“Why not?”
“We live apart. We want different things. I want to do something, have a career, I don’t know—”
“What do you have in mind?”
She smiled. “I might go back to university and do an advanced degree. A doctorate if I can get sponsorship.” She could study at Uppsala and try to revive her interpreter career with less hard-line political deaf people. She could apply for a scholarship or a grant, and that meant she’d be local, easy for her post-op checkups and tests.
He traced his finger along her cheek. “You’re a clever one. What do you want to study?”
“History,” she said immediately. “Specializing in the history of Scandinavia. Working on ancient languages.”
“Of course Scandinavia. Where else?” Water rained between them, and it was like looking at him from a distance through a curtain. “I’d sponsor you.”
She couldn’t make out if he’d said “I’d” or “I’ll”, but she didn’t like to think of it. She decided to make it flippant, because she didn’t want that thought impeding what she meant to ask him. “Is ‘sponsor’ a new word for it?” She made a grab for his cock, but he laughed and turned sideways, picked up the shampoo. “We’d better get out of here or we’ll turn into prunes.”
“I like prunes.”
“So do I, when they look like you.” He leaned forward and kissed her, the rain sprinkling their faces. Then he poured shampoo over them both and she spluttered. Laughing, he worked up the lather on her hair, while she did the same for him. So domestic, but infinitely precious.
She’d never wanted a photographic memory more, so she could mentally turn the pages and remember everything about this glorious time.
They didn’t speak much above quiet murmurs and gentle endearments. Nothing too close. He seemed to pick up that she didn’t want anything too emotional tonight.
Not until they were in bed. He held her close, stroked her skin, which he’d pampered by smoothing lotion over it, as tender now as he’d been ferocious before. She purred and lifted herself up on one elbow so she could look down into his face. He appeared perfectly relaxed, quietly happy, his lips tilted in a sated smile. He lost the smile at her next words.
“You don’t wear those things in your ears onstage.”
His answer came too pat, too obvious for her liking. “They’re monitors, to let you know what you’re playing. I don’t need them.” He grinned, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes. “I make more noise than anyone else.” He slid his hand down her body to cup her buttocks. He could get both in his big hand. He slipped one long finger between her legs to lazily tease her. Sabina recognized distraction techniques when she saw—or felt—them, although she had to fight not to give in.
“They’re also ear protectors, aren’t they? People who go to a lot of concerts can lose some of their hearing. So band members must need it even more. Why don’t you wear them?”
He smoothed back her damp hair from her face and she thought he wouldn’t answer. His finger stilled between her legs. “I don’t know.”
“I think I do.”
He removed his finger, slid his hand back up to her waist. “Tell me.”
“You’re tempting fate.” It made sense. Horrible sense. Slowly, a realization was slotting into a place in her brain, making the jumble of things she knew about Hunter into a bigger picture. Not yet, she wasn’t there yet, but she was getting there. His attitude toward deafness was far more complex than she’d imagined. But first, she needed to stop him risking his own hearing.
“Explain.” This was the Hunter Ostrander the public knew—laconic, cool, his face completely devoid of expression.
She swallowed. She couldn’t stop now. “Your mother has been deaf from birth and the doctors never discovered what was wrong with her. Your aunt is deaf, isn’t she?”
He jerked a nod.
She touched his ear lightly and he moved away as if she’d hurt him. “Please don’t. Keep your hearing, Hunter.”
“Or what?” He glared at her fiercely as if she’d made a threat.
“Or nothing. I’m only asking you. I remember what it was like to hear. I got an ear infection when I was nearly ten. A month short of my tenth birthday. By the time I reached double figures, I was legally deaf. But I remember things. Music, some Mozart and some pop. And Led Zeppelin, because my father was crazy about them.”
She grinned but received no answering smile. “I had a cat. He only died five years ago, and I remembered what he sounded like right to the end. My friend had a dog. And traffic, I remember traffic. I wake up with the sound sometimes.” He still watched her. “I think I dream sound.” She cupped his cheek, let her finger rest close to his earlobe. “I’m just asking, Hunter. Don’t risk it. Wear the monitors.” He said nothing.
“I want to hear you.” She wondered if she’d gone too far, confessing this part. “That’s why I made up my mind tonight. I missed so much. I watched the audience. They adore you. Some were just sitting, listening. Some were rocking out. You gave them a lot tonight.”
He grimaced. “Nearly three hours. We get carried away, and if the crowd’s good, we feed off them. Musical vampires.” One corner of his mouth went up in a brief half-grin. “It’s like a dare, leaving out the monitors. I didn’t like them at first because they’re very much like old-fashioned hearing aids. Each member of the band gets his or her own feed, so they can hear themselves properly, but I took mine out from the start. It does help me blend in.”
“But you could have a general mix? Just turn the sound down?”
“I could. They block out everything from outside.”
“Would you choose to go blind or deaf?” she asked. An old, old game.
He answered without thinking. “Blind,” he said. Then nothing more, just watched her.
Her turn to smile. “Nearly everybody says ‘deaf’. But I believe you. Music is your life, isn’t it? It must have been terrible sometimes, growing up in that house.”
His shrug told her what she wanted to know. He’d found it hard and, being male, he denied it for a long time. “It wasn’t so bad. I had good headphones and earbuds, the kind that don’t leak sound. We were never poor. My mother inherited money and made more.”
“Your father left early, didn’t he?”
The deep pain left his eyes then. Clearly that wasn’t much of an issue with him. “I never knew him, more than a name on my birth certificate. With a woman like my mother, I can understand why he didn’t stick around. He was hearing. He must have felt left out. She has always known what she wanted, and it wasn’t him.”
“Or you.”
Only when she’d said it did she realize how true that was. Hunter had been an extra, an unwanted presence. When Sabina had spent time at the house, she’d known that, seen it. He’d come in from university and his mother would say welcome home and then get on with her work. By then he must have known how little interest she took in his life, because he’d leave the room. They never spent much time together, always had separate lives, but at the time she’d thought it a factor of his growing up and moving away. Not that it had been like that his whole life.
How she felt for the lonely little boy he must have been, and how proud she was of the man he’d become.
Chapter Eight
“She may come back with me,” Emmelie said.
“Good of you,” Hunter answered. Otherwise he’d have paid for Sabina to stay somewhere. She’d received an email that morning saying the operation was on and giving her the date. A week away. A little week. They were still in shock.
“She may stay as long as she needs to, of course, but I can’t offer her much in the way of work if the operation works and she becomes hearing.”
Stockholm was an hour away by road from Uppsala, and staying there post-op would be best for Sabina. Already guilt had kicked in, that Hunter would have to leave on the tour. He’d arranged to fly in for the operation and for ten days afterward, then he’d have to leave agai
n. He’d had to fight Chick for that concession. It had led to his first argument with the man, but once Hunter had made it clear he’d leave the band rather than miss Sabina’s procedure, Chick had given in.
Now, facing his mother in her hotel room before she left for Stockholm, he wondered if he was really so sure about staying with the band. Leaving Sabina to her care felt—wrong. His mother would do her best to dissuade Sabina from having the procedure, but what could he do? And his Sabina was strong enough to know her own mind.
“Mother, you have done a lot of good for a lot of people, but by denying their right to have these operations, you do them wrong.”
Her face, always cold, turned to ice. “It implies that there is something wrong with us. There is not. Children are considered for this operation and the cochlear implant too young, before they have a chance to learn what the world can offer them. Who can say that the implant will work for a lifetime? If it fails, it leaves adults stranded, without the ability to converse or live. We are not impaired. We are different.”
He paused, staring at her. Yes, put like that, she had a point. He’d always appreciated the deaf community, always considered himself a part of it in a strange way. “When I was a child, I always felt awkward, the one out of place. Who is the impaired, the disabled then?” He knew he was becoming more agitated, but didn’t care. She should know this.
She moved away, pretending to check her vanity case, which meant he couldn’t talk to her. When she glanced up again, he was ready. “I left because I wasn’t wanted. You took no notice of me.”
“You still sound like a sulky child.” She turned her back on him to go to the bathroom.
He wasn’t leaving, not until she’d talked to him. She’d never been this open with him before, never. He might not have a chance like this again. When she returned with a toothbrush, her eyes widened slightly, as if surprised to see him here still.
“I’m still here, Mother.”
She dropped the toothbrush into her toilet bag, which was in the case, and then answered him, “I’ve told you.”
“No you haven’t. Tell me why you turned your back on me. Just as you did now, all my life you’ve done that. Turned away when I tried to ask you anything too personal. We’re strangers, Mother, and we shouldn’t be.” No longer angry, just sorry they had never had the relationship he yearned for as a child, one he learned not to ask for after repeated rejections. The man could rationalize but the boy couldn’t. Boys shouldn’t cry. Not as much as he had. “Tell me again.”
With the sigh of someone long-suffering, she faced him and signed, slowly, as if he were a beginner. He guessed she hoped to make him mad, and then he’d walk out. It had worked before. Not now. Not fucking now it wouldn’t.
“The deaf have a culture that we should be proud of and preserve. Children are being taken from their deaf parents by the hearing world, families are separated, broken apart. They don’t learn how to communicate.”
“I did.”
“Yes, you did.”
He vaguely remembered times when she’d helped him, tenderly forming his fingers into the right shapes so he could talk to her. Yes, he could see her point. “But you don’t communicate with me. It’s always the other way around. It always was. Mother, I love what I do. I learned the drums so that you could at least share something. Last night, you didn’t even look at me.”
“I’m proud of what you do.”
She’d never said that to him before. His fingers stilled and he stared at her, shocked. “You are?”
“I’ve always been so. My son, you haven’t needed my help. You’ve always made your own way. When you were small it became obvious to me that you wanted a career in music.” She paused and her mouth showed the shadow of a smile. “I couldn’t help you with that. I’m profoundly deaf. I hear nothing.”
“You could have showed an interest. That hurt.” He’d never told her that, feeling that he had to stand in his own corner, return indifference with indifference. She’d sometimes pushed him away, told him to go because she was too busy for him. He’d never forget that.
“I’m sorry. Better you learn sooner that our paths wouldn’t lie in the same direction.” This time her smile was more definite. “You’ve turned out a successful man, and one I don’t have to worry about. Other people need my help more.”
Abruptly, he signed, “I am proud of you too.”
Her eyes glistened brightly and then she blinked. Tears? Unshed but still there. They would go when he said what he had to say. He lifted his hands again. “I wanted to talk about Sabina.”
“I said I would take her in.”
“She’ll need more than that. I plan to come home when I can, but I need to know she won’t receive the same treatment I did as a child. She needs someone to talk to. If you can’t help her, then I’ll find her somewhere nearer to the hospital.” Being in the same house as a number of other people, all of whom chose not to concern themselves with her wouldn’t be the kind of therapy Sabina needed.
“She’s an adult and she can sign in several languages. I fail to understand why she should wish for anything else, especially when if this procedure fails it will mean the loss of her peripheral hearing.” Emmelie’s mouth firmed. “An experimental operation may not work. It may not last. I advised her to at least wait until the operation becomes routine, if it ever does. I can’t believe it’s good for her. However, I will offer her a place to stay, and she can talk to us about it.” She paused. “I understand there’ll be no evidence outside, other than a small shaved patch by each ear and some stitches she can easily cover up.”
“She won’t hide it.” His Sabina faced problems head-on. She wouldn’t lie to make things easier for herself.
Shaken to the core, he realized what he’d thought. His Sabina?
Yes. He wouldn’t deny it. No lying. He wouldn’t push her, however, not when she had so much to concern her. His Sabina. Whatever else they meant to each other, this would remain.
“Promise me you will not isolate her.”
His mother nodded. “Not deliberately. If she comes out of her room, she’ll be welcomed.” A dig at him, he presumed, because after he’d realized he wasn’t the most important thing in Emmelie’s life, he’d spent a lot of time in his room listening to music and reading.
That was all she’d give him, he knew. So he rang for someone to help her with her luggage and kissed her on both cheeks. Her perfume coiled around his senses. Sweet but not cloying, it reminded him of times long gone when she’d held him on her lap, and times when she’d been too busy for him. Sweet and sour, good and bad.
*
Back in their room, he found Sabina in a similar state of readiness. She’d travel to Iceland to see her people, then with her mother to Stockholm a few days before the operation.
Without hesitation, he walked across the room and took her in his arms. He loved the way she nestled back and circled her arms around him as if she belonged.
He drew back so she could see him talk. “My mother’s just left.”
She went on tiptoe and kissed him gently. “How do you do it?”
“What?”
“Stay friends with her.” Today her voice had a rough edge, as if something had strained it. All that screaming she’d done last night, no doubt. Their last night together for some time, so they’d made it count.
“You’re smiling?”
“I was thinking of something else.” He kissed her, savoring her sweet lips against his own. “You.”
He was close enough to feel the change in her body heat and to see the flush mantling her cheeks. So tempting. But when he ran his hands around her waist, looking for a way in, she slapped them away. “The car will be here soon. They’re ringing up when it arrives.”
“I could take you. Chick can find me a car.”
She shook her head. “It’s no trouble to get a taxi.”
“It means we can spend a few minutes longer with each other.”
This time he sa
w the glimmer of tears in her eyes. Fuck, he’d made two women cry in an hour. He was losing his touch. Used to sharing a good time and moving on, he rarely saw tears. “Don’t. I’ll be back for the operation. Nothing will keep me away.”
*
“Nothing” turned out to be a bombshell from Chick.
Still raw from the separation, Hunter was staring out the plane window on the way to Copenhagen, watching clouds when Chick cleared his throat. “A moment, please, gang.”
The body of the plane held the core members of the band and staff. They took a small group of skilled craftsmen with them and employed others at each gig, but with every leg of the tour the entourage seemed to get bigger.
He looked up from the magazine he hadn’t been reading. Next to him, Riku closed his laptop with a sharp click and leaned back, folding his arms. The seats on this plane were all first class, plenty of room with small tables between. They could be rearranged for meetings, sleeping or even conferences, but right now they were ranked side by side, all facing forward.
Chick glanced to the back of the plane. “This is confidential band business. Sorry.”
Presumably that was for the flight attendants, who, employed solely for this trip, weren’t regular staff. He waited and Hunter heard the doors close.
Riku sniggered and Hunter shot him a sharp glance. Riku raised a thin, black brow but didn’t say anything else.
“Yeah,” growled someone else. Jace. “Important business like sleeping.”
“Something keep you awake, Jace?” V yelled from her seat at the back.
“Shut the fuck up,” she got in reply, but she only chuckled at the less than aggressive tone.
Chick stood at the front of the plane, waiting, his frown deepening. Eventually, when the chat had subsided to a murmur, he began to speak. “We’re on our way to Copenhagen.”
“Talking of the bleeding obvious,” Zazz, sitting behind Riku and Hunter, muttered.
“Yeah, just in case you’d forgotten or you’re too high to remember.”
Zazz grunted. Hunter knew Zazz never got high, whether drink or drugs, but he often behaved as if he were flying. Part of his thing.
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