Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
JASMINE
“Shit.”
Looking away from the door, Jason sits on the edge of the bed and puts his head in his hands.
“Did you have any idea he was so bad?” Sean asks as I move to kneel behind Jason, wrap my arms around him, and lean my cheek against his back. I think we both need some sort of comfort right now.
“No,” Jason replies, placing a hand over mine resting on his stomach.
“Have you seen him this bad before?” Maximus asks. I don’t think he has looked away from the door since Christian left.
“Only once. He didn’t sleep for a month after Mum died, because of nightmares. Tommy was fucking vicious with him when it started affecting his fights and everything else.”
The twins both curse under their breath; Maximus pinches the bridge of his nose as Sean rubs the back of his neck.
“What do we do to help?”
“So now you fucking care?” Sean spins around and stares at his twin as Jason and I look on in surprise.
“What the fuck is that meant to mean?” Maximus snaps, turning his attention to Sean, who looks angrier than I have ever seen him towards his brother.
“You know what it fucking means. You have made it your mission to give him shit for months. From the sly comments to throwing downright nasty insults, don’t forget Christmas when you only got the bloody puppy for Jaz to piss him off!”
“Enough,” Jason snaps as I stare at Maximus, my mouth hanging open. Did he really use a gift for me to get at his brother? I think I know the answer from how he refuses to look in my direction.
“He goes harder on me than anyone else, don’t try and say he doesn’t because he fucking does,” Maximus yells, pointing towards the door, which is thankfully closed. “So yes, I make comments and digs and do things just to push his buttons; what does he expect when he bitches at me all the time!” He closes the distance between him and Sean, so they are nose to nose. The two-inch height difference between them means Maximus is looking down at him. “But not once, not for a second, have I not loved my brother. He’s not the only one who would take a bullet for each of you because I would, too. Without a second thought, I would jump in front of that prick. Because as much as we rile each other up, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for that man. He may be a prick, but he’s our fucking prick, and he's been the best father we could have ever asked for, which says it all as he’s only meant to be our brother.”
I don’t miss the way Sean doesn’t look away from his brother, but his eyes soften as he realises there is so much love between them under the looks, digs, and everything else.
“He only goes harder on you because you have always reminded him of himself.” The twins finally stop staring at each other and turn to Jason, who takes my hand and pulls me around him, so I’m curled up on his lap. Jason holds me tightly for comfort, and I’m okay with that.
“You have always strived to be like Christian, it's why you went into boxing in the first place. You jumped at every chance you could to be just like him, and as you got older, that didn’t change, and you know it.” Jason tightens his arms around me as I relax into him, letting him know I’m here for him.
“Most would take that as a compliment, but he doesn’t,” Maximus mumbles.
“Of course he doesn’t, you absolute dickhead!” All three guys watch me climb off Jason's lap and stand before Maximus.
“Excuse me?” Maximus stares down at me, but I’ve had enough of the bickering and snide comments, like everyone else.
“I called you a dickhead, and no, I’m not taking it back.” I don’t give him a chance to answer again before I finally snap. “One of these days, you are going to realise how much that man hates himself.” I stare at him while pointing towards the door. “I know each of you hates having to kill people. We are all well aware that Christian will try to be the one to do it rather than any of you. Have you ever seen him after he’s killed someone? I don’t mean when he knows you are around, but when he is in the shower, alone and broken. Because I have. Have you heard him crying out in his sleep because he's reliving what he's done? No, but I have. Why do you think he gets up before the rest of us every morning and very rarely sleeps in whatever bed we end up in? Because he doesn’t want us to know he’s suffering.
“That man in there wouldn’t only kill others to save you, but he would kill himself before letting you turn out like him. That’s why he’s tough on you; he doesn’t want you to follow in his footsteps. He blames himself for every single thing that has gone wrong in all our lives. But most of all, he blames himself for the fact you have to do the things you do.” I turn away from a shocked-looking Maximus, not caring what he has to say on the matter. We are all sick of the way he can be with Christian, and it needs to stop.
“Why did he react so badly when he walked into the bathroom? That wasn’t just because I was in there.”
Jason shakes his head before looking at the others.
“You were singing the song Mum used to sing all the time. She loved the Beatles, but something about ‘Blackbird’ made her sing it more than any other,” he sighs, looking at the door.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have stopped,” I point out, devastated that I’ve been walking around for weeks unknowingly singing a song that upsets them all. But when Jason turns back to me, he’s smiling.
“Because I love hearing it. It’s like she’s here again.”
“I forgot about that,” Maximus whispers, looking at the door. “She would sing it more around Christian than anyone else.”
“That’s because he was her Blackbird,” Jason answers with a sad smile. “For years, he was her Little Blackbird.” He gives his head a little shake. “Tommy would give her hell for it, claiming she was ‘making him weak,’ so she stopped to protect him. I’d forgotten all about that.”
“It doesn’t look like he has, though,” Sean whispers. The four of us look at the door, all thinking of the broken man who just walked through it.
Walking back over to Jason, I press a kiss on his cheek.
“Can you tell the girls to lay off what we were going to tackle today? If they want to go home, they can.” I turn to walk out of the door, but Jason grabs my hand and stops me.
“You want to call off the wedding?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I’m going to spend the morning with him and see what he wants.” I look around at the others and offer them a small smile. “Could you honestly enjoy the day if you know one of us is hanging on by a thread?” I’m surprised when Maximus is the first to shake his head. Stepping up in front of him, I kiss his cheek. “You are a dickhead, but you’re my dickhead.”
He chuckles under his breath, shaking his head.
“You're lucky you’re so damn cute.”
“I’m your brat, and you love it.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“But a word to the wise,” I say, letting him see I’m serious. “If you ever use me to get at any of the others, you won’t like my response. Whether through a gift or by making comments regarding any of our relationships; I am not a pawn in any of your games.” I look around at the others to make a point. “That goes for you all. There are enough people willing to use one of us against the others; I won't have any of us acting the same.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they say in unison. I used to think this was them all being sarcastic, but apparently, it’s because I can be quite scary when I want to be.
Not saying another word, I walk out of the room and head straight to Christian's, terrified of what I will find. Do I think he would do something stupid? No, he’d never want to leave us unprotected, but that doesn’t mean he's not suffering. We all knew it was bad, but after seeing the way he broke this morning, I think it's time he got some help.
Standing outside the room for a moment, I take a second to prepare myself for whatever I find there. Taking a deep breath, I slowly open the door. Trying to be quiet in case he has fallen back to sleep. But he hasn’t.
Christian is sitting on the far side of the bed where I sleep, still in nothing but his boxers, holding his head in his hands. He’s breathing heavily as he fights his inner demons.
There have been times since moving in that I have woken to find him in the same position, but the second he thinks I’m awake, he heads to the bathroom, shutting himself away and promising he’s fine. But after today, he’s not going to suffer alone. He has helped me heal since everything has come to light; it’s time for me to carry some of the burden.
Walking into the room, I quietly shut the door and head to his side. He doesn’t realise I’m there until I climb onto the bed beside him. Placing an arm around his shoulders, I gently pull him down so he can rest his head on my lap as he did before falling asleep. This time, he doesn’t cry or say anything. He just stares at the window as I run a hand over his head.
“I love you,” I whisper, leaning over to kiss his head. “I know you love me and want to protect me, but that doesn’t mean you have to struggle on your own.” I hug him the best I can from this position. “You need to start talking, whether to me, your brothers or even a therapist. But you need to talk to someone.”
“I know,” his voice barely a whisper. “I’m too tired to keep doing this.”
“Then tell me what I can do,” I whisper in his ear, holding him tighter. “Tell me what you need, and I will make it happen.”
“I don’t know.” Those three words wreck me as this man in my arms always knows what to do. He fixes everything and everyone but himself. It’s my turn to fix him.
“I’m sorry,” the words are out before I can stop them.
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Sweetheart. It’s all on me.”
“I’m apologising because I didn’t know your mum liked the song I’ve been singing for weeks. If I had known, I would have stopped.”
“I wouldn’t have asked you to,” he replies, rolling onto his back as I sit up so he can look at me.
“Do you ever talk about her?” As I expected, he shakes his head. “Can you tell me about her?” I want to get him talking and opening up, and for some reason, I think talking about his mum might work.
“She would have loved you,” he says, his eyes finding mine for the first time. “You remind me of her so much. She was always singing and dancing around and just … happy. She never shouted, but we still knew when she was fed up with our shit. She would rather spend all day in the garden or the kitchen with Mrs Brown than anything else.” He smiles, looking up at the ceiling. “I wish she could be here when we have kids. She would have been the best grandmother. They would have been spoilt rotten, and she would have been so hands-on. She loved being a mother, even if not so much a wife. Tommy was always an arsehole, but she never let him break her.”
“She sounds like she was strong and amazing,” I point out, brushing some hair from his forehead.
“She was so strong; even when the twins were born three months early, she was still there for Jason and me, as well as at the hospital for them.” He seems lost in thought for a moment, and I wait, giving him time to process. “Has anyone ever told you how we nearly lost Sean?”
“No!” I snap, my whole body tensing. Why has no one told me this?
“You wouldn’t know it, looking at how he is now, but he was the weaker of the two. He was so tiny, his lungs hadn’t fully developed, so he was on all kinds of machines; he didn’t stand much of a chance of survival. But Mum saved him; she realised that he deteriorated every time they separated the two of them. Maximus would whine whenever he wasn’t next to Sean, who would struggle with his breathing. The nurses didn’t believe her, but Mum told them she knew her babies, and they weren’t to be separated. Just three days later, Sean was improving, and Maximus was the most content baby the nurses knew.”
“They say mothers know more about their babies than anyone, no matter how old they get.” I smile, ignoring the fact that my mother was the complete opposite. She was a first-class evil bitch.
“She knew everything; no matter how much I tried to hide from her, she knew.” The way his smile slips tells me she knew things he really didn’t want her to.
“Did she know about that night?” I ask, knowing she would have still been alive when Christian killed my father to protect Jason.
“I think so,” he says as his eyes fill up. “She found me in the woods at the back of the house. I was crying, hugging my knees to my chest. Tommy wouldn’t tell her what was wrong, and Jason was so scared by the event that he didn’t speak for nearly a month. We were worried he had become mute. I used to sneak into his room after Tommy had gone to bed and sleep with him to stop the nightmares. They were the only thing that made him make a noise.”
“So how did she find out?” I ask, confused.
“She could have guessed; I think the fact that I was covered in blood, with busted knuckles and sitting in trousers soaked in my own piss was a giveaway.”
I gasp as tears fill my eyes at the same time as Christian’s widen.
“Shit, Baby, I wasn’t thinking. I’m so sorry.” He sits up and cups my cheeks as I burst into tears. “I can't believe I said that. I’m so sorry. Sometimes I forget it was your dad.”
“That’s not why I’m crying,” I snap, taking him by surprise. “I’m crying 'cause I’m fucking furious at that arsehole, Tommy!” I yell, jumping to my feet as I start pacing around the room. “You were fifteen! Fucking fifteen, and he allowed you to get so scared you …. You pissed yourself!” I turn to Christian, surprised to see him smiling. “How are you smiling? I am on the verge of going looking for his body so I can piss on him! Before I set him alight!”
Christian laughs aloud before sucking his lips between his teeth.
“It's times like these you remind me of her the most.”
“Well, that makes me like her even more. Sounds like we would have gotten along just fine,” I snap, rolling my eyes before sitting beside him again.
Christian moves up the bed and holds an arm out for me once he’s sitting against the headboard. I sit beside him and curl up against his side.
“You two would have been a terrible combination. I dread thinking how many punishments you would add up in just one day together,” he says into my hair as I roll my eyes again.
“She sounds like she wouldn’t have let you punish me.”
Christian laughs as I feel him shaking his head.
“Not a chance, but then again, what goes on in our bedroom is no one's business.” He kisses the top of my head as I place a hand over his heart, glad to feel it beating normally. “She was in the dream.”
I move a little to look up at him, but he's staring at the ceiling.
“I’ve always believed she would be so disappointed in me. I’ve felt like I have failed her every day since she died.” His eyes close as he takes a deep breath.
“She died of breast cancer; it was so quick. She went from running around, cooking, and cleaning to sleeping twenty hours a day in six months. She still tried to make time for us, though. Every second she was awake, she would be with at least one of us, ensuring we knew how much she loved us.
“I didn’t handle it well. I was falling apart on the inside, but on the outside, I was the loving brother and son. I helped the twins with their homework and picked flowers daily for her room. She loved being outside, so I brought the outside to her when she couldn’t go out there anymore.” He goes quiet for a moment, and I let him have the time to remember her.
“The night she died, I was with her,” he says quietly after a few silent minutes to himself. “Tommy was out, nothing new, so I was reading Pride and Prejudice to her. It was one of her favourites. She tried to smile at me, but her eyes looked so heavy, and I remember thinking, ‘It’s going to be tonight.’
“Just before ten PM, she opened her eyes and smiled while holding her hand out to me. She called me something she hadn’t called me for years and asked me to climb on the bed with her, so I did.” Christian lets out a deep breath as he blinks back tears.
“She was so tiny in my arms. I held her just like this,” he looks down, giving me a small smile. “She reached up, cupped my cheek, and whispered that she needed me to be brave and look after my brothers. She told me that no one could protect them like I could, and I was to make sure Tommy couldn’t hurt them like he had me. It was then I knew she was aware of what was going on. So I promised her I would, because how could I not? I love my brothers more than anything other than you. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for them.
“I still remember the last words she said to me, and I will never forget. She started humming ‘Blackbird ’, and with her last conscious breath, she whispered, ‘Fly, Blackbird, fly.’ She took her last breath less than five minutes later.”
“Why did she call you Blackbird?” I ask, curiosity getting the better of me. Christian frowns, probably wondering how I know. “Jason told me earlier.”
“Of course he did,” he chuckles. “She loved the Beatles. I think if she had gotten her way, we all would have been named after them, but Tommy hated them. When I was born, my hair was jet black; it reminded her of a blackbird. She would sing it to me whenever I would cry. Apparently, it was the only thing that would make me stop. I was her Little Blackbird for years until Tommy put a stop to it.
“When I was seven or eight, he started forcing me to box, determined to ‘man me up.’ One day, Mum and I were in the kitchen doing something, and he flipped, that it was her fault I was so soft, and she was babying me by calling me by a stupid nickname. He also hated that I called her Ma. So, from that night, I was just to be called Christian, and she was my mother or Mum. We tried to keep it behind his back, but I slipped up and called her Ma in front of him, and he beat the shit out of me. So, from then on, she made us stick to his rules. Even though we both hated them.”
“Did he ever hit her?” I ask, and I’m surprised when he shakes his head.
“Tommy was many things and a complete shit, but he never touched a woman. He had no issues belittling her and gaslighting her until she nearly lost herself for a while. But sometimes I think he did love her, in his own way.”
“I wish I had gotten to meet her.” I smile as I reach up and wipe away a stray tear from his cheek.
“Me too, but if she had lived, we may have never met you, Sweetheart.” Christian cups my cheek before pressing a soft kiss to my lips. “I don’t even want to imagine a world where you aren’t in our lives.” He looks back to the window and appears to be deep in thought.
“This isn’t the life Mum would have wanted for us. When she appeared in the dream, I remember crying and apologising for failing her and not protecting my brothers. I had the gun to my head, but she lowered it and called me Blackbird and told me she was so proud of me.” Christian swallows deeply as he watches out of the window. “She told me that I had broken my wings to ensure my brothers kept theirs, but it was my time to fix my wings and fly.” Christian looks down at me, and my heart stops. “I want to move on and live life the way we should.”
“Do you still want to go ahead with Sunday?” I ask. Christian frowns as he stares at me.
“Of course I do. Why do you ask?”
“You had a nightmare about the wedding; I wasn’t sure if it was your way of realising it's not what you want.”
“Sweetheart, if anything, after speaking to you, I want it more than ever! Is that why you are sitting here? Because you have stopped getting everything ready?”
“No, I’m here because you were hurting, and nothing is more important to me than you four. If you're hurting, so am I!”
“Well, I’m fine now, so get out there and make sure everything is ready for Sunday!” he declares, pushing me until I’m off the bed. “Go; see the girls and get shit done while I have a an hour in the gym.” He is back to being playful Christian, and the spark slowly returns to his eyes. But I know he still has a long way to go, and I will be there every step of the way with him.
“You are only pushing for it because you don’t want to be the one to tell Mrs Brown we wouldn’t need a cake.” I laugh as he gives me a well, duh, face. “Fine, everything is still going ahead, and I’m going to see the girls.” Before I get a chance to walk away from the bed, Christian grabs me around the waist and pulls me in for a hard, passionate kiss.
“Thank you,” he whispers as he leans his forehead against mine. “I know I don’t need to say it, but I want to. You have no idea how much you help just by being you and distracting me when I need to be distracted or showing me love when I need it the most. You just make everything better, and I can't wait till Sunday.”
Tears well up in my eyes as I throw my arms around his neck and hug him.
“I’m always here for you, Daddy. Even when you think you don’t need me.” I press a kiss to his cheek and rush from the room before I do something I will regret, like burst into tears and become an emotional wreck.