Chapter 15 #2
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I do. I need to say it. At least to you.”
He didn’t argue. Just pressed a kiss to my hair and waited.
“When I took that first pill, it was like . . . the world softened,” I whispered. “The pain disappeared. The noise in my head went quiet. The fear, the grief, the anger. All of it just floated away.”
I buried my face against his chest.
“It wasn’t even about getting high at first,” I said. “I just wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to feel normal.” My voice cracked. “Then one pill wasn’t enough, and I started taking them when I wasn’t even in pain. Until the bottle ran out.”
I rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling like it might have answers.
“Someone at the pub I worked at knew a dealer, and that’s where it all began.” I exhaled slowly. “Somewhere along the way, I stopped being a dancer who got hurt and started being an addict.”
Silence settled between us, heavy but not uncomfortable.
“Fast forward a couple of years and . . . well, you know what happened after that,” I finished quietly.
Bodhi didn’t speak right away, and for a moment, fear curled tight in my chest. I worried I might’ve triggered him. That he’d look at me differently now. Not as I was, but as something damaged. Broken and weak. Just like I’d been back then.
Then his hand slid over my stomach, warm and steady, the weight of his arm settling on top of me. He leaned in and kissed my shoulder, my neck, my cheek. Wherever he could reach, before resting his forehead against my temple.
“I’m really glad you told me,” he said eventually. “I know it wasn’t easy.”
His thumb traced a slow, absent-minded circle against my skin, and I focused on the sensation, letting it anchor me.
“You survived something that would’ve broken a lot of people.”
My breath hitched, a familiar burn rising behind my eyes. “But it did break me,” I whimpered. “I was weak.”
Bodhi shook his head and kissed my tears as they slipped free.
“That wasn’t weakness,” he said gently. “That was pain, and you were just trying to live with it.” He exhaled, slow and thoughtful.
“You lost your body, your future, and your sense of who you were. Of course you reached for something that made it stop hurting.” He paused, then added softly, “That doesn’t make you less. It makes you human.”
Something loosened in my chest. A weight I hadn’t even realised I was carrying finally slipped free and I could breathe again.
Despite the ever-present dull ache in my side, I felt light.
Almost buoyant. Last night, he’d shown me I wasn’t broken.
And now, even knowing the full story, he still looked at me like I was someone with a future. Someone becoming, not someone ruined.
Back in rehab, he’d told me I could live a long and happy life. And lying here with him, I thought . . . maybe that wasn’t just something people said to make you feel better.
Still, the moment had tipped into territory too dangerously earnest for my liking, so I wiped at my cheeks and let out a slow breath.
“Well,” I said softly. “That was a lot before breakfast.”
Bodhi huffed a quiet laugh and nudged my shoulder with his nose.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “We can switch to something lighter. Like what coffee you want. Or how good you look naked.”
I smiled, the last of the tension easing out of me, and rolled onto my side until we were nose to nose. I met his gaze, those sapphire eyes steady and kind.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For not looking at me like I’m fragile.”
Bodhi didn’t hesitate.
“You’re not,” he said simply.
And for the first time in a long while, I believed it.
By our third night in Milan, the pain in my hip had reached a fever pitch.
After my heart-to-heart with Bodhi, we’d spent the day with Riff and Ghost, wandering the city and stuffing ourselves with pasta and arancini.
We toured the museums in Castello Sforzesco, stood in quiet awe before Da Vinci’s Last Supper at the Basilica di Santa Maria delle Grazie, and watched the sun bleed orange and gold across the skyline from the top of the cathedral.
It had been a good day.
It had also involved a fuckload of walking.
Normally, I wouldn’t have thought twice about being on my feet all day.
But after back-to-back shows, nights folded into a cramped tour bus bunk, and an impromptu ballet performance on the stage of Milan’s opera house, my hip was screaming for mercy.
And because I am, at my core, a stubborn prick, I ignored it completely.
By the time we reached the cathedral steps, I was practically dragging myself upward. There was a lift, sure, but the queue stretched on forever, and when Mick suggested taking the stairs instead, I agreed without hesitation. Pride is a hell of a drug, and I was an addict, after all.
Bodhi asked me more than once if my hip was okay. Every time, I smiled and lied through my teeth. I could’ve told him the truth. But I knew if I did, he’d drop everything and march me straight back to the hotel without a second thought.
I didn’t want to be the reason he missed out. And after the third time he asked, I snapped at him.
He didn’t bring it up again, and what should’ve been a romantic sunset view was instead spent with guilt curling tight in my chest, sitting heavier than the pain I was hiding.
Everything was forgiven later that night, after I blew him in the shower.
On our final day off, Thump decided he wanted to take a pizza-making class. The rest of the band agreed it sounded like fun, and Clara approved on the basis that it would look good on social media. As much as it was Thump’s idea, he was hopeless with logistics, so the actual planning fell to Clara.
Even last-minute, she was a force of nature. She booked out a popular family-run restaurant in the Navigli district, and thanks to a generous payout from the boys, we had the place to ourselves. No fans. No phones. Just dough, sauce, and an obscene amount of cheese.
I’d assumed it would just be the band, and I’d resigned myself to a quiet night in with room service and my heat pads.
Then Bodhi knocked on my door an hour before they were due to leave, where he found me in pyjamas.
“Get your ass dressed,” he’d said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Of course you’re coming. You’re part of Noctis, Iggy. Same as the rest of us.”
His words hit harder than I expected.
It had been a long time since I’d truly felt like I belonged anywhere.
My family had fractured under my parents’ ambition and neglect.
School had never fit. Even the Royal Ballet, a place I’d thought was home, had slipped through my fingers far too quickly.
So hearing Bodhi say that, knowing he meant it, knowing it wasn’t just because we’d recently started fucking, filled a hollow place inside my chest I hadn’t even realised was empty.
And for a moment, despite the pain, despite everything, I felt . . . seen.
“Iguana, pass me the mozzarella!”
Thump’s voice yanked me back to the present. I looked up to find him pointing dramatically at the bowl of cheese in front of me.
“Iguana?” Mick chuckled, spreading marinara over his dough with surgical precision.
“Yeah,” Thump said, entirely unapologetic. “I’m trying out new nicknames.”
He grinned when I slid the bowl across to him. Not that he needed it. His pizza was already more cheese than anything else, but who was I to judge a man living his truth?
“What else is on the list?” Riff asked, digging his fingers into a fresh piece of dough. This was his second attempt. The first had died bravely after a failed hand toss and an unfortunate encounter with the floor.
“Igloo,” Thump muttered around a mouthful of mozzarella.
“Nah,” Ghost said flatly.
“Iggy Pop.”
“That one’s mine,” Bodhi grumbled. “Pick another.”
“Okaaaay,” Thump drawled, completely missing Riff’s snort. “Iggy Smalls.”
I burst out laughing. “Oh my god.”
“That one’s good,” Mick said approvingly.
“I dig it,” Ghost added.
“You’re all ridiculous,” Clara declared, placing basil leaves on what was shaping up to be a disturbingly perfect pizza.
Bodhi leaned across me to grab a bowl of prosciutto and murmured, “They can call you whatever they want. You’ll always be Iggy Pop to me.”
His lips brushed the shell of my ear, and a shiver ran straight down my spine. I couldn’t stop the way my mouth tipped up at the corners.
“What’s Iggy short for, anyway?” Mick asked, carefully spacing out his mozzarella.
Bodhi straightened, putting a little space between us. I hoped the heat creeping up my neck wasn’t obvious.
“It’s not short for anything,” I said lightly, my ignorance expertly performed.
“You’re such a liar,” Thump pouted. “Come on, Iggy Smalls. Tell us.”
“If I told you,” I said with a wink. “I’d have to kill you.”
“Hot,” Thump muttered, and I bit back a laugh.
I scattered mushrooms and prosciutto over my pizza, finishing it with basil. Something nudged my arm. When I glanced left, Bodhi was watching me from the corner of his eye.
“Will you tell me?” he whispered, quiet enough that only I could hear.
I chewed my lip, considering it.
My name had embarrassed me for as long as I could remember. It was ostentatious. Stupid. An unwanted heirloom from my too-posh parents. Most kids spent their childhood wishing for something unique, the kind of names celebrities gave their kids. Apple. Cricket. Bandit.
I’d been the opposite. I would’ve killed for something boring, like Joe. Or Ben. Even my upper-crust peers at boarding school thought it was too much, and they wielded it like a weapon.
I was ten when I started going by Iggy.
One of my nannies, Myrtle, had found me crying in the playroom one Easter break.
When I told her I was sick of being picked on for my name, she’d told me to pick a new one.
I hadn’t really understood at the time, but I liked the way she called me Iggy.
Liked how it felt when it was just the two of us.
So I’d decided that was who I was.