Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
NICK
“ C erys, wait.” I followed her out of the living room door and down the corridor. The sight of her running from me , twisted something in my gut.
She didn’t stop. Of course she didn’t. She stormed into the kitchen like she was marching into battle, her braid whipping against her back, her shoulders rigid with tension.
“Talk to me. I want to understand. I want to make it—” — whatever the hell it was — “right.”
I barely crossed the threshold before she whirled to face me, her green eyes flashing like the lightning cracking outside the farmhouse. If she’d had a plate in her hand, she might have hurled it at my head.
“Just stop, Nick,” she snapped, her voice low and razor-sharp. “I can’t do this with you right now.”
My first instinct was to argue, to push back, to demand that she tell me what she meant by this . But the look on her face — eyes glistening, lips pressed into a thin, trembling line — silenced me.
She didn’t want a fight. She wanted me gone.
I clamped my mouth shut. What was the point in arguing? It would only solidify her image of me as the villain who slunk back into town whenever it suited him.
Maybe I’d earned it.
Cerys turned away, leaning over the sink. Water rushed from the tap as she seized a plate, scrubbing it with more force than necessary and plunging it under the running water. The sound of it filled the silence between us, louder than it should have been.
I stuffed my hands into my pockets and just stood there, feeling useless. My foot tapped the worn tile as I just barely resisted the urge to pace.
I felt like a kid again, standing outside the headmaster’s office after getting caught sneaking out of school — guilty, embarrassed, and desperately trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong.
I’d said that I missed Gareth, which I did. But why would that set her off? It had to be something else. Something I didn’t say maybe? Or was it just my very presence?
But she wasn’t supposed to hate me. Not like this. Not with this sharp, biting edge that felt like it was cutting me open every time she looked at me.
“You know, Nick,” she said finally, her voice barely audible over the rush of water, “for someone who used to be so dependable, you’ve gotten damn good at disappointing people.”
Talk about a gut punch.
A hollow ache settled behind my ribs. Years ago, I’d have teased her, turned it into a joke that left us both laughing. Now, I just felt the weight of it, heavy and suffocating.
I bit back my instinctive need to snap, defend myself, blame my busy life on the road. What good would that do when part of me agreed with her?
“Let me help.” I reached for a towel, desperate for something to do besides stand there absorbing her anger.
She spun, snatching the dishcloth before I could grab it. Our fingers brushed, a bare instant of contact that sent a jolt of awareness spiralling through me. I saw it register in her eyes, too, a flicker of something besides bitterness. Then she yanked her hand away, droplets splattering the flagstones.
“Don’t,” she said, her knuckles whitening around the cloth. “Just don’t.”
My throat tightened. “Cerys...”
I winced at how small and unsure it sounded. I wasn’t used to this — to feeling this out of my depth. On stage, I knew who I was. I was confident, in control.
“What, Nick?” She stepped closer, her gaze cutting through every defence I had. “What exactly do you think you can fix? You show up after eight years, like missing Gareth’s funeral and skipping out on Meinir’s birthday after he died wasn’t enough proof you’d washed your hands of us.”
My stomach twisted. I’d been in London with the band recording our first tracks. Nothing screwed up carefully laid plans like weather in Wales. A storm had moved in that week and washed out the railway lines. I’d promised myself I’d make it up to them later, but later never came.
“I’m sorry, okay?” The rain outside grew louder, the farmhouse windows rattling under the gusts. “I know I’ve been gone. I know I didn’t call. I don’t even know what I said this time that?—”
Her laughter cut me off, sharp as shattered glass. “Of course you don’t know. You never do, do you? You just breeze in here like nothing’s happened, like you haven’t spent the last eight years pretending this place doesn’t exist.”
“That’s not fair. I would have been here for you...” Guilt pressed on my lungs. Had Meinir told me about her dad? Did I miss it in a text or a voicemail I never returned? “If I’d known?—”
“That’s your excuse?” She shook her head, incredulous. “You didn’t know. Because you never asked. Everyone else who cared called, even if they drifted after. You couldn’t spare a second for that. Not a funeral, not a birthday, not a five-minute check-in. Nothing.”
I wanted to deny it, but I couldn’t. Instead, I stared at her with pleading eyes, at a complete loss for words. The silence stretched between us, broken only by the steady patter of rain against the windowpane and the distant rumble of thunder.
All I wanted was to rewind the clock ten minutes, go back into the living room and continue our trip down memory lane. For a little while, it had felt like we were friends again, inseparable.
But even that had flaws, didn’t it? It was hard not to think of the bad when we remembered the good. Gareth’s memory permeated it all.
“There are phones. People text these days. Call.” She gestured to the old, corded phone hanging on Meins’s kitchen wall, her voice rising. “Jesus, people have fucking Instagram and God knows what else! Do you know how many of Gareth’s mates showed up? Do you? Because I do. And you know what one thing they all did afterward?”
I shook my head, mute, numb, waiting for her to deliver the blow I knew would come. Because what could I say to disagree? She wasn’t wrong.
“They fucked off home,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “But they called. Even if it was just once. But you? Not a word. Not a single bloody word.” She shoved the plate she was holding into my hands.
I set it down in the sink and scrubbed a hand over my face. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I can’t change any of that?—”
“No,” she said bitterly, “you can’t.”
“I couldn’t...” I closed my eyes, my temples beginning to throb. I’d weathered more than a few fights in my life, but none of them felt this close to breaking something inside of me.
“You couldn’t what? Couldn’t be bothered? Couldn’t spare a day from your precious music career to say goodbye to the people who were supposed to matter to you?”
“That’s not fair.” My eyes flew open and my hackles rose, a familiar mix of guilt and anger bubbling up. “You have no idea what I was going through. What I’m still going through.”
She laughed, a harsh, bitter sound. “Oh, poor Nick. It must be so hard being a big rock star. All those adoring fans, all that money. How do you cope?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped, anger overriding my better judgment. “Try living out of a suitcase for months on end. Try having every move you make scrutinised and judged.”
“Cry me a river,” she spat.
Hurt glimmered in her eyes, raw and accusing, and it made me want to reach out to her. But I knew I had no right.
“I never wanted to hurt anyone,” I said, my anger deflating as quickly as it had come. “I just... I couldn’t face it. Any of it. So I ran.”
“You’re still running,” she said, her voice low and intense. “You show up here, acting like nothing’s changed, like you can just waltz back into our lives?—”
“I never said that!” I shouted, but even to my own ears, it sounded weak. I ran a hand through my hair, frustration building. “Christ, Cerys, do you think this is easy for me? I miss him every fucking day. I see his face every time I close my eyes.”
My hand unconsciously moved to my left arm, tracing the outline of the tattoo hidden beneath my sleeve. The Welsh dragon, intertwined with a treble clef — a permanent reminder of where I came from and what I’d lost.
She flinched at that, and I saw a flicker of something — understanding? Sympathy? — in her eyes. But it was gone in an instant, replaced by that same hard anger.
“I didn’t mean to—” I started, but she cut me off.
She gripped a plate so hard I feared it would crack. “If you really missed Gareth”—her voice faltered on his name, eyes shining with more than anger—“you’d have shown up. If you meant what you said about him being your best friend, you wouldn’t have run. You wouldn’t have forgotten him and acted like he never existed.”
“I didn’t forget,” I said, my voice low and strained. “I could never forget.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” she muttered.
“I’m serious.” Shame formed a tight knot in my chest. “I was drowning in guilt. So much so that I wrote a song about him trying to deal with the pain.”
Cerys froze, surprise flickering across her face.
“I never played it for anyone, not even the band. It hurt too much.” I took a step forward, closing the distance between us until she had to tip her head back or retreat.
She stared into my eyes with a vulnerability that both terrified and captivated me. Just like that, the years melted away, and I was seventeen again. Heart pounding in my chest, palms sweaty, pulse pounding in my throat stealing my voice.
A stray lock of black hair fell across her cheek, and I ached to reach out and tuck it behind her ear. God, what was wrong with me?
After everything, after all the silence and the mess I’d made, how could I still crave even the smallest touch? I had no right.
My gaze drifted over her face, taking in every change time had carved into it — the sharper angles of her cheekbones, the tension around her eyes, the way her jaw tightened as if holding back a thousand words she refused to speak. She wasn’t the carefree, optimistic girl I remembered, the one who’d once laughed when I drummed on tabletops or teased me about my dodgy Welsh slang. She’d hardened, grown guarded.
And yet something underneath that hardness still drew me in, like I was fourteen again and hopelessly smitten, but preparing to give her up because Gareth called dibs first.
Wanting her was a joke now, a cruel punchline to the life I’d lived on the road, always running from home. But it didn’t stop my stomach from twisting at the scent of her or wishing she’d smile at me like she used to. It didn’t stop me from noticing how her lashes trembled ever so slightly when she blinked, or how that single strand of hair refused to stay put, as if daring me to do something about it.
I stared back at her, tongue-tied, feeling that old ache flare back to life. And it hurt, knowing that I couldn’t make a move even if I wanted to. She would always be Gareth’s girl. It hurt worse knowing I wanted her anyway, even if she hated me, even if I deserved every scrap of anger in her voice.
“I wasn’t running from him ,” I whispered.
“Right. It was the rest of us you couldn’t wait to escape,” she muttered, her tone dry.
I ran a hand through my hair, frustration building. “I didn’t mean it like that. You know that.”
“No, I really don’t.”
As if on cue, another clap of thunder echoed outside, rolling slowly over the fields and pulling her gaze away from me.
“You think an apology or a secret sad song will fix anything? My dad’s gone. Gareth’s gone.” A flash of lightning lit the kitchen, turning the shadows stark. Cerys inhaled sharply, and for a breath, I thought I saw tears. “Meinir barely talks about him anymore. And I’m here, holding it all together. Meanwhile, you’re living your dream, unaffected.”
“That is not true.”
What did I have to do to make her hear me?
I closed the distance again, aware on some level that I shouldn’t crowd her — that it would only make it worse — but I couldn’t stop. We were toe-to-toe now, close enough that I could see the faint freckles dusting her nose, smell the lingering scent of milk and herbs that clung to her clothes.
No, no, no. Back away, you idiot. She’s not yours. She’ll never be yours.
But I couldn’t. It was like some magnetic pull I was powerless to resist. My traitorous body leaned in, inch by agonising inch, drawn to her like a moth to a flame.
My gaze dropped to lips I’d spent far too long trying not to think about. Lips that, even now, made my gut twist with sheer longing. I inhaled sharply as the urge to close the distance built in me. My heart raced, pounding so loudly I was sure she could hear it.
Move. Back away.
“Cerys,” I whispered, her name a fragile thing on my lips, tangled with years of unspoken words and buried desires. The kitchen seemed to fade away, leaving just the two of us, teetering on the edge of something dangerous and thrilling.
And for one brief, dizzying moment, she leaned in. Time seemed to slow, each second stretching out like taffy, the distance shrinking, the years of separation dissolving.
My gaze drifted to her lips again, full and slightly parted, and a wave of longing washed over me, so intense it nearly stole my breath.
But then she blinked, and reality crashed in.
I almost kissed her.
The realisation slammed into me like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs. Guilt, thick and suffocating, coiled in my chest.
What the hell was wrong with me? I was a selfish bastard, plain and simple.
I stepped back, putting the island between us. I needed to leave. Staying had been a mistake.
“I can’t do this,” I bit out, my voice thick with emotion. And then I did what I had always done best.
I turned and walked out.
“Of course,” Cerys called after me, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. “Go ahead. Run back to your precious band. It’s not like you’ve made a habit of sticking around.”
Her words hit me like a blow, but I didn’t turn around. Couldn’t. Because if I did, the weight of everything — the guilt, the loss, the years of distance — would break me. I stormed down the hallway, my footsteps echoing loudly on the worn floorboards.
I yanked open the front door with a finality that felt too predictable, too easy. The old hinges creaked in protest.
I froze.
Rain hammered down in sheets so thick that the world beyond the doorstep was just a swirling mess of grey. Large puddles had already formed in the yard. A low rumbling sound in the distance told me it wasn’t just a passing shower.
It was a bloody flash flood.
Of course. Because the universe, like Meins, had a twisted sense of humour.
“Shit.” I’d been too inside my own head to realise just how bad things had gotten outside. The wind whipped around me, sending icy droplets of rain that stung against my face.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the flooded yard for a brief, blinding moment. In its wake, thunder crashed overhead, so loud it seemed to shake the very foundations of the house.
“What’s wrong?” Cerys asked behind me, her voice a mix of lingering anger and reluctant concern. “Forgot how to open an umbrella, rock star?”
I turned to face her, watching as her expression shifted from annoyance to shock as she took in the scene beyond the door. Her eyes widened, and for a moment, all the tension between us was forgotten in the face of this new, shared predicament.
“Oh,” she breathed, her anger seemingly evaporating as quickly as it had flared. “That’s... not good.”
A humourless laugh escaped me. “Yeah, you could say that.”
The wind surged, rattling the door in my hand, whistling through the house. The driveway had all but disappeared under a sheet of water.
We were trapped.