Chapter 22
Joz
I’m a great singer, an cracking guitar player… and a shitty person.
Aspen Kingcaid glided into my apartment on a chilly Wednesday afternoon like she was floating on air, dropped demands she’d flown four thousand miles to deliver, and sank onto my couch, expectant and ready for battle.
She was a fucking queen—and I was obsessed with her.
Whether that obsession was strong enough for her to drag secrets from me that I’d held on to for more than eight years was still up for debate. One thing I did know was that she wouldn’t leave until I’d given her something. She had a radar as sharp as the betrayal I’d cut her with.
“You eaten?”
“No. I was saving my appetite to chew you out.”
Despite the rot of guilt gnawing on my insides, I smiled. “I’ll make some eggs.”
With my back to her, I busied myself by whipping up scrambled eggs with cheese and sourdough toast, and made two cups of tea. I set the food and the drinks on the breakfast bar. “Salt?”
After selecting one of the four stools on offer, she picked up a fork and, looking for all the world like she wished she could jab the tines in my eye, she scooped up some eggs. “Trust me, I’m salty enough. No need for extra.”
She moaned around her fork, and my dick perked up like I hadn’t just ghosted her with a bullshit note.
I focused on the food—the first I’d eaten in thirty-six hours—because letting myself think of her was a one-way trip to Hell.
I’d fucked up. I knew it. She knew it. The fucking pigeon that woke me by squawking at six a.m. this morning knew it.
“You’re a decent cook.”
“Shame I’m a shitty person.”
Her nostrils flared, and she stared at me for a full ten seconds, then carried on eating. I let her finish in peace, then cleared our plates away.
“I suppose you think I owe you an explanation.”
Picking up her tea, she perused me over the rim. “Never mind what I think. Do you think you owe me an explanation?”
My lips made that soft popping sound as I worked my jaw. Thinking, overthinking, filled with self-loathing.
“I do, yes. The problem is, when you know the kind of man I am, the man I really am, you’ll be on the first flight back to the US.”
Annoyance narrowed her eyes. “You’re pretty sure of that, are you?”
“Yeah.”
“How so?”
“Because I am not a good person, Aspen.”
The way she looked at me as though she was boring through the outer layers of my armor to my shitty fucking soul made me squirm in my seat. I hid my discomfort behind a large gulp of tea.
“Okay, let me make something clear.” Sighing, she set her cup on the breakfast bar.
“I hate being told what I’ll think when you can’t possibly know that unless you’re a mind reader.
And if you are, then you’ll know that, as mad as I am with you for bolting, I think I’m a good enough judge of character to recognize a fear response when I see it.
” She reached out a hand, cupping my forearm.
“You don’t have to talk to me, but, and sorry if I sound like a broken record here, you should talk to someone. ”
I let her warmth and kindness seep into me for a few seconds, then rose to my feet. I dumped my half-finished mug of tea in the sink and turned, bracing my back against the worktop. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a therapist couch to hand.”
“Joz.” She sighed again, a slight shake to her head. “In some ways, you remind me of my cousin Johannes, except he hid his pain with cutting responses every time someone got too close, whereas you hide yours with witty humor and brazen flirting.”
“What happened to him?” Was I deflecting? Damn right I was.
“His so-called girlfriend set him up, and the men she hired to rob him slashed his throat. He almost died.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Yeah. For six years, he cut himself off from pretty much everything, hiding behind the sharpest tongue you could ever have the misfortune to meet. In the end, though, his pain caught up with him, and he had no choice but to lance it.”
“What did he lance it with?”
A soft smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “A good woman.”
I returned her smile. “He okay now?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t an easy ride, but he put in the work.
He’s happy, and he deserves to be.” She cupped her hands around her mug of tea and leveled me with a stare.
“The question you have to answer is do you want to do the work, or do you want to live the rest of your life with this albatross you’re punishing yourself with strangling you? ”
Ouch.
I avoided her eyes. “It’s an ugly story. Unlike your cousin, I’m not the victim, I’m the perpetrator.”
She canted her head. “Caroline?”
Knew she was smart. “Yeah.”
“Look, I’m not here to force you to relive a painful memory.
That’s not my place. But please listen to me.
You may have successfully run from whatever happened for eight years, but just like Johannes, in the end, life finds a way of forcing you to face up to what you did and figure out a way to live with it. ”
And there I was planning to run from my demons forever until a purple-haired dynamo exploded into my life and upended it in the best and the worst ways possible.
Pushing off the worktop, I cocked my head, then traipsed into the living room.
Aspen followed, and when I sank onto the couch, she sat beside me rather than in one of two chairs that surrounded my coffee table.
She didn’t touch me, nor did I reach for her, but I appreciated the solidarity, nonetheless.
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“Tell me about Caroline. What was she like?”
There’s a loaded question. “She was… multi-layered. Complicated. The life and soul of the party one minute, and the next, she’d sink into a deep depression that could last for days or weeks.
Everything she was, everything she did, was in extremes.
There was no middle ground with her. In the beginning, she entranced me.
She was so… vibrant, you know? Until she wasn’t.
By the end, I used to search for excuses not to see her. ”
“How long did you date?”
“Six months, give or take. I knew by month four that the relationship was dead, but Caroline would have a meltdown if I even hinted that we might’ve run our course.”
“She loved you.”
“I’m not sure she did. She was obsessed with me, but love? Our relationship was too toxic to be love.”
“How did you meet her?”
“She waited for me at the stage door after a gig. It was pouring down with rain, and there she was, soaked through to the skin, shivering. She asked for a picture. I asked if she wanted to come back to my hotel room.” I shrugged. “The rest is history.”
“So, what happened?” Her voice was soft, encouraging, kind. All the things I didn’t deserve.
“I’d ended things between us a couple of times, but she’d freak out that much, I always agreed to get back together.
Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t a bad person, but our relationship brought out the worst in both of us.
I was twenty-seven, at the height of my fame, doped out of my mind most of the time, and my addiction only got worse every time I broke up with her, then took her back.
We were spiraling, fighting more than ever.
She’d started getting physical, and I’d have to restrain her to stop her from hurting me and herself. ”
My chest constricted, flattening my lungs.
Fuck, this was painful, and I hadn’t even shared the worst part yet.
A smattering of rain pelted the bank of windows on the opposite side of the living room.
I focused on the droplets dripping down the glass to center myself.
Aspen didn’t say a word, just let me catch my breath. I fucking loved her for that.
“She was twenty-one years old. Twenty-fucking-one. Too young to be hooking up with a man like me. I should never have invited her to my room that night. If I hadn’t, she’d still be alive.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I do.” I gave her my eyes then, bleak.
“The night before she died, we had a blazing row. I told her we were over and I wasn’t taking her back this time.
She threw a glass vase at my head. I didn’t duck in time.
Needed three stitches.” I pushed my hair out of the way, showing her the faint white scar on my temple.
“I manhandled her out the door, blood dripping in my eyes. When I shoved her into the lift, I told her I never wanted to see her again. As it turns out, I never did.”
Aspen’s fingers, with purple-tipped nails that matched her hair, wrapped around my forearm. She squeezed. “God, Joz, that’s awful.”
“Oh, that’s not the half of it.” I looked past her shoulder at my first platinum disc proudly displayed on the exposed brick wall.
I kept the rest in my home studio down the hallway, but this one was special.
Back then, I’d been filled with raw ambition, certain I was destined to conquer the world.
Musically, at least. And I did, but somewhere along the way, I lost myself.
Keeping my focus on that disc, I scrubbed a hand over my beard.
“I went out drinking with some friends, reveling in my new-found freedom. Must’ve got home around one-ish.
Shot some heroin. Passed out on the bed.
Sometime later, my phone woke me up. I should’ve ignored it the moment I saw her name on the screen.
When I answered, she came at me with vitriol.
I let her get it all out, because I’d learned through bitter experience that was the best way to deal with her.
When she failed to get a rise out of me, she started crying, begging me to take her back, telling me it would be different this time. ”
I pressed the heel of my hand into my chest bone, rubbing in small circles as though that would erase the permanent cramp that resided there.