by Dylan Allen
He takes it from me and tucks into the inside pocket of the tuxedo he’s still wearing.
“I’ll make sure he gets it.”
I square my shoulders and take a fortifying gulp of air.
“I’ll get a new phone tomorrow and text you the number. So you can call me if there’s an emergency, okay?” I ask.
“Only if it has to do with Cam, but otherwise, I want you to pretend the only person you’ve got to worry about is yourself,” he says resolutely, but I’m not convinced.
“How are you going to even see her? Dad is so furious with you. You’re not going to be welcome in that house,” I warn him, fretting about the prospect of him being cut off from her.
“Dad has been furious with me since the day I confronted him about who my real mother might be. He may be able to keep me from Cam for now, but she doesn’t have a more fierce protector than Fiona. She won’t let any harm come to that child. And once I get my hands on the will, I suspect I’ll find out that I have a lot more say than he’s allowed.”
“Really? You think so?”
“I do. That man has had the benefit of complete autonomy for decades. James couldn’t protect you and rock the boat. I’m sending you away so I can overturn it. I’ll get answers, Clo. Then, I’ll end his tyranny. It’s too late for James. But it’s not too late for you, me, Cam, and mom.”
His words send a jolt of annoyance through me.
“Mom? What’s she got to do with any of this? I haven’t heard from her since James died.”
“She was his victim, too.”
“She lives on his money. She left her children so she could,” I protest.
I think about the blood on my sheets, the baby I never got to hold, but love anyway. My heart squeezes so tightly it brings tears to my eyes.
“I could never leave my child,” I say adamantly.
He strokes my cheek. “She’s not as strong as you are. Forgive her for that. Maybe, reach out to her.”
“She’s a stranger to me. I’m sorry, but that’s the last thing I want,” I say, and ignore the way my stomach rolls and coils.
“When you’re ready. Do whatever your heart tells you, honey.” He runs a hand over my head.
“Go, Clover. The world is waiting. Throw a dart at the map and go where it lands.” He smiles and then turns me to face the sliding glass doors of the airport and gives me a gentle nudge.
I walk to the ticket counter and redeem the ticket Carter bought me. When the agent hands me my boarding pass for the next flight to LaGuardia Airport in New York, I don’t try to stop the tears that stream down my face. I can’t believe I made it this far.
I realize now that I wasn’t sure that I would.
I’ve had this resolve before. When Carter and I had set our sights on forever.
The future was free and clear.
I could taste it.
When everything fell apart, it wasn’t just his love that I lost, but the castles I built to the future based on it.
Without it, everything crumbled to the ground and taking me with it,
I hurtled to the ground at breakneck speed and the crash landing shattered me.
But it didn’t kill me.
Even though there were days I wished it would.
And now…I know better.
There is no free.
There is no clear. Not when your father is a narcissistic misogynist with more power than integrity.
Not when the thing that wants to hold you back is stronger than your will to fight your way free.
My new start means leaving everything behind. The only thing I would take from this life are the things that are intractable. My love for Phil, Cameron, Dina, the name and new birthday that were bestowed on me with purpose and love.
I’m saying yes to things I have long denied myself. My steps are light, there’s a wind at my back.
I realize now, that it’s always been there and that my fear was the resistance that made doing this feel impossible.
I sit at my gate, alone and unmasked. No wig, no make-up, no pink. Just me, in my flip flops, jeans, and a plain white t-shirt. The only jewelry I’m wearing are the pieces that James bought for me.
I’ve never truly been by myself. Never had only me to rely on.
I’ve lived my life by the coda of low expectations.
I’m not demanding.
Pleasing people is a defensive stance for me.
Who could I be if I really let myself fly free?
I can’t wait to find out.
They call my flight and I dump my phone, the one that my Wolfe Industries pays for, into a trashcan. Then, I skip down the jetway and step onto a plane for the very first time in my life.
I don’t look back once.
Freedom
CARTER
THREE MONTHS LATER
“Hey, C, you’ve got a visitor,” Dane sticks his head into the Live Room. I’ve been holed up writing since last night.
I glance at my watch, see the 6am time and frown.
Our first single debuts on national radio today and we’re supposed to meet here this afternoon to listen. It’s the first time we’ve seen each other since we wrapped up all the pre-recorded promotional material last week.
It was supposed to be down time before we head off on our three month long promotional tour.
I’ve been in the studio by myself all week, focusing on writing new music. It’s the only thing keeping me sane and sober. I’m not expecting anyone, my bandmates included, for at least another hour.
“Why are you here so early? And what visitor?”
“This visitor, you fucking asshole,” Jack’s voice reaches me before he appears in the doorway.
“Jack?” I ask, confused and alarmed to see him. I stand up in surprise.
He strides into the room and slams the door in Dane’s face without a word.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, alarmed by the barely restrained anger pouring off him.
Instead of answering me, he drops wearily onto the couch in the corner and sweeps his gaze around the room. His expression is distinctly unimpressed as it lands on me.
“Is everything okay at home?” I prod when he doesn’t answer.
He inspects his fingernails with exaggerated nonchalance. “I’m surprised you remember you have a home. Seeing how you forgot that you have a family. I thought maybe, you’d forgotten everything.”
“What are you talking about? I talk to at least one of you every single day.” I ask, annoyed now, too.
“Oh, I know. And you’ve told us all about LA, and your music, and your little band, and all that shit. You forgot to tell us that you went to Texas to find your biological brother. The one that your biological mother, who you also found, gave birth to tens years after she gave birth to you.”
My heart drops like a stone in water to my toes.
“Jack, I can explain.” Are the only words I can muster.
In the span of the second it takes him to surge to his feet, he is transformed. His nostrils flare, his lip curls and he’s vibrating with unadulterated, unbridled, anger.
I tense, instinctively braced for him to launch himself at me.
He stops an inch away from us being toe to toe and roams my face, inspecting it like he’s looking for something.
When our eyes meet, I flinch at the disappointment in his. He snorts in disgust and looks down, as if the sight of me hurts him.
I’m gripped by a keen sense of helplessness. I don’t know what to say. How do I explain that the chapter of my life he’s asking me to probe is one I’m too afraid to revisit?
“I drove all the way here.” The change in subject is so abrupt that I wonder, for a second, if I missed something or misheard him.
“From the airport?” I ask, cautiously because he’s still staring at the ground and his voice is thick with anger.
“I didn’t fly, Carter.” His words are as gritty and rough as gravel, but I forget his anger and gawk at him.
> He rotates his head, as if just talking about the drive is making his neck stiff.
“Wait. You drove from New York?” I gape.
“No, from Austin,” he says around a large yawn.
“What were you doing in Austin?” I ask, but guess before I even finish the question.
I should have known that I couldn’t bury my head in the sand and ignore Phil forever.
Pure disdain is etched onto every angle of his face. That fierce, dark look he’s got locked on me was one of the secrets to his success on the soccer pitch. And now, I understand why. I’ve never backed down from a fight with him, but right now I’m thinking about making a run for it.
“I was there meeting your other brother. He’s been trying to reach for months. When he couldn’t, he reached out to me, on fucking Instagram. He said he had something important to give you, and didn’t want to risk sending it to your agent’s office because it’s highly personal. So, I flew down to see him.”
“Why? You could have just given me the message?” I ask, genuinely puzzled. Jack hates to travel, especially by plane.
His lip curls again. “Because, ass wipe, I wanted the whole story and I didn’t trust you to give it to me. And boy was I right. He told me that fifteen months ago you found out that Beth was your fucking half-sister. All you’ve said about her is that it didn’t work out.” He makes air quotes around his caustic words.
The blood drains from my face as remorse, fear, and resentment coalesce to turn my gut into a churning sea of contradiction.
I’m sorry that he found out this way. But, my decision to keep my family in the dark wasn’t a whim taken in a moment of panic. It was a deliberate. When I limped back home, I was hanging on to everything by a thread. And the truth, at the time, was too terrible to give voice to.
Now, though, I can see that the lies I told were the real transgression, the truth was… just that.
Jack has been pissed at me before. I’ve given him plenty of reasons to be disappointed over the course of my life. Right now, though the depth of his hurt is on full display and I’m sick with guilt knowing that I’m responsible for putting it there.
“Jackson— I’m sorry.” To my own ears, the words are a feeble and insufficient sentiment. Judging by the unwavering anger in his eyes, he feels the same way.
He lets out a harsh, exhausted sigh and shakes his head. “I know I’m an asshole. I know I’m not warm and fuzzy. I call you on your crap and I’m not fucking sympathetic, but God dammit, you can’t keep shit like that to yourself, Carter.”
He slams his hand down on the top of the piano, the crack of the contact sends a discordant reverb through the room. Anxiety and anger move like a shockwave through me. I can’t help the anxiety.
And I take the anger as my due. I owe him my unconditional contrition.
The painful blow we suffered when we lost my father was compounded by his deceit about his cancer’s return. In the dark days that followed, we promised that we wouldn’t keep secrets from each other.
The first time that vow was tested, I failed.
He shakes his head, his anger framed and muted by disappointment, now.
“I’m your brother. I would lay down, right now, and let someone cut me open, take my heart out, and put it in your chest if it would save you.” His voice is nearly a growl, and his throat works as if he’s holding back tears.
“You went through some really major shit all by yourself and kept it secret from your entire family. That’s not who we are as a family. We don’t go it alone. Not when we have each other,” he says angrily.
Full of regret, I drop my head into my hands. “I know. I know. I just didn’t know how to tell you. I barely know what to tell myself.” Again, my words fail to rise to the occasion, but I don’t know what else to say.
“You know why I drove here?” he asks.
“Because you hate planes?” I quip. It earns me a scowl.
“I knew I’d need the 21-hour drive to cool down enough to not want to kick your ass when I saw you. I was wrong, because that look on your face - you look like total shit by the way - makes me want to whale on you so bad. I know you think you have a temper. But, you’re not anyone’s big brother. You don’t know what it’s like to love someone the way I love you. And it’s just…shitty to know you struggled with this all alone.”
He takes a step back, putting distance between us and I’m hit with a pang of worry that he’s going to say he can’t forgive me.
He runs his hands through hair. The thick blond waves are a total mess. The dark circles beneath his eyes testify to the sleepless night, as do the thoroughly crumpled and stained dress shirt he’s wearing.
He sighs wearily and closes his eyes for a beat, rubs them like he’s trying to dislodge grit. The fatigue he’s feeling is secondary to everything else because when he opens them again, they are full of an angry blue fire that pins me in place while he digs in his jeans pocket and pulls out a key card.
“I’m staying at the Beverly Wilshire. I’m going there to take a nap. Be there for dinner at 7pm and come ready to tell me the fucking truth. If you don’t show, I’ll come back here and beat it out of you even if your cameras are rolling.”
He slams the keycard down on the piano. We both wince at the distinct sound of wood splintering. “I’m in the Beverly Suite. Let yourself up.”
He’s halfway to the door when he stops abruptly, I brace for whatever he’s planning for his encore.
“Here, your other brother asked me to give this to you.” Without turning around, he flings a piece of paper over his shoulder. It flutters to the floor, and when I look up, he’s gone. Dane ducks back into the room, his eyes wide with amused curiosity. Lucas and Heath, filter in, within seconds of him wearing the same expression and sit next to him on the sofa across from the piano.
“Dude, what the fuck did you do?” Dane asks. I stare blankly at them, as I grapple for what to say.
I may have eventually come clean with my family, but telling my bandmates was definitely not in the cards.
But now, I know that I need to come clean. We’ve become friends and I trust them as much as I trust anyone. We’ve hitched our stars together and it’s on the rise. If what happened in Winsome - any of it, ever comes out, they’ll be dragged down by it, too. They deserve the truth.
“I fucked up. I’ll tell you everything, but I need to talk to my brother first.”
“Sure…since we’re all here early, you want to show us what you’re working on?”
I glance at the clock. The song is supposed to play on the radio stations at ten o’clock in the morning. I’ve got more than twelve hours before I need to be at the hotel.
“Yeah, just give me a second.” I pick up the envelope he threw from the floor and freeze when I see the handwriting on the outside.
“Carter.” I scrawled neatly in bold, slanted script that I recognize right away.
It’s from Beth…I press it to my nose and smell all of the things she means to me. Home. Love. Freedom. Joy. Need. Want. Everything.
I finger the seal of the envelope and swallow the lump my heart has made in my throat before I turn back around to face them.
“Actually guys…maybe a raincheck would be good. I’ve got…stuff.” I wave the envelope and hope they don’t make me explain.
I don’t miss the quick glances they exchange. I never choose anything over work.
Dane speaks for them. “You’ve been at it really hard this week. You could use a break, man.”
“Maybe get a workout in, too,” Dane mutters.
I look up to find them giggling like they’re a high school lunch table. “What’s funny?”
Heath manages to stop laughing first and clears his throat. “On his way out, your brother said if we wanted the studio to be in one piece tomorrow, we’d make sure you weren’t a no show at his hotel tonight.”
I laugh, too because that sounds so much like Jack. But there’s a pit in my stomach as I pack up my stuff a
nd get ready to leave.
“Alright, I’ll see you this afternoon,” I call over my shoulder as I trudge toward the door.
“Maybe take a shower,” Lucas says with a straight face.
I sniff my armpit and grimace and Heath muffles a laugh by coughing.
“Fuck you,” I laugh, but don’t break stride until I’m outside. For the first time ever, I regret turning down the label’s offer of a driver. I tuck the letter into the inside of my jacket, hop on my bike and and head back to my hotel.
Heart of A Lion
CARTER
Before I read her letter, I shower and shave for the first time in three days.
When I’m dressed, I sit down at my desk and slide my finger under the flap of the envelope and pull out the handwritten letter inside.
Carter,
Hi, how are you? I’m sorry we haven’t been in touch at all since everything that happened at the end of last summer. You know I’m not good with words like you, but I wanted to say a few things and I wasn’t sure if you’d take my call. And…I’m not sure I’m ready to make a call, either.
I was supposed to get married today. I didn’t. Right before the ceremony, I found out that Duke was responsible for James being out that night. He called him and told him I was hurt and needed him to come get me. I don’t know why he did. But finding out was like divine intervention. No matter what I want for my sister, there is no way I could let Duke benefit from what he did.
So, instead of becoming his show wife, I’m leaving Winsome. I’m not sure where I’m going to end up, but I’m excited to be out in the world on my own.
Anyway, I just wanted to tell you I don’t regret a single second of our time together. Not even what happened in the church. Meeting you filled holes life started drilling into me as a little girl. You looked at me and saw me in a way that no one else ever had. Except me. It’s because of the time I spent with you that I even think I can do this. That’s a gift that’s going to last me a lifetime.
I’m going in search of the thing I’ve always longed for— freedom. I know everything I don’t want. I’d like to find out what I’d choose when I only have myself to consider.