Sweet Ache

Chapter 25

HAWKIN

When she opens the door, I feel like I can breathe for the first time in forever. Her lips part in surprise and then turn upward in a slow smile, but I also can see her hesitancy, the guard that’s up in her eyes. A shudder of panic darts through me and I feel lost, unsure what has changed between the two of us. The world beneath my feet seems to be shifting—beliefs, promises, truths, all of it in doubt—and I can’t have whatever is causing these changes—her, us—not be okay.

“Hey,” she says and motions for me to come in but then holds her hand up in the air in a one minute gesture. I see the phone in her hand as I follow her into her family room. She motions for me to sit on the couch but I’m too restless to sit because all I want to do is pull her toward me and kiss her senseless. It’s like I can’t get enough of her, and I need to abate this burning in my gut.

She leans against the kitchen counter with a smile on her face from whatever the person on the other end of the line says. “Well, that sounds like a great idea. I’ll have to take you up on that,” she says before falling silent while the person speaks again. She laughs affectionately, and I can’t tear my eyes away from her. “Well, I’ve got to get going—someone’s here…. Uh-huh, but I’m glad you called. Bye, Luke.”

What? Talk about whiplash. I stare at her as she takes her time setting her phone down before she walks toward me. “What a nice surprise!”

I don’t know if it’s all of the shit in my head and my fight with Hunter mixed with my sudden want for her to be only mine, but my temper flashes without forethought. “Who the fuck was that?”

“Luke. Is there a problem?” She stops and places her hands on her hips.

Quin has every right to be annoyed by my question. Hell, she’s probably playing me and pushing my buttons on purpose, but I’m not in the mood for games. I’ve dealt with enough shit as it is today and am at that point where my confusion and emotional turmoil and need for her all crash together into a perfect storm waiting to explode.

“Yeah, there is. I thought we … I mean we … What are you talking to him for?” I grit the words out, frustrated at myself for being so flustered and playing into her game if she is in fact playing one.

“Because I want to.” And the way she says it, challenge mixed with what are you going to do about it, has me angling my head and questioning myself again.

“Not when you’re with me, you won’t.”

She stares at me, arms crossing over her chest and that fuck-you lift to her chin. “I’m with you? Because unless I’m mistaken being with someone means that you don’t hide shit that’s a need-to-know. We’ve never talked about being exclusive so I’m free to do what I want, right?”

“We’re exclusive.” I react without thought, my own answer surprising me.

Quin stares at me for a beat, eyes wide, lips parted before shaking her head in disagreement. “No we’re not. Being exclusive means closet doors are open so we can peek at the skeletons inside … and yours? Your doors are locked shut and that’s not okay with me.”

Is she rejecting me? What the fuck am I missing here? Fear that I’m going to lose her when I just realized I want more with her hits me. “What are—”

“You’re pissed I’m talking to Luke … so I can be pissed you haven’t told me about Helen, right?”

Her words take me by surprise. My mind stumbles, panic replacing my anger again—but of a totally different kind than when I knocked on the front door minutes ago. I must look like a deer in the headlights trying to figure out how she knows about my mom because she answers the question for me.

“You and Vince were talking about her in the kitchen the other morning, and I overheard,” she says with a quiet, resigned hurt in her voice.

And things start to click into place for me. Her sudden departure after we had sex. The flustered excuse to work on her thesis that didn’t match the deception in her eyes. Almost like she’d fallen into the lust of the sex with me and once it was over, she realized that it was all too much … but in reality she was thinking I was cheating on her or double-dipping or what-the-fuck-ever with the person we were talking about in the kitchen.

I’ve held my mom’s privacy so close for so long that my chest constricts when I think of letting an outsider in. And even though that person is Quin, trusting someone to know about my mom, the one person I love more than anything, my one and only weakness, paralyzes me.

I hang my head down and squeeze my eyes shut from the hurricane of emotion that is whipping inside me. “Helen’s not who you think she is, Quin.” The words are so quiet I’m not sure if she even hears me but when I lift my head to meet her eyes, I know she has. “Come with me somewhere?” The offer is out of my mouth before I can stop it.

We drive in an awkward silence toward Westbrook. Quin must have sensed my distress when I asked her to come with me because she stared at me for a beat before grabbing her purse and climbing in the car beside me.

I glance over at her, eyes shadowed behind her sunglasses and hands folded in her lap, and wonder what she’s thinking. Does she have any clue what my insides feel like right now? Like they’re being churned and twisted and filled with acid. She can’t possibly because I haven’t said a word and yet she still sits there in silent reassurance, allowing me the space I need to work through my inner turmoil.

“I knocked Hunter out.” I’m not sure why I choose right now to confess this to her other than to break the silence.

“Well, he probably deserved it,” she says matter-of-factly and asks nothing more. No how could you punch your brother? No you don’t do that to your family. Nothing.

And yet I feel like I need to explain, purge the wrongdoing from my soul, because I continue, “I lied about some shit, took the fall for him, and he made a smart-ass remark about how I’d do it again.”

“Vince told me about the drugs.” It’s all she says and it’s so soft that all I can do is nod my head in affirmation. “Everyone has a breaking point, Hawkin. One person can take on only so much responsibility without buckling from its weight,” she murmurs without any judgment of the lies I’ve told.

I keep my eyes fixed on the freeway in front of me as I let the comment resonate, knowing its truth despite the constant tumult that burdens me. A part of me sags in relief at her observation, knowing that someone else sees the cracks in my resolve, while the other part of me begins to question again.

And the scary thing about questions are they usually result in a revolution of some sort. I’m just not sure if I can withstand an overhaul of principles without it resulting in casualties.

“Am I the reason he’s like this, Q? How did this person I’ve been with since conception … how can we experience the same tragedy but be so completely different? Did I try too hard, protect him too much, throw him to the wolves when I shouldn’t have and end up proving I’m just like Dad?” I speak the questions floating around in my mind aloud, throw them out there even though I know there’s no way in hell she has the answers.

She does nothing more than reach over and lace her fingers with mine, staying silent, but her unconditional support is deafening. Except even with someone beside you, the quiet has a way of smothering you when you’re left alone with just your thoughts. And of course mine turn to where we are headed right now.

I don’t have a clue why I’m so goddamn anxious all of a sudden when my thoughts veer to my mom. It’s not like I’m a monster. It’s not like anyone knowing she’s sick is going to ruin me. It’s none of the above so why does my dad’s voice still ring in my ears as prevalent as the sound of the gunshot?

It’s bullshit—the fear, the worry, the sense of the inevitable—but it’s the truest thing I’ve ever had in my life. My mom might never remember me again, she might hate me, but she’s still my mom.

She’s my greatest love. And my biggest weakness.

Exposing her illness to the press, who’d splash it across magazine covers and make a spectacle of her because of me would break me when Dad’s death nearly did just that. I wouldn’t be able to protect her anymore from the glory-hound paparazzi, who would feed their greed by taking advantage of the insults her ailing mind hurls at me. How many people would stop and look at the cover of a rag if they proclaimed “murderer,” “useless,” “coward” as a precursor before lead singer?

They’d use her up and spit her out to get dirt on me without a second thought to collateral damage. If that happened, I would have failed her twice in my lifetime, and that’s something I can’t let happen.

You can’t remove the scars of your childhood. They stay with you forever, an indelible mark to remind you time and again what you should or shouldn’t do differently next time. And fuck if my scars aren’t so deep my bones are grooved by their presence. Even in my own death they will remain.

So I’ve had Ben ensure that it appears that she’s fallen off the face of the earth, so far buried in this Google era and HIPPA privacy laws that no one can bribe a facility nurse to repeat the insults and accusations my mom hurls at me as a means for tabloid fodder. Keeping her condition private, using her mother’s maiden name on her patient history, means I no longer worry about someone manipulating her to get to me.

So why am I suddenly feeling like I need to tell Quinlan about her? Letting her in my private world is like unzipping my soul and letting her climb inside to the deep, dark recesses I choose not to delve into. I’m not the only one in life who has gone through this and yet the one thing in my very public life I’ve fought fiercely to keep private, I want to tell someone about.

Quinlan sitting here terrifies me and frees me simultaneously. My thoughts are running a thousand miles an hour, scattered in so many directions I can’t keep them straight. Years of obligation, hours of self-doubt, a lifelong inability to accept someone’s love, all boil down to this … letting someone in when I’m so used to shutting everyone out.

Will she think less of me when she realizes I can’t even take care of my own mother? That I have her in a facility to not only protect her but to protect my own image? I mean how fucking selfish does that make me? And what if my mom is having one of her sundowning moments and hurls vile things at me? What will she think of me then? Will Quin understand that underneath it all—my continual protection of Hunter, staying true to my word—all of it is some fruitless attempt to redeem myself and not be weak like my dad was? Ever again.

I suck in a breath when I realize my thoughts have transitioned so drastically in the past five hours that a damn sprinter wouldn’t even be able to keep up with them.

I’m letting Quinlan in. I want to let her in.

I try to shut all of the noise out for a moment, quiet my head, and let the warmth of the sun against the car’s window warm the cold parts of my soul. This is all too much too fast. The truths I’ve always believed to be true are now pouring down around me like the acid rain in this Los Angeles smog.

I don’t know what all of this means for me or for the way I live my life. Shit, if throwing a single punch can cause all of these revelations, what the hell would happen if I actually allowed myself to let someone in? If I actually let myself love?

The thought staggers me, for the good and the bad. Blows apart preconceived notions in my world that I’ve tried so hard to make as predictable as possible.

My past has written the path of my future and made me who I am. For the longest time I thought it would be impossible to rewrite what’s laid before me. But as I pull into the parking lot at Westbrook and glance over at Quin with her soft smile and blond curls floating from the breeze, I realize I don’t want to accept that anymore. I have a pencil in my unsteady hand and when I step foot from this car, I’m attempting to write on a new page.

I just hope the lead sticks.

If not, I might be erased.