I thought I had the real you. But you lied to my face over and over.”
“I know. Trust me, Caleigh, nobody hates me more than I do for that. You were right. The longer it went on, the harder it got to turn to you and say ‘Oh, by the way, I’m not who you think I am. I’m actually Brent Ryder’. I tried. I really did. I even told you one day, but you’d fallen asleep in my arms.”
“Oh, so because you told me when I was asleep, that makes it okay?” I seethe.
He flinches at the sharpness in my tone.
“I’m not saying that’s okay, Caleigh. I was just meaning that I did try to tell you. I didn’t wait until you were asleep. I lay there with you in my arms and I told you. It was only afterwards that I realised you were asleep.”
“So, if you’d plucked up the courage to tell me then, why did you chicken out when I woke up?”
“Because I looked at you and saw a woman I was falling in love with.”
“That makes it worse, Brent. You knowingly lied to a woman you profess to love.”
“I wish like hell I could turn back time and start over again, Caleigh, I truly do. But I can’t. All I can do is tell you how sorry I am. I want to make things right with you, but I don’t know how.”
“I don’t think you can,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. My heart feels like it’s broken into a million fragments. It’s like he took a sledgehammer to it.
“Caleigh, please. Please let me try. I don’t know how to fix it, but I want so badly to try.”
“You’re leaving, Brent. This isn’t your home. You already have somewhere far from here. Even if I could forgive you—which I’m not saying I can—then we couldn’t make things work. You’re a famous singer, part of an extremely famous band—a huge part of that band—and you can’t juggle that with a long-distance relationship. It’s just not possible.”
“I would find a way to make it work, Caleigh. I would do anything to show you how much you mean to me. I really mean it when I say I love you. You’re everything to me, and I want to prove that to you somehow.”
I scrub a hand over my face as a sigh escapes me. I want him so much that it physically hurts. But if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people that lie.
“You can’t, Brent. Look, it pains me to say this, it really does, but I can’t be in love with someone I don’t trust. Without trust, there’s nothing.”
A stray tear rolls down my cheek and I wipe it away with my sleeve. I take a large gulp of my now lukewarm coffee and am grateful for the whiskey to help steady my nerves.
“I will earn back your trust, Caleigh. I will do anything it takes. Anything.”
“I’m sorry, Brent, but no. It will never work. Whatever we had—it’s over. We have to accept that and go our separate ways. You’ve hurt me, irreparably.”
“Caleigh, I … I’m sorry. Truly sorry. I don’t know what to do here. I’ll get on my knees and beg if that’s what it takes. I’m not beyond swallowing my pride here.”
“Brent, please.”
I sigh and stand up. Putting my cup in the sink, I take a moment to gather myself. Then I take a deep breath and turn to face the man I’ve loved and lost. My heart is broken, and I don’t have anything left to give him. Trust is the most important part of any relationship, and I can’t trust a man who didn’t put any trust in me. If he’d told me from the start, or even if he’d just confessed before this shitstorm, I probably could have forgiven him.
It’s not the fact that he lied to protect his true identity. I could possibly have gotten over that, but now we’ll never know. It’s more the fact that after we started seeing each other, I trusted him to never hurt me. I fell for him and I fell hard. But he didn’t trust me with his secret, like I was some groupie that he hooked up with in the past. A woman to use and discard.
“Caleigh,” he says as he stands and walks towards me.
I put my hands out to stop him coming any closer. He sinks to his knees and looks up at me, his eyes full of sorrow, his handsome face crestfallen.
My heart feels like it’s trapped in a vice with a million hot needles sticking out of it. I want so much to forgive him—I could forgive the lies because I know he had to protect himself. But there’s no trust. He broke that bond and it’s beyond repair. I thought we had a future. I was going to introduce him to Hardin properly, as someone I was dating. Now I’m truly glad I didn’t because whilst I might be able to understand his reasons, I couldn’t forgive him for hurting my child.
I’m not about to allow my son to get hurt. I’m his mum, and I would protect him with my life. It hurts to know that we could have been happy, the three of us. And it hurts to know I’ll never have that. Maybe never again with anyone else because I don’t know where to begin piecing my heart back together now.
“Caleigh, please. I love you so much it physically pains me to know that I’ve hurt you. I want to put that right. I can’t make it go away, but I can spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Just give me one chance, please? I swear on my life I will never let you get hurt again, by anyone.”
My heart stutters in my chest, and I swear to god it’s stopped beating.
“I can’t, Brent. Please, please just leave. Go back to your life and forget I exist. I forgive you, okay. I forgive the fact you lied. I just can’t forgive how long you let it go on for, how close you let us get without allowing me to know the real you. Yo
u should have trusted me with your secret. I would never have said a word to anyone. But you treated me like I was some … some groupie that you’d use until you left town.”
I watch as the first tear falls down his cheek, and my heart breaks a little bit more. I don’t want to lose him. But I guess you can’t lose what you never really had.
Slowly he stands, and he wipes his tears away. I want so much just to hug him. To hold him and tell him everything will be alright. But I won’t placate him with lies.
“For what it’s worth, Caleigh, you were always more to me than that. I’m truly sorry that I made you feel like less.”
My arms ache to hold him, but I stand firm, resolute that this is for the best. I only offer him a small nod.
“I love you, Caleigh Rae Flynn. I always will. You are the first woman I have ever fallen in love with, and you will be the last. I know it’s all of my own making, but my heart is broken beyond repair and I will never be able to give it to anyone else. No matter how far in the future, you will always be the keeper of my now broken heart.”
With those parting words, he turns and walks away. I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can’t tell him not to go. All I can do is watch his retreating form.
As the front door closes behind him, I slide to the kitchen floor and sob like I’ve never sobbed before.
Chapter Fourteen
Brent
Six weeks later
“I am sick of looking at your fucking moping face. Would you just cheer the hell up, you miserable shit?” Ash says as he throws his towel at me.
I watch him walk around naked, not giving a fuck who has to look at his junk.
“I’m entitled to feel however the fuck I please. Now would you please put some goddamn clothes on? Have you no shame?”
“Nah, man, I don’t care if you have to see my naked ass. I know it’s not like you wanna fuck me, is it?!”
“I wouldn’t touch you with someone else’s cock mate, never mind my own.”
“Aw you know you love me really,” he says with a grin that’s pure cheese.
“Like a hole in the head.”
“You need one of them. Stop your goddamn moping over Caleigh.”
“Don’t,” I warn.
“I’m just saying, man.” He holds his hands up, giving me a view of him full frontal. Just what I always wanted. Jesus, why does this jerk think he can walk around naked in my house?
“Yeah? Well, don’t just say shit. You hear me? You don’t get to mention her name.”
“Lighten up, bro. It’s been six agonising weeks of this bullshit.”
“Just because you wouldn’t know love if it bit you on the ass, that doesn’t mean that I don’t know how it feels.”
“You just need to get laid. Best way to get over one woman is to get under another.”
He finally wanders off to get some clothes. I hope. Leaving me to ponder his words. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I need to get laid. What can it hurt at this point? It’s not like Caleigh will take me back anyway.
I’ve tried to text, but I always chicken out at the last second. I’ve tried to call, but I can never seem to press the button. I got her voicemail six million times in a row during the first week, so I should get the message. But while my head knows that, my heart doesn’t agree. My cold, dead heart, the heart I annihilated by lying. It’s amazing it can feel anything right now, but it does.
“Maybe now we’re coming to the end of the tour, you can find some pussy worth sticking around for,” Ash says as he walks back in, thankfully fully covered.
“Uh-huh,” I grunt, noncommittally.
“Seriously dude, I am telling you—”
“Yeah, I heard you the first time. Get laid.”
“No woman is going to want you with that sour face though, so, would you put a smile on it? I mean, it wouldn’t kill you. If you have to, just fake it. They do say ‘fake it ’til you make it’.”
I can’t stand his crap any longer, so I fake a huge smile before hitting the shower.
***
“I still can’t believe you hit Gordon,” Jude says as we set up.
“Dude, that was weeks ago,” Ash chimes in as he sets up his amp.
I know that people normally have other people who set their stuff up, but the four of us have always done it together. It’s just something we do, because nobody knows our instruments like we do.
“Gordon still hasn’t let it go though, has he?” Evan asks of no one in particular, “He’s like a dog with a bone, but he has a right to be when someone fractures his jaw.”
“Seriously, man, can you just leave it? Gordon agreed to drop it because I came back for the end of the tour.”
It wasn’t easy, but I’d got Gordon to admit that he’d acted poorly towards Caleigh, calling her things he shouldn’t have. We talked on the flight home and he’d apologised when I spilled my guts and told him I really loved her. I’d apologised for hitting him and got him some ice to ease the swelling. Then we’d settled our differences like men, drinking whiskey and talking about the end of the tour and how we had to “go out with a bang”.
Gordon admitted he was never really going to sue me, that he’d only said it to try and get me back on tour. He also said if someone had spoken about a woman that he loved in the way he spoke about Caleigh, he would have sucker-punched them. He admitted he deserved what he got. What he didn’t know until later was that his jaw was actually fractured.
No wonder my hand stung like hell afterwards. I hadn’t even noticed the swelling of my knuckles until he pointed it out and had me ice them. Maybe he did that because he cared, maybe it was because I wouldn’t play the guitar well with a swollen hand. Either way, I wrapped my hand in a bandage to hold the ice in place while we sat and drank a couple of whiskeys—the good stuff, of course.
“Tonight has to blow the roof off boys. It’s the last night, and we still have a lot of making up to do with the fans. Well, I say we, but I really mean you,” Jude says, pointing a finger at me.
After a soundcheck, we head off to grab a bite to eat. We end up at an American diner, where I order a short stack complete with crispy bacon, scrambled eggs and maple syrup. Every bite reminds me of Caleigh. I sigh in frustration, which earns me jeers from the boys before I suck it up and finish my pancakes in silence.
“You ever gonna get over this shit?” Evan asks quietly as we exit the diner.
“Don’t think I can, bro. I fucked up. I hurt her, and that hurts me. It kills me to know I am the one that pieced her back together and then tore her apart again—her words, not mine.”
The only time I managed to pluck up the courage to text Caleigh was when Gordon and I were in the rental car on the way to the airport in Pedmore. I didn’t think I’d get an answer, but I did, and she’d answered me saying exactly that.
“Think you can win her back?”
“Not in this lifetime,” I answer with a shrug.
“Then I guess you gotta move on, my friend.”
“I know, but it’s hard man. I’ve never been in love before.”
“Then woo her back with a grand gesture like they do in those cheesy Hallmark films. Watch a few romcoms for inspiration or something. Dudes always fuck up, but they always win the girl back. Every. Single. Time.”
“Ev, that’s just make believe. Nobody would pay to watch a film without a happy ending. But in real life, there isn’t always a happily ever after. Sometimes, you fuck up the most perfect thing in your life and there’s no going back.”
“For what it’s worth, man, I’m really sorry.”
He claps me on the shoulder, and I give him a wry smile.
“It’s my own fault, bro. I fucked up.”
“Happens to the best of us.”
“You married the love of your life. You’ve got it made with Julia.”
“Believe it or not, there was a while there where I thought we wouldn’t make it.”
“Really? You two always seem so puke-inducingly loved-up.”
“We hit a rough patch when we were trying for a baby. Julia got frustrated that we couldn’t get pregnant. We paid to go private for tests and everything, and they all came back fine. So the doctors told us to try a little longer before thinking about more drastic measures like IVF.”
“And did you?”
I can’t believe I didn’t know this about one of my best friends.
“We did. We tried and tried, but I have to admit, I was sick of it. I was ready to throw the towel in. She was always stressing over when she was ovulating, and I felt like sex had become a chore rather than something we enjoyed.”
“But you have Jessa now.”
“Yeah, because we stopped trying so hard. I’d had enough and I quit playing the game the way we had been. I refused to sleep with her, believe it or not,” he adds with a chuckle. “One night, we both got angry, drank a little, screamed and shouted a little, then made up with freaking hot, angry sex. That’s the night Jessa was conceived. I told her that if I’d known that’s all it would take, I’d have got drunk and had dirty, angry sex with her a lot sooner.”
I can’t help but laugh, and Ev lets out a hearty chuckle.
“And you’re thinking of trying again once we get home from this tour, right?”
“Well, if I can trust you to keep a secret,” he says in a hushed tone, “we’re actually expecting again. She’ll be due in five months.”
“What?” I ask a little too loudly, making the other boys look around at us, their heads comically on a swivel.
“Keep it down, man. We were going to tell you all tomorrow once this tour is over. That’s why Julia has invited you all over for a barbecue. Don’t worry, Gordon won’t be attending. Apparently, he’s needed elsewhere, so it will just be us boys, Julia and Jessa.”
“Congratulations, Papa,” I whisper, managing not to draw the attention of the others this time.
***
“Hey Jessa,” I coo at the gorgeous little girl in Julia’s arms.
Her long blonde hair is just like her mum’s, but her eyes are all her dad’s. She really is the most beautiful little angel.