Emmelie took a seat in one of the wide chairs and motioned to the sofa. He took it, feeling more like a little boy than he had in years. “I thought you were in China,” she signed.
“I came back after the concert to see Sabina.” His fingers flew and he hardly had to think about switching. If Sabina wanted someone for her project, he could do it and then some.
“How is she?”
“She can hear.”
Emmelie tsked. “I know that, I spoke to her earlier today.”
“With Skype?”
“Texted.” Of course. His mind flashed back to the concert, when she’d spent most of the time texting. Not listening to him. All his life, he’d taken that from her. No more. “Why didn’t you watch me when you came to Malmö?”
“What? Oh, that.” She dismissed it as if it meant nothing. “I’m profoundly deaf. I can’t hear. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Yes of course,” he signed, his expression bitter. “It’s what drove my life until I left home. Eventually I couldn’t bear it anymore.”
She raised her brows. “Couldn’t bear what?”
“Being the only hearing person in the house. I couldn’t bring my friends from school here, and when I visited them, I found myself signing to their parents. Signing! They laughed, they jeered.”
“You fought back, I hope.”
“To survive. They weren’t laughing at you, they laughed at me. I learned and then I grew. Six inches in one year.”
She smiled. “I remember that. Suddenly you towered over me.”
He didn’t return the smile. Memories of that time still hurt if he let them. “I was alone. You were too busy for me, I was an oddity at school.”
She shrugged. “You think you were the only one?” Her pale-blue robe almost fell open with her agitation and she paused to draw the edges together and refasten it. “I had hearing parents, although they could sign because my aunt was deaf too. Still, they didn’t know how to cope or what to do.”
“You repeated that with me.”
She signed faster now, always a sign of increased agitation. “You learned. What was I supposed to do with you? How could I teach you or care for you?” She paused, still holding her hands up, staring at him. “I did what I could.”
“Employed people.”
“You needed someone to teach you to speak. I couldn’t do that.”
Time to tell her the truth. He’d never told her before because it left him vulnerable. She was so strong, she’d have taken advantage, added it to her armory. But now he had his own armory—Murder City Ravens, the music they made and the consequent wealth and influence. He would speak and people listened these days. “I thought you didn’t want me.” It sounded so pathetic, so needy, but it was the truth.
“I loved you more than life itself but I was afraid.”
“Of me?” Did she take him for a fool? “You were never afraid of anything in your life.”
“Not until my husband left me. Not until I had a child who needed more than I could give him, one I was terrified of failing. So I put my mind to other things. You managed perfectly well. You never told me if you were afraid so I thought you were not. You never came to me with problems, outside of your homework.”
A memory came to him, of sitting in her office with his algebra homework, the only time she ever paid him personal attention. He’d pretended to be much worse at algebra than he was just to get something from her. That was until he hated his own neediness and decided that if she didn’t want him she wouldn’t have him.
“You’ve always been stubborn and independent,” she signed, smiling. “You were probably better that way.”
It made her sound like a saint. And yet she had abandoned him to caregivers and professional helpers. The cook had fed him and someone had always been there to make sure he came to no harm. “You didn’t care.”
“I told you; I was scared, I didn’t know what to do with you. Then I found people I could really help.”
“Why didn’t you let my grandparents care for me?” They were good to him, loved him. He saw them as frequently as they could manage, and more than once they’d offered him a home.
“Because they told me I couldn’t cope.”
She didn’t have to say any more. Anyone who told him that, he proved them wrong. He’d always done it but never realized he’d got that trait from her. He’d have done the same.
Now he thought back, he could remember gentle suggestions that he might be too much for her. The pieces began to fall into place. While he couldn’t erase his miserable childhood, he understood it better. Under it all, he suspected Emmelie was never cut out for motherhood. Even if she’d been hearing, she’d probably have farmed out much of his upbringing. She had a coolness he didn’t think was entirely due to her deafness. But she’d always faced problems dead-on, and he was definitely a problem. Something for her to solve.
She got to her feet. “You want a coffee?”
“Yes please.”
“Decaf or ordinary?”
“Ordinary.” Even that simple exchange made him realize she didn’t know him at all. A notion crossed his mind. Could they start again, become friends? She’d probably function much better as a friend. But then he realized, no. Too much had happened, and even more not happened between them. He respected her more, understood some of the decisions she’d made but it didn’t make those decisions any better.
Awareness stirred deep inside him. What had he done? Was he more like his mother than he’d imagined?
She brought in the coffee with sugar and cream separately. She didn’t even know how he liked his coffee. He added cream and stirred. Usually he took it black but he got the feeling the stronger shot of caffeine would make the growing sense of agitation inside him worse.
The conversation with his mother had projected his concentration elsewhere, and now he could think of Sabina without the red, unreasoning cover of rage obscuring what he did and thought. He put down his cup. “Sabina said she might come here.”
“I’m expecting her soon.”
“What do you want with her?” No way would his mother not ask for something in return. It was the way she was made. Look for opportunities in everything. If they didn’t exist, create them.
“I want to talk to her,” his mother answered readily. “I want to know what the operation was like.”
“You want it?”
She shook her head vigorously, her hair loose enough to become ruffled by the movement. He’d rarely seen her without hairspray welding her hair to her head either. He’d seen Sabina more than once that way, and always found the sight adorable. The thought that he might never see her that way again pierced him with longing.
He’d worked something out that would mean they could be together, and arrogantly assumed she’d fall in with his plans when she had plans of her own.
“When do you expect her?”
“Tomorrow or the day after, if they agree to let her go. She is calling me.”
Texting.
He couldn’t bear it, not seeing Sabina, not having the right to touch her and kiss her. His temper left in a cloud of regret and sorrow. At the least he should apologize.
He hadn’t realized his mother was watching him so intently. He should have known better. She watched everyone that way. “You lost your temper, didn’t you?”
“Sorry?”
“What did you do? Ask her to marry you, try to sweep her off her feet? Sabina isn’t the kind of woman who wants that. Didn’t you know that?”
He finished his coffee, pondered his reply. “I do now.” Because of his temper, he’d decided to adopt the quiet, laconic personality in public. It forced him to think. After a few regrettable incidents in London, which lost the bands he’d belonged to their gigs and then got him fired, he decided he needed a way to give himself time.
It hadn’t helped him with Sabina.
He dropped his chin, put his hands to his temples and wailed in despair, “God, Mamma, I’v
e really screwed up. I need her so much. What the hell can I do?”
Chapter Sixteen
Sabina stood on the platform at the railway station knowing her life would change. She just didn’t know whether it would be for better or worse.
She’d had a very bad night. After showering and changing her nightdress, she could still detect the scent of his skin on her sheets. The air was perfumed with raw sex, although since they’d used protection, much of it would be in her vivid imagination. She didn’t know whether to remember or try to forget, and the thought of never seeing him again except on TV, never hearing from him except in public drove her to despair.
Hearing from him. But her plan, her precious plan meant a lot to her. It had kept her sane when she thought she’d go mad wondering if she’d hear or not, once they took the bandages and ear defenders away from her. But more than that, it gave her something useful to do, a direction in which to take her life.
Yesterday she woke up smiling. Today she awoke with tears in her eyes. She knocked them away and got on with her day.
By noon they’d released her. She had to return tomorrow.
She’d already texted Emmelie and received a terse “Your room will be ready” in return. She knew better than to expect anything but a courteous and cursory interest from her ex-employer. With her political career gaining ground, Emmelie would need people for the grunt work—envelope filling, that kind of thing—and Sabina would offer to help. She wasn’t averse to it and it would give her a chance to talk to Emmelie.
But it wasn’t Emmelie who kept creeping into her mind unaware. The memory of Hunter’s loving, of his gentle words and fiercer endearments in the throes of lovemaking would stay with her for the rest of her life.
Consolation didn’t come easy but she’d had it, known what an affair with the man who’d haunted her dreams for six years was like. It didn’t make parting any better but perhaps, eventually, she could close the door on it and remember it with pleasure instead of this pleasure-pain, the recollection of ecstasy followed by agony so fierce it felt like a physical pain lancing through her, destroying her happiness.
Again she felt it, like a sword slicing through her stomach and abdomen and she tensed, although she knew the pain had no physical cause.
Physically, the hospital was very happy with her, although she’d had to lie and say someone was coming to fetch her before she used her phone to text a taxi company. She still didn’t feel comfortable calling, although her implants were doing everything they should.
It felt strange. She couldn’t gauge distances, for instance, so someone speaking could sound closer. Traffic made her start.
Once she’d alighted from the taxi at the train station, the announcer seemed unnaturally loud to her, so much that she contemplated getting out the headphones and putting them on to block out the sound.
But what did it matter? She felt listless, let down, and she wanted to howl to the moon. Sighing, she reached into her purse for her reader. She could read and listen for her train to arrive. She didn’t have to check the board every minute. Even that didn’t make her smile.
The announcer told them they shouldn’t leave luggage unattended for what felt like the millionth time. People sighed and someone standing behind her swore softly. Sabina agreed, but she wouldn’t have dared speak out loud, strangely reticent to say anything at all. Even buying her ticket proved too much, and she eventually used the machine instead, chickening out of facing the clerk.
She’d be fine. She’d taken this route before so she’d be fine. Or so she kept assuring herself, although her stomach roiled and her throat tightened.
She loved being on her own. Didn’t she? What she didn’t love was this aching feeling of aloneness. This loneliness.
“Sabina.”
Now she was imagining voices. The doctors hadn’t warned her about that.
Just to reassure herself, she turned around, only to nearly collide with a hard male chest. Starting back, she nearly lost her balance but he caught her upper arms, releasing her only when she was steady on her feet once more. “What are you doing—?”
Instead of answering immediately, he went down on one knee before her. For a horrified moment, she thought he was going to propose, here, on the platform with everyone watching. And she’d have to say no. With everyone watching.
Already people were getting out their mobile phones and pointing them at Hunter and her. She stood uncomfortably before him, preparing to turn him down and become the laughingstock of Sweden, because hey, who’d turn down a romantic proposal with the hottest drummer with the hottest band on the planet?
Where was that train?
He reached for her hand. She let it lay limply in his, not responding. He stared up at her, face taut with tension. “I want to apologize,” he said.
Sabina couldn’t be sure if it was her new sense of hearing or whether he really had spoken loudly. “I was a complete jerk. I made the plans and it took some time and effort, so naturally I thought you’d fit in with them.”
His voice dripped with bitter irony, but even if she’d been lip-reading, she’d have known from the expression on his face. “I don’t deserve that you forgive me, Sabina, but I am asking you to anyway. I can’t bear that you feel so badly about me. Please, take me back. I’ll do anything you want to. I’ve already talked to Chick and the guys about leaving the band, and after the European leg, I’ll do so.”
“No.” Not the negative she’d planned but she’d practiced it, so she might as well use it. “What do you mean, you’ve spoken to them? Why?”
“So I can concentrate everything I have on you. If you want me, of course.” He gave a half-smile. “You see, I’m taking nothing for granted this time.”
She tugged on his hand. “Get up.” At least they were speaking English, but since it was compulsory in Swedish schools to learn the language, she doubted that gave them any privacy.
Keeping the smile, he got to his feet in a smooth, easy movement. Sabina heard the female gasps and murmurs.
Whatever he was about to say was drowned by the blare from the speakers announcing the imminent arrival of the train to Stockholm and the arrival of the train itself, thundering down the tracks.
She planted her feet apart and kept her balance, but it was a near thing. As it was, she nearly forgot her bag and, mortified, she watched Hunter pick it up and follow her. At the narrow door, she climbed the steps and then turned around to take it. When her hand brushed his she shivered, unable to stop her response. Angry with herself for demonstrating such a lack of control.
He wouldn’t let go. “You can’t come,” she said. “You don’t have a ticket.”
“I’ll get one on the train.”
She searched for a different excuse. “You drove here, didn’t you? What about the car?”
“I’ll tell them where to find it. Nothing is more important than this. Please, Sabina. Move back, there are people waiting to get on.”
She glanced over his head. “No they’re not. They’re watching us.”
He sighed. “Get on.”
Frantically she went through the journey in her head, wondering if this was a local train or an express. Seeing the size and the number of carriages, she realized it was the fast one. They’d be in Stockholm in an hour. She could handle that.
She found a vacant double seat and, after stowing her bag in the overhead rack with insulting ease, Hunter sat next to her. He reached for her hand again, as if he couldn’t bear not to touch her. “Sabina, please forgive me at least. Say something. Are you deaf again?” He half turned in the seat to face her in case she needed to lip-read. These seats were rather cramped for sign language.
“I can hear. Too well.” She thought of the traffic and the announcer. “Is it me, or is this coach really quiet?” From what she remembered, trains were packed with people talking on their phones, talking to each other, babies crying, children chattering. This carriage sounded strangely hushed.
He grinned.
“They’re listening to us.”
“At least they’re not queuing up for your autograph.”
“Swedish people are cool like that.”
Not for long,she thought. They’d arrive, paper and pen in hand, she was sure. But they wanted the drama, like people watching a play. “I don’t feel comfortable here.”
“Would you prefer we spoke about this in Stockholm?”
“No. Why did you leave Stockholm and not look back? All the truth now.”
His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. Tension, even more than before, tightened his features and put lines on either side of his mouth. Lines she yearned to ease, but she had to know. He replied, his words slower, as if he wanted to explain it to himself as well as to her. “You know most of it. Because there was no place for me at home. If I wanted to pursue my career as a drummer I had to leave. But there’s something else, and it doesn’t have anything to do with my career. I was scared. I ran, Sabina.”
“No, I’ve changed my mind. Tell me later.” She couldn’t let him bare his soul here, in public.
He shook his head. “I have to tell you now or I’ll lock it up again. It’s hard to talk about because of how ashamed I felt. I was scared I would go deaf, because music meant so much to me. I was terrified that I might have to give it up. Every day I was surrounded by people coping with the very thing I was scared of.”
She listened, horrified that he would think in that way. He swallowed and finally, after a fraught interval that nearly broke her nerve, he spoke. “It’s something I’m afraid of but something I’ve learned to cope with. The fear, I mean. I wake up not hearing. I dream deaf sometimes, like you dream hearing, I suppose. Growing up in that quiet house, well, it taught me how much I love sound.”
“So you learned an instrument you could play if you lost your hearing.”
He shook his head. “Not with Murder City Ravens, not the way we work. I have to know what they’re doing so I can do my part.”
She’d always regarded her condition as something she just got along with since she didn’t have much of a choice. Not until recently. “I’ve never been scared. Not even when it first happened. It was just something to handle.”
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