Sliding Down the Sky (28 page)

“People have a hard time accepting

anything that overwhelms them.”

– Bob Dylan

Sass

I was serving a customer when Callum came in. My heart skipped a beat, in that annoying ‘I told you so’ kind of way. There was no denying it now, least of all to myself. He had me, hook, line and sinker. What had begun as a little harmless flirtation had blossomed into something much, much more. He didn’t even know it, but the little pieces of myself that I had thought were long gone had finally begun to glue themselves together again. I was now a strange mosaic of my former self and my present self, an artful arrangement of segments, so close to being whole that I could almost fool myself that I was.

I’d realised that late last night, after he’d taken me home. Jack and Ally had left, Leo and Gemma were in bed, and Aria was out cold, no doubt exhausted after her fun-filled evening.

And Callum had kissed me.

It wasn’t our first kiss, and I hoped it wouldn’t be our last, but it felt significant. I wasn’t sure why at the time, but after he left, when I was lying in bed going over the evening in my head, it hit me.

I’d spent the past year putting up walls. Roadblock after roadblock, detour upon detour, just to keep everyone out while I grieved behind them, in private. Callum had spent the past few weeks taking them down, brick by brick. He hadn’t rampaged through them like a raging bull, he’d done it carefully, thoughtfully. He’d taken his time, chosen his moments, chosen his bricks. While I was busy trying to decide if I was ready, he was standing there, a pile of bricks at his feet, waiting for me. While the maelstrom of emotions waged a war inside my head and my heart, he had stood there, just out of sight, and waited for the storm to pass.

Although I still wasn’t sure how or why, he had found me, and he had cared enough to dig me out of the rubble. I didn’t think I would ever be able to put that into words he would understand.

I finished serving my customer and saw Callum out of the corner of my eye, settled into his regular spot at the end of the bar. I glanced around, but Leo was busy clearing tables at the other end of the room. I walked towards Callum, unable to keep the smile off my face. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know how to play it cool, not with him. There didn’t seem to be much point anyway, not after last night.

“Hey,” he smiled.

He looked like the cat who got the cream. Was I the cream? I wanted to be.

“Hey yourself.”

I polished the bar half-heartedly with the cloth in my hand, the only outlet for the build-up of nervous energy inside me.

“Can we talk? Privately, I mean?”

His smile faded, as did mine. Something was wrong, I could feel it.

“It’s okay,” he said gently, reaching across the bar to rest his hand on top of mine, stilling it. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

If he felt the need to reassure me, my gut instinct was right. I could already feel myself trying to rebuild those walls around my heart, just in case. My gaze fell to his hand, as he squeezed mine. His knuckles were red and swollen.

What the hell?

When I looked back at him, his expression was still neutral, but I wasn’t fooled. His eyes gave him away, just like they always did. He was hiding something from me. I gestured for him to come behind the bar and through to the back room, and I disappeared through the door, waiting for him to catch up. He was right behind me, closing the door after him.

“I’ve just paid a visit to Mike Dawson, that reporter from the other night.”

He turned to look at me, but it felt like the floor was tilting. What did he just say? Why would he…

I glanced down at his hand again and he tried to hide it from me, shoving both hands into his pockets.

The blood drained from my face.

“Don’t freak out, okay?”

Too late.

“I wanted to make sure he got the message – that you didn’t want him around, that you deserved your privacy, that you’d damn well
earnt
it. I don’t think he’ll be bothering you again.”

That was code. I knew Callum. It felt like I was inhaling sand. The pieces were joining together and I didn’t like the picture it was forming.

“What… what did you do?”

“Let’s just say he had trouble understanding me, but I think I got through to him.”

I shook my head. Oh God. Why did he look so damn calm? Didn’t he know what he’d done? My knees turned to jelly and I leaned back against the wall to steady myself.

“I can’t believe you did that,” I mumbled, still trying to convince myself that I’d misunderstood.

I’ll never be free of them now.

He was genuinely confused, I saw it written all over his face as the blood rushed back into mine.

“It’s okay,” he said, reaching for my arm. “It’s going to be fine. He’s not hanging around, you don’t have to worry about him anymore, Sass.”

“Are you kidding?” I snapped, shaking him off as my temper roared to life. “Don’t you get it? You’ve just made everything a thousand times worse!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t do you? You don’t get it. Jesus… “

I pushed myself away from the wall and walked down the hallway, towards the store room. I needed to move. I couldn’t just stand there. Everything buzzed – the blood rushing through my veins, the noise in my head, the anger thundering in my temples. My emotions took over, turning my body into a robot.

“Sass?”

I stood in the middle of the store room, flexing my hand into a fist in a vain attempt to keep a lid on my temper.

“You can’t reason with these people!” I seethed. “They don’t work like that! They want drama, they want misery, because that’s what they thrive on! They’re not like you and I, they think differently!”

“If it’s misery he wants, then that’s what I gave him,” he said, all trace of nonchalance gone now.

He was starting to doubt himself. Good. I wanted him to know how it felt to be trapped like a rat in a cage. I wanted company in there this time.

“Why?” I said, my voice cracking as irrationality and anxiety overwhelmed me. “Why did you do it? Did you seriously think he’d just go quietly? Don’t you get it? He’s just the tip of the iceberg – he’s the one we can
see!
The ones we can’t see, all the others with their cameras and their long-distance lenses, they’ll be everywhere soon –
everywhere!
We’ve already had two of them in here, and it won’t be long before word gets out and the others catch up. Word spreads like wildfire in their world! I won’t even be able to leave the house soon! It’ll be like after the accident, all over again… “

I stumbled backwards as the realisation hit me, sucking the air right out of my lungs. He was on me in a heartbeat, grabbing my shoulders, dragging me upright, his eyes honing in on mine. Part of me recognised the panic in him, and saw the regret, but it wasn’t that part that had control over me.

Irrationality and sheer, abject fear took over.

“It won’t,” he said, shaking me gently. “It won’t be like that again. I’m here this time, and I won’t let it, I promise you that.”

“You can’t stop them!” I blurted out. “You’re not my bodyguard! You can’t be with me twenty-four seven! They don’t sleep, okay? They just keep coming until they have what they want!”

He shook his head, and even his steely determination wasn’t enough to make me waver. I knew them better than he did.

“Not on my watch.”

“You’re not even listening to me!” I cried, my head spinning with worst-case-scenarios.

“I am listening to you! I heard very damn word you just said, but I refuse to give in to them, that’s all!”

I stared at him, gulping down a breath. Suddenly, the world seemed to stop turning.

“Is that what you think I’m doing? Giving in to them?”

“I didn’t say that.”

No, he didn’t, but he didn’t have to. I hated them. I hated them for making me feel this way, especially in front of him. I hated them for making me show this side of myself to him, the side I was so ashamed of, the side I wanted to hide from him.

“I know what they’re like,” I said in a strangled voice that didn’t even sound like me. “You don’t. I’ve been there before. They won’t ever stop, and I won’t ever be able to move past what happened because they won’t let me.”

He held my gaze, as though doing so would change everything. It wouldn’t. Nothing would.

“It’s not them holding you back, Sass,” he said gently, loosening his grip on my arms. “It’s you. You’re holding yourself back.”

What did he just say?

“Your music isn’t gone, you’re just not hearing it. You’re letting the guilt and all the shit that happened that night block it out. It’s still there, inside you. I know, because I’ve heard it.”

He was too close. Too close, and talking like a crazy man. I shrugged out of his grasp, backing away from him. I needed space. I tried to remember to breathe, because somewhere in the back of my mind, there was screaming, and it was so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else.

“What are you talking about?” I murmured, willing the screaming to stop.

His eyes never left mine.

“I’ve heard you sing,” he said. “That night I stayed over, you got up in the middle of the night and you came out into the living room. You sat down at the piano, in the dark, and you sang. It was incredible, so beautiful. Leo was there, too. He said you’ve been doing that since the accident, getting up in the middle of the night and singing, in your sleep. He’s been too scared to tell you in case you stop, but I think you need to know. You need to know that your music isn’t gone. It’s still there, and it’s searching for a way out. You need to trust yourself enough to let it out, because maybe, with that trust comes the kind of healing you’ve been waiting for.”

The screaming stopped, suddenly, without warning, and then it was just the two of us, staring at each other.

The silence was worse. It grabbed at my throat, squeezing it tight. It tumbled over my skin like flames, setting every inch of me alight. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, I was way beyond speaking. My world came tumbling down, bricks crashing to the ground around me.

I turned towards the door, stumbling over a box, but catching myself just in time. I needed to get away. There wasn’t enough air in that small room for both of us. There wasn’t even enough for me. The store room had gone from my sanctuary to my coffin.

“Sass, wait!”

I needed to put as much distance as possible between me and everyone else. I pushed open the back door and fell out into the fresh night air, gulping down oxygen.

And then I started running.

“Strangely, some songs you really don’t want to write.”

– David Bowie

Callum

During the short drive home, Leo’s voice rang in my head.

“Get out, before I throw you out.”

Jesus.

I ran a hand down my face. I was so sure that telling her had been the right thing to do. So why the hell did it feel like I’d just done the exact opposite? I couldn’t get Sass’s face to disappear. It danced in front of my eyes as I pulled into my driveway, like some kind of ghostly apparition. That’s how she’d looked – like a ghost. She’d lost all trace of colour in her face. Her skin turned a sickening ashen grey, just like the night she’d had the panic attack. This was different, though. This wasn’t just a physical reaction – that would’ve been bad enough. No, it was the mental torment that was so much worse. I could see it, the moment I broke her. It had been as clear as day, like a neon sign above her head.

I walked up the path like a man condemned. I needed whisky, something to dull my senses, anything to shift this bone-deep ache in my chest. I heard the phone ringing as I was unlocking the front door. I hurried through the hall and snatched at it.

“Sass?”

There was a pause, and I held my breath, my heart rocketing up into my mouth.

Don’t hang up. Please?

“Callum?”

It wasn’t Sass. My heart fell with a speed that sucked the breath right out of me, lodging somewhere near my knees. I leaned back against the wall in the hallway, closing my eyes.

“Yeah.”

“It’s Coop.”

Through those two little words, I heard the clear ring of anxiety. My eyes shot open. Coop never called me. Something was wrong.

“What is it?”

His sigh seemed to reach down the phone and grab me by the throat.

“It’s your Mom. I’m at the hospital. I think you should come.”

I packed while I was on the phone to him, frantically scrabbling for details, along with clean clothes and underwear. When the words ‘cerebral aneurysm’ and ‘coma’ are mentioned in the same sentence, you stop thinking clearly. Your brain shuts down and you run on auto-pilot. Your priorities are whittled down in a heartbeat.

Clothes.

Bag.

Car.

Now
.

She’d collapsed at work earlier that day. After tests and scans, a cerebral aneurysm was diagnosed. The bleed wasn’t slowing down and blood was gathering inside her skull. It would need to be drained. Surgery was mentioned. He hadn’t called me until they knew for sure what was going on. He didn’t want to scare me, but he had no guarantees for me, either.

I threw my bag into the car and took off like the devil himself was on my tail. I needed coffee and a miracle, not necessarily in that order. I stopped for coffee and gas on the outskirts of town. It was practically deserted and, with my heightened sense of awareness, adrenaline pumping through my veins, I’m pretty sure the attendant thought I was as high as a kite, not that I cared. I barely spoke to him, shoving the money over the counter and making a beeline for the door.

It wasn’t until I was out on the road and heading out of town that I realised I hadn’t told anyone where I was going. I forced myself to plan ahead. I’d call Jack and Ally when I got there, I’d call Bill in the morning. Hopefully by then I’d know more about what was going on. I debated whether to call Sass, but I decided not to. She had enough on her plate right now. Besides, I wasn’t even sure she’d want to talk to me after what happened tonight. It didn’t stop me wishing she was with me, though. Suddenly, the gravity of the situation hit me again, right in the gut. I tried to swallow down the fear. Everything would be fine. It had to be.