MUSES AND MELODIES
Page 20
“Where are you going?” I followed him.
“We’re leaving,” he announced, flinging the bedroom door open.
“Why is your father in jail?” I asked from the doorway.
Nixon paused, then shook his head as he yanked a bag from the top of the closet and threw it onto the bed. “This discussion is over. Get packed.”
I felt his words like a direct blow to my heart. “You can’t just ignore what happened down there.”
He scoffed. “No, you can’t just ignore it.” The sound of drawers opening and shutting filled the space as he threw his clothes into the bag. “Please, Zoe. Let this go.”
Like hell.
“Why is your father in jail?” I repeated. “Is it for hurting you? Is that what those scars are really from?” I gripped the wood of the doorframe to keep from crossing the distance between us and tracing those scars.
“Those are bar fights. Just like I told you. He was never stupid enough to leave marks on me,” Nixon answered with another shake of his head.
Bile rose in my throat. “But he did beat you.”
“Every summer, when I was there for visitation,” he replied casually, grabbing the shoes from the bottom of the closet.
“Why did you go back?” I flinched at the sound of my own words. “I don’t mean that it was your fault. It wasn’t your fault. Did your mom know?”
“I told her after the first summer.” He glanced at me, but there was still nothing recognizable about him in those eyes. “It didn’t really start until I was seven or so. And my mother liked her summers free. When she questioned him, my father told her I needed discipline. Said I was out of control. My father…he’s very convincing.”
“Nixon,” I whispered, imagining him as a boy, small and vulnerable.
“Don’t do that,” he snapped. “Don’t pity me. I’m the last person who deserves it.”
“It’s not pity.” It was compassion.
“Like hell it isn’t.” He ripped his phone charger from the wall, stuffing it into his bag. “And I’m the one who chose to go back as I got older. I’m the one who stopped telling my mother when it escalated. This is just as much on me. If I’d pressed the issue, she would have done something. She’s…flighty and naïve, not inhuman.”
“It’s never on you!” There were missing pieces here, that’s why I couldn’t put it all together, but I didn’t know what to ask. Didn’t know what he’d even answer. But I had to try. I couldn’t let him put on the I’m fine mask only to wake up screaming beside me tonight. A name—Cheryl had said a name. “Who is Kaylee?”
The blood drained from Nixon’s face, and he froze like a statue, his hands on the edges of the duffel. It was the same face he’d worn when Ashley had come over. But he liked kids. Loved Levi. He buckled a car seat like a pro…like he’d done it before. Cheryl’s hair—
“You don’t have a kid, you have a sister.” My hand fell from the doorframe. “Don’t you?”
“Had.” The admission was low, the sound grating over my heart like a thousand tiny cuts.
“Had?”
He pulled another piece of luggage from the closet, then started on the clothes hanging there. His motions were quick and jerky but efficient, as though his body was on autopilot. As though we weren’t in the middle of a storm he’d held at bay for far too long.
“Nixon!” I moved inside the room—our room. How long before he shut the door in my face too?
“What?” he shouted, turning to face me, his hands out. “What else could you possibly want to know, Zoe?”
“Everything,” I answered softly. Suddenly, the room didn’t feel like ours anymore. Maybe it hadn’t ever really been ours. Just like his heart, I’d only borrowed the space that was ultimately his. Now I was trespassing. “I want to know everything.”
“Everything,” he mocked with a sneer.
“Yes.” This was the Nixon I’d seen backstage and across the conference table for the past four years—the egotistical, callous, pompous asshole. He had the mask in place so seamlessly I couldn’t help but wonder if I was the only one who saw it for what it was—a scab over a sluggishly bleeding, festering wound. Somewhere between the two—that’s where my Nixon lived, and he’d shut me out.
“You want to know about my little sister?” He folded his arms across his chest and glared at me with the same face he’d shown Cheryl. The face that sent everyone running.
“Yes.” I leaned back against the wall next to the door.
“Really.” There was that dismissive scoff again. “Why? What good will it do? She’s dead. She’s not coming back. She had eight summers in this shitty world before he snuffed her out like a weed he found growing in the sidewalk. Is that what you want to hear, Zoe?”
“I want the truth. No matter how ugly or sad it is.” I swallowed and stuffed my hands in the pockets of my jeans to keep them from shaking.
“He killed her! It wasn’t an accident. I don’t give a shit that he was drunk, or that the charges were dropped to manslaughter and abuse. I don’t care that he swears it was only the one time, or that Cheryl is so desperate for that asshole’s love and approval that she still claims it was an accident. I’ve seen the report. The force with which she hit the bottom of the stairs could only have come from being thrown down them.”
I gasped and pressed my lips between my teeth.
“Still want the truth, Shannon?” He lifted his brows.
“Yes,” I whispered. I’d take whatever he’d give me because I knew this moment wouldn’t come again. “I want to know what makes you who you are, Nixon.”
“Jesus, you really are just like everyone else!” He shook his head. “My head isn’t public property! The only person who owns the rights to my past is me.” He thumped his chest.
“I only want to help you!” I pushed off the wall.
“Bullshit! You want to crawl inside my head and try to fix me!”
I floundered. “That’s…that’s not true. Do I want you to be fixed? Yes. I love you. I want you healthy, and I want your nightmares to stop, and I want you to be okay. But I don’t care if I’m the one who fixes you, Nixon.”
He tilted his head as a corner of his mouth lifted. “Right. So, you don’t want to be the one who unlocks my secrets? The one who gets in here”—he tapped his chest—“and turns me into a changed man?”
“That’s not fair.” I wanted all those things romantically. To be the woman he trusted with his secrets because he wanted to.
“What if I made you choose?”
“Between?”
“Between fixing me and loving me?” He motioned down his body. “Just like I am. Right now. Addictions. Nightmares. General asshole. The whole package.”
“I already love you.” I moved forward, and he retreated.
“You love who you think I can be. Who I’ve been here in this house. But it’s not enough for you, because I’m not perfect. I’m not…healthy. So, you chip, and you dig, and you ask, and you prod at me, like I’m the next square to check on the Zoe’s gotta-fix-it list. I’m the phone you can’t put down at night. The mess you can’t quite clean up.”
“That’s not true.” I lifted my hand to my chest, right above the tearing sensation behind my ribs.
“It is. We both know it. You’re literally only here to keep me from fucking up. Maybe your heart got tangled up in the process, but the mission has never changed. So, I’m asking you to choose, Zoe Shannon. Would you rather fix me? Or love me?”
My feet were still on the floor, but I felt gravity shift as he stared at me, waiting for my answer. I loved him, and not only the version of him who existed in this house. I loved all of him. But I was also smart enough to know my love might not be enough to hold him. I might not be enough—not in the long run. And he’d still have the nightmares long after I was gone. Still carry the weight of his past.
“Choose.” He shrugged, like it meant nothing.
“It’s a ridiculous hypothetical.”
“Choose.”
“Right.” He turned away from me and zipped the first bag. “Right,” he repeated to himself. “Well, so much for love, huh?”
“That’s not what I mean. You can’t just make me stop loving you.” I couldn’t even stop it if I tried. Loving him was a force so strong there was nothing I could do to protect myself.
“Sure I can.” He zipped the second bag.
Gravity shifted again, turning my stomach inside out. And when he hits the self-destruct button, he takes out everyone in his path. Quinn’s warning sounded in my ears like the wail of an emergency alert for a flood that hit two minutes ago.
I’d failed to climb to higher ground, and now he’d drown me.
“Nixon,” I whispered as he calmly sat on the bed, putting on his socks and shoes.
“You see, I’m somewhat an expert on how to kill love.” He didn’t bother to look at me as he tied his shoes. “You just remove yourself from the equation. If that’s not enough, you dole out a little neglect and maybe just a hint of what could be considered abuse. Give it some time, and voila, no love.” He stood.
“I love you.”
“For now.” He shrugged. “But you asked for the truth, and let’s be honest—damn, did you work your ass off to deserve it. So here it is: I’m the reason she’s dead.”
“Why would you think that?” I ignored the blatant dig at my character and concentrated on his confession.
“Because it’s true.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I don’t give a shit what you believe.” He lifted one of the bags to his shoulder. “He never touched her—at least when I was there. He saved all that shit for me. I figured it was because she was a baby. Or because he loved her. I loved her too. It was impossible not to. And I went. Year after year, summer after summer, I went just so I could be with her, so I could protect her, like big brothers are supposed to.” He sighed. “And then I turned eighteen.”
“And visitation ends.” I drew the obvious conclusion.
His gaze flashed toward mine. “It was the first time in my life that I didn’t have to explain myself. I was an adult. Besides, he always took my phone when I got there, and I had too much college shit to organize to let that happen. He couldn’t touch me anymore, and I convinced myself—like the selfish bastard I am—that he’d never hurt Kay—” He flinched. “He loved her in a way he’d never loved me, and hey, you don’t hurt someone you love, right?”
My chest tightened, making it almost painful to breathe.
“She cried at graduation when I told her I wasn’t coming for the summer, but I promised I’d teach her the guitar. I bought one for her with the money I’d been given for graduation—Mom was never in short supply in that department.” He adjusted the bag on his shoulder and reached for the handle of the luggage. “Then I turned down every offer but Washington, because it meant I’d be close enough to see her. You got that one right back in Seattle—first person to see it.”
I didn’t feel like I’d scored a point, not with the loss I saw coming from a mile away.
“I gave it to her on her eighth birthday, but he was there, and I didn’t stick around long enough to even show her how to tune it. It was too big for her anyway. I should have gotten her a kid-sized one.” His face crumpled for a breath before he locked his jaw and lifted the suitcase to the ground. “She was dead a week later.”
“I’m so sorry.” I swallowed back the lump in my throat for what they’d both been through as I walked to the end of the footboard and lifted my hand to his chest. His heart was racing, his muscles tight.
For a second, our gazes collided, and he was there. He was still mine.
Then he froze me out with a single blink. “Why? It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I’ve always done whatever was best for me, Shannon.” He focused on the wall. “Anyway, there was no record of my abuse, no pattern to go on, so it was ruled as manslaughter. He got thirty years. I got back the guitar I’d given her. I don’t even have a picture of her.” That last part faded into a whisper.
The acoustic. He didn’t say it, but I knew it from the bottom of my soul—the acoustic was hers. It was Kaylee’s. I didn’t know what to say, what to do, or how to even begin helping him. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I chose not to go. She died. That’s a pretty easy line to draw.”
A car honked outside.
“That’s my ride. Amazing that even a town as small as Legacy has Uber.” He walked right past me, as though my hand hadn’t been touching him. As if I wasn’t even there.
“Where are you going?” I followed him into the hallway.
“Back to Seattle,” he answered over his shoulder. “I figured we should leave the Rover here in the garage, but now that we’re traveling separately, you can do whatever you want with it.”
“Traveling separately?” This wasn’t happening. I couldn’t fathom a world where Nixon would actually walk out and leave me. Somehow my legs got the message and raced after him.
“Well, yeah. I asked you to drop it. I asked you to pack. I asked you to choose.” He was already in the entry hall when I caught up to him. “You chose.”
“This isn’t how this works!” I shouted, reaching for his arm.
He shrugged me off. “It takes two to decide how a relationship works, and I decided we’re not in one anymore. You don’t want me, Zoe. You want whatever little picture it is you painted of me inside your head.”
“That’s not true! I love you!” And he was maliciously, purposely breaking my heart.
“And whose fault is that? I never asked you to!” he snapped. “And this is exactly why. Consider it a mercy that it ends here, Shannon. Before the tours and the media and my inevitable decline decide to do it for us. Besides, it will make it way less awkward on the occasions I have to come into the office if it all just stays…here.” His gaze skimmed the exposed timbers and rock walls.
“Don’t leave me,” I whispered. “Don’t do this.” Already, I felt the cracks in my soul widening, splitting apart under his reckless hands. You don’t hurt someone you love, right? That’s what he’d said. But he’d never loved me.
He’d used me, and I’d let him.
“The plane will be back tomorrow. Or whenever you’re ready to leave. Don’t hurry on my account.” He swept his gaze over me like it was the last time, like he’d need to remember. “Oh, and don’t worry about the guitars. I’ll have Ben send his new Shannon for them.” He let go of the suitcase only long enough to twist the handle on the door and open it.
New Shannon. Because I was replaceable.
“Just like that?” I challenged, throwing the words that had defined just about every stage of our relationship back at him.
“Just like that.”
“Funny how you accuse me of trying to fix you when that’s all I was to you—a fix.” Something ugly erupted from the fissures in my soul, pricking at my eyes.
He stiffened in the doorframe but didn’t turn. “Good. You’re finally learning. You might survive the industry after all. See you around, Shannon.”
He didn’t even slam the door as he left. The sound of my ruin was the soft click of the door shutting behind him and the silence that followed. He didn’t care enough to scream. To fight. To hold on.
Apathy is Death. That’s what he had inked across his stomach, and that’s what this was—his emotional apathy, my death. The months of waiting, the celibacy, the monogamy, the effort…it wasn’t affection. Wasn’t love or even attachment or devotion. It was the price he’d paid to attain his fix.
And now he’d find a new one.
17
ZOE
I dropped my bags just inside my apartment door, then stood on the little patch of linoleum that served as my entryway, staring at the space that no longer felt like home.
&n
bsp; Or maybe I didn’t feel like me anymore.
This apartment belonged to BN Zoe. Before Nixon. I was someone else entirely after him. That’s exactly what this is, I thought as I slowly walked to my couch, falling into the soft cushions. This was a new era—after Nixon.
I’d stayed in Colorado for two days. First, because I couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to walk back in that door. Couldn’t believe he’d thrown away our entire relationship on a hypothetical question. Would he have stayed if I’d answered selfishly? Chosen to keep him for myself, wounded and hurting? That entire day, I’d done nothing but cry and stare out the window, waiting for him come back.
It hadn’t been until the next morning, when I’d woken with tear-swollen eyes, that I remembered Nixon never came back. Nixon never made the first move. Our entire relationship, first professional then personal, had been based on me chasing him. I was the one who’d tracked him down. I was the one who’d told him I wanted more. I was the one who’d risked my reputation in an industry that wasn’t known for second chances. I was the one who’d pried his secrets loose. And I was the one he’d left behind to clean up the mess, as usual.
Nixon didn’t come back. Not for me. Not for anyone. That would take a vulnerability he wasn’t willing to expose.
That second day, I’d spent doing my job. Packing the things he’d left behind and shutting up the house. Trying like hell to close the gaping wounds he’d left in my heart, only to accept it was useless. There was no suture in this world strong enough to hold me together.
I fell to my side, curling up on the couch and clutching one of the throw pillows to my chest. I wasn’t brokenhearted. I was emotionally eviscerated, bleeding out.
Tears turned my vision blurry and I let them fall, not bothering to wipe them away as the trickle became a steady stream. No risk. No reward.
I’d risked.
I’d lost.
I’d been too blind to see I’d let myself become the fix for the very addiction I’d been assigned to guard him against.
He’d failed me, yes. But I’d also failed him. In that, we were perfectly matched. My phone rang, and I ripped it from my back pocket.