I can barely breathe. My chest feels as if it’s on fire, as if my vital organs are being scorched, and I’m about to combust.
“If he thought we were serious? I thought we were fucking serious, Whit,” I tell her, my voice sounding incredulous.
“We got married, we had a baby. How much more fucking serious does it get?”
There’s nothing. No remorse, not even pity as she looks at me.
“I thought by going on tour with you, getting away from him, it would change the way I felt about him, but then he turned up in New York, and nothing had changed. I still love him.”
I close my hands together in a prayer pose and cover my nose and mouth with them as I try to steady my breathing.
“So, why stay with me? Why fucking marry me, Whit?”
“I was pregnant, Alix was back in rehab, you sprang the wedding on me, what was I supposed to do?” she asks in a high-pitched shriek.
“What were you supposed to do? Say no, Whit. Turn me down, go be with Alix, be fucking honest. Jesus fucking Christ, who are you? I don’t even know you anymore!” I slam my hand against the wall in an attempt to ease some of the anger raging inside me. It doesn’t work, and I only calm marginally when Layla begins to cry from her crib.
I move towards her. Whitney doesn’t.
I lift my daughter and hold her against my chest where she instantly pulls up her knees, pokes her bum in the air, and settles.
“If you think for one fucking second that I’m letting you take Layla to live with that fucked up junkie, then you best think again. He can’t look after himself, let alone a kid.”
It’s the first time during our entire exchange that Whitney actually looks contrite. Her shoulders slump, and she breaks eye contact because she knows I’m fucking right.
I watch, waiting on her response as she again looks around the room, anywhere except at me.
I reach for my phone, moving on autopilot. I need to call Aaron, my lawyer. There’s absolutely no way Whitney is leaving here today with Layla, and I need to know what my rights are.
“Yeah, about that . . .”
Whit is finally looking at me but stops talking when my eyes meet hers. Her chin tilts, and I brace for the fight she’s about to put up. She can argue with me all she likes, but there is no fucking way she’s taking my daughter to live with Alix Gardener in whichever hotel he’s currently staying at Daddy’s expense.
I tap the screen of my phone where Aaron’s number is displayed and listen for the dial tone.
“We probably need to have a paternity test to work out which of you is the father.”
And that’s the blow that ends me.
My phone crashes to the floor, and as I hold Layla tightly against me, I’m finally brought to my knees.
“She can stay here with you while we work all of that out, but we’ll have to get it sor—”
“Get out!” I almost choke on my words. “Get the fuck out of my house!”
Layla startles before she screams. She doesn’t just cry, she screams.
“Max, calm down; you’re scaring her.”
“What the fuck do you care?” Regaining my composure, I let the adrenaline now coursing through me help lift me to my feet. I lay my wailing daughter back in her crib and move around the bed to Whitney.
My first thought is to tell her to take her daughter with her. If the kid’s not mine, then fuck it, what do I care who she lives with? But Layla’s cries hit my very soul. They permeate my bloodstream and flow right through every part of my body.
She’s mine.
If she weren’t mine, her cries wouldn’t affect me that way, right?
Jesus fucking Christ let me be right.
All of these thoughts rush through me as I stalk towards her. I’ve no clue what the look I’m wearing conveys to Whitney, but she’s moving before I even reach her, backing away from me towards the bedroom door, holding up her hands. I’m not sure if she’s surrendering or telling me to stop. I don’t care. I don’t give a single fuck. I can barely breathe, never mind think straight.
“Keep moving. Get out. Get the fuck out now.” My voice conveys a calmness I most definitely do not possess.
Whitney turns, heads out of the bedroom, along the galleried landing, and down the stairs as I follow.
When she reaches the front door, she turns. “I did try, Max. I wanted it to be you, not him. I’m sorry.”
Feeling utterly defeated, I shake my head. “Just go, Whit. I’ll never believe a single word that comes out of your lying, deceitful mouth again.”
She looks over her shoulder, and that’s when I notice Gardener waiting in a huge four-wheel-drive truck outside the house. Every part of me wants to go outside and kill the fucker, rip his limbs off and feed them to him. But I’m more than aware of what the consequences will be if I were to beat, maim, or kill Alix Gardener.
He’s a slippery, slimy little worm who’ll run to Daddy and have me arrested for sure. Then what? Where will that leave Layla? It’ll be left to those two to raise her, and I’ll have no part in her life if I’m in prison.
Fuck me.
Calling on every ounce of willpower I’m ever likely to possess, I remain inside my house. Balling my hands into fists, I close my eyes and tilt my head up towards the ceiling. The tattered pieces of my heart regroup and manage to beat strong enough to send adrenalin-filled blood coursing through my veins. It rushes loudly through my ears, the sound only interrupted by Layla’s distant cries.
That sound is what anchors me to the spot and stops me from carrying out every terrible blow I want to bestow upon the two people in front of me.
Layla. She’s all that matters. She’s everything. I won’t do what the press and the public have come to expect of me. I won’t fight. I won’t get arrested. I won’t be that person. For Layla, I’ll do better. For Layla, I keep my hands to myself.
I open my eyes and slice my gaze back to where Whitney remains watching me cautiously from the front door. She was obviously with Alix and not at the spa yesterday and last night. While I looked after our daughter and lost sleep worrying about my wife’s mental wellbeing, she was with another man. A man she’s been having an affair with—been fucking—long enough that there’s a real possibility he could be Layla’s father.
“How long, Whit? Were you with him the whole time we were together?” The question is out before I have a chance to consider whether I really want to know the answer.
She nods. Not even a verbal response. I don’t even warrant that much from her. Just a nod.
My heart tears again. It doesn’t just break—it rips, jagged and uneven, right through the middle. “Did you ever love me?”
“I . . . I care about you, Max.”
“I changed for you. I changed my entire fucking life.”
She ignores that comment and continues as if she hasn’t just ended my world as I know it. “I’ll be in touch about the paternity test.” She turns and leaves, slamming the door as she goes.
Once again, I fall to my knees, and as my daughter cries upstairs in her crib, I lie on the hallway floor and cry for the person I was for a very short while, worrying that this morning’s events may have changed me irrevocably and that I may now never be the father my little girl deserves. And that’s when a very small part of me hopes she’s not mine. Because life with a junky for a father might be better than living with the monster I fear Whitney has just created.
Max
I once again wake to the sound of my daughter crying, but this time her cries hit me from a distance, and it takes me a while to work out what the fuck is going on.
Blinking a few times to clear my vision, the large light fixture which hangs in the middle of my hallway, comes into focus. It looks like a chandelier, teardrop-shaped, but instead of being glass or crystals or whatever shit chandeliers are made from, it’s manufactured from black shells or beads. It’s vast, and despite being suspended from the upstairs ceiling, if you reached out from halfway up the stairs, yo
u’d be able to touch it.
I’d seen one in a hotel foyer in Australia and told my interior designer to source me something similar when the house was being renovated. It’s so heavy that a reinforced beam had to be added to the ceiling to take the weight.
I think about all of this while trying to ignore the thump, thump, thump happening in my head.
Sitting up, I heave as bile fills my throat while the room not just spins but rocks from side to side. A bottle of Grey Goose lays on its side in a puddle of spilt alcohol beside me.
When Whitney left yesterday, I’d pulled myself together enough to feed and change Layla before putting her back in her crib for the rest of the day. She’d had her last bottle at around eleven o’clock. After retrieving a bottle of vodka, I’d gone back to the hallway and sat at the bottom of the stairs.
Why the bottom of the stairs? I have no fucking clue. But I decided that was as good a place as any to drink myself into oblivion.
As I sat in my hallway getting drunk at my pity party for one earlier, I made a semiconscious decision to keep an emotional distance from Layla until I knew for sure she was mine and I would get to remain a part of her life. I’d take care of her, obviously, but I didn’t want to give any more of my heart to that baby girl only to have her ripped from my life.
I’ve no clue what time it is, but the birds are singing, and I know what I’m hearing is Layla’s hungry cry.
Like her dad, she loves her food.
Despite what I’d convinced myself earlier about taking a step back, that cry lets me know I don’t have it in me. I couldn’t stay away, no matter how hard I tried. I love that little girl right down to the marrow of my bones, and whether she’s biologically mine or not, I need her right now as much as she needs me.
I stand and reach for the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. In an attempt to ease the sensation of the room rocking as it spins, I keep my eyes closed. It doesn’t work, and I once again heave as the urge to throw up hits me.
I take a step forward, and my foot lands on something sharp. The spinning room momentarily forgotten as pain shoots through my foot.
“Shit. Motherfucker!”
I open my eyes and take in the remains of a broken bottle of Grey Goose, and it comes back to me that—for some reason I don’t recall right now—I threw the first bottle I opened at the front door halfway through drinking it.
The bottle didn’t break, which caused an unwarranted amount of anger to unleash inside me, and in the fit of rage that ensued, I collected the bottle and smashed it against the bottom stair, glass and vodka spraying across the hardwood floor.
I lift my foot to take a closer inspection of the glass buried in it and watch as blood slowly leaks from the wound. Taking a deep breath in through my nose, I grit my teeth and pull.
“Fuuuuuuck me!” I yell as I remove the offending object. “Motherfucking—shit—bollocks.” I wince and take in more deep breaths in an attempt to control the pain.
I fail.
And then proceed to throw up all over the floor. Blood, vomit, glass, and vodka, mixing together to display a pretty accurate visual of the current state of my life. All the while, my daughter still cries.
“I hear ya, baby girl. Daddy’s sorry. He fucked up. Just give me a minute and I’ll be with you,” I call out.
Holding on to the handrail of the bannister, I leave the mess on my hallway floor behind, and hop up the stairs to my bedroom, still dripping blood as I go.
When I reach my bedroom, I glance down at Layla’s angry, red face when I pass her crib. She blinks her tear-filled eyes as she looks up at me, and as much as it hurts my heart to do so, I have to keep moving.
I reach the toilet just in time to hurl into it. I then wash my hands, clean my teeth, and splash my face with water. Still dripping blood, I search through the cabinets for a plaster or some bandage but find nothing.
Hopping back out through the bedroom, I carry on until I reach the nursery where Layla will eventually sleep once she’s a little older.
Hopefully.
I find some cotton wool and cover the wound. I then wrap two clean nappies’ around my foot, and use the sticky tapes to hold the makeshift dressing in place. Without putting any weight on the ball of my foot, I make my way back to my bedroom and pick up Layla. Her back arches and she headbutts my chin in temper as she cries and attempts to suckle on my whisker covered jaw at the same time.
“Daddy’s sorry, hungry bug. I’m so sorry. Let’s get you fed and changed.”
Layla’s babygro is soaked all the way up her back, and by the smell coming from her backside, I’ve also left her to lay in a shitty nappy.
Guilt hits me hard. I feel like a total fucking failure, and I have to take a moment to get my shit together.
Pulling the wet blankets from her crib, I make my way back downstairs, avoiding the glass, vomit, blood and vodka puddle as I go. I feel like a pig for leaving it there, but right now I have other priorities.
After dumping the damp crib sheets in the laundry, I get Layla out of her wet babygro and full nappy, only gagging roughly eight times as I wipe away the shit that has stuck to her skinny little arse.
“Daddy fuc—ussed up, hungry bug. I promise I’ll do better,” I tell her as she gazes wide-eyed back up at me. She needs a bath, but a wash with a wet wipe and a sprinkle of baby powder at least has her smelling better and will have to do for now. Getting her fed is my immediate priority, and I need to do that quickly, which means putting her down, something I know will piss her off.
I drag her bouncy chair from the family room to the kitchen, singing Ed Sheeran's “Perfect” to her as I move. As much as I hate to admit it, she quiets to an Ed song more often than she does one of mine. But she’s only four-weeks-old, I still have plenty of time to educate her about music.
At least I hope I do.
At least I think I hope I do.
I keep moving rather than dwell on those thoughts, limping around the kitchen like the king of multitasking, I wash my hands, reheat Layla’s milk while talking and singing to her.
Before picking Layla up from her chair, I knock back a glass of water with a couple of pain killers in the hope they’ll help ease the rave happening in my head, the throb in my foot, and the feeling of utter hopelessness sitting heavily in my chest.
Carrying her to the family room, I sit in the corner of the sofa, put my throbbing foot up on the coffee table, and finally feed her. She gulps down milk so fast that I worry she’s forgotten to breathe and pull the teat from her mouth. My daughter instantly wails loud enough to have the whole of London thinking I’ve pinched her.
“Slow down, hungry bug. You’re drinking too quickly, you’re gonna make yourself sick.”
After giving a loud burp, I put the teat back into her mouth, she sucks hungrily before passing out like a drunk. Milk on her chin, bottle hanging from between her lips, looking a lot cuter than when her dad pulled a similar pose last night and this morning.
A wave of guilt hits me again as I stare down at her perfect little face. I glance at the clock on the wall, I’m an hour and a half late with her bottle, all because I’d chosen to drink vodka over my baby girl’s needs.
My foot throbs, my head pounds, and my tattered heart shreds a little more as I wonder how the fuck I’m going to cope with a four-week-old baby on my own.
How the fuck will I cope if they take her away from me?
Layla’s wail drags me from my thoughts, and I realise she’s woken up, drained the bottle and has been sucking in air for fuck knows how long.
My phone rings from somewhere in the house.
Layla cries.
My head and heart continue to hurt.
I lift Layla up to her favourite spot on my shoulder, and she immediately brings up what appears to be the entire contents of the bottle she just drank except, now, the milk is nicely congealed, and it stinks. The sofa cushions and my back are covered in baby puke, and I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.
“What the ever-loving fuck has happened here?” Callum Wild, my bandmate and best friend, asks. Giving me the first clue someone other than Layla and myself are in my house.
“Shit. What the fuck. Max?” I hear Mel, his wife’s distinct New York accent ask, right before she and Cal enter the family room. Mel’s mouth drops open, and her eyes widen as she takes in the mess. Cal is slightly in front of her, his arm stretched out as if to hold her back or protect her from whatever’s going on in my home.
“Dude?” His eyes dart all around the room before landing back on me.
Mel shoves his arm away and swiftly moves towards me. Stepping around the pile of vomit in front of my sofa, she takes a screaming Layla from my arms as I sit, covered in baby sick, and cry.
“Take the baby, Cal. I’ll try to find something to clean this mess up.”
I open and close my mouth to protest. I’m a fucking adult, I don’t expect anyone to clean up my puke, except, right at this moment, I don’t feel much like an adult or capable of anything.
Jesus. I need to get a grip.
I’m not usually a crier. Obviously, I’m in touch with my emotions; otherwise I wouldn’t be able to write the lyrics I do, but I rarely cry. Right now, though, overwhelmed by tiredness and all of Whitney’s revelations, I can barely breathe through my tears.
Cal pulls tissues from a box on the coffee table and passes me a handful while holding my now sleeping daughter against his chest. “What the fuck happened? Where’s Whit?”
“Why are you here?” I ask, trying to think back to what day it is, and what I should’ve been doing.
“Mel made lunch plans with Whit a couple of days ago. I told her you were worried about her being depressed, so she invited the three of you over. Whit said she wasn’t up to it, but ya know Mel, she couldn’t just leave it and told her we’d come here, and she’d cook.”
All the Forbidden Things Page 2