Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Freedom Mansion
Shay
I stumble over the rock song “Werewolves of London” that I am mangling on the piano in my Wednesday evening lesson with D’Angelo. My movements are jerky with anxiety.
My shoulders hunch. I wince at the dissonant wrong notes.
“Stop.” D’Angelo is sitting next to me on the leather stool in front of the grand white Steinway piano. He rests his hand lightly over mine.
I’m stripped to nothing but jeans, and D’Angelo is relaxed in only trousers and shirtsleeves.
The lounge has fast become my favorite place in Freedom Mansion, even over the games room. A circular chandelier hangs above the piano like a halo.
We find ourselves gathering together here most evenings.
The room is like nowhere I’ve imagined but it suits D’Angelo. It is his luxurious throne room.
I try to picture him in the tiny front room of my house in Guildford with the sagging couch and faded school photographs of Eden and me on the walls and I just can’t.
Strangely, I really want to.
A gorgeous fallen angel with ash like feathers, which reminds me of my brother’s phoenix tattoo, has been painted on the back wall. The floor is a dramatic black with gilt golden feathers. A fire roars and crackles on the opposite wall under a black marble fireplace like a portal to hell.
A massive television hangs above the fireplace.
The fragile, pure white angel wing shell that Eden collected for me on our first vacation together at D’Angelo’s beach house is placed on the fireplace in pride of place. It makes me blush that Robyn has propped next to it the oil painting of the four of us at the beach house, which I made for her.
The other walls, in between the windows, have inbuilt bookcases reaching to the cathedral like vaulted ceilings. I can see why Eden loves this room as much as I do, pacing up and down the bookcases and running his fingers over the spines of the books.
Right now, while I ruin song after song that I am meant to be learning, Eden is resting on the black couch in front of the fireplace, reading a book. He is dressed in soft joggers and is taking sips of his favorite Earl Grey.
Robyn is resting in her favorite place sprawled on his chest. She is relaxed, wearing his KIT-TEA t-shirt and reading the same book. When she comes to the end of the page, she taps it for him to turn over.
I’ve felt Eden silently watching since I came back from practice.
This morning over breakfast, he tried to talk to me about Blythe’s messages.
“Why do you keep being sent emojis?” Eden whispered, passing me the raspberry jam.
I froze, paling.
I couldn’t answer.
I didn’t want to lie but I hadn’t worked out what to say.
Ever since, he’s returned to being my silent shadow.
I sigh, bouncing my knee with nerves.
“Clear your head, cucciolo.” D’Angelo rests his hand on my knee to still it.
“Relax. You’re too wound up. Don’t think about yesterday’s game.
This is meant to be our downtime. We can talk strategy afterward.
You had enough of having your ass kicked after the Caps’ game; you don’t need to keep kicking your own ass. ”
He’s right, especially about the arse kicking.
But how can I stop thinking about it? Plus, he doesn’t know what I truly have on my mind.
I have to tell him about Blythe.
I have to come clean.
But how?
How the bloody hell do I tell any of them?
It’ll change everything.
Right?
I’ve always pushed and pushed and finally, found everybody’s limit.
They’ll hate me…want to punish me…just like Blythe does.
Isn’t it better? To at least know what the worst looks like?
Robyn and D’Angelo can’t continue to be this good to me forever. It’s not real. People don’t treat me like this.
My muscles ache from the hard exercises and drills that Fleet put me and the rest of the team through for most of the day.
We deserved it.
The game against the Washington Capitals was a disaster. Coach made that clear to me personally, when he pulled me out of the locker room into the corridor.
“What the hell was that, Prince?” Coach demanded. “If you can’t keep your head in the game, then I’ll trade you right now.”
My eyes widened. “No, please. I’m sorry, coach. It won’t happen again, I swear—”
“You’re damn right, it won’t.” Coach shook his head. “You have the best potential of any player I’ve coached. But you also self-sabotage more than any other. You remind me of D’Angelo when he was a newbie. I was tough with him back then. Is that what you need?”
I could barely hear him; I was in a daze. “Whatever you say, coach.”
“Don’t expect me to go easy on you from now on, Prince. You obviously need a firmer hand.”
Yet I couldn’t remember most of the game.
I’d been playing most of it on autopilot, flashing in and out of memories from my past with Blythe.
Only D’Angelo’s constant check-ins with me had kept me present at all.
Before the game, she had sent me the details of my punishment in a text, or she would publish online every photo and video that she had taken of me, along with her tell-all story.
My Knave, before u play 2nite, send me a 100 word essay with the title: When I Am a Bad Boy…
I had stared at my phone in shock.
Luckily, D’Angelo had been in the showers, while the other players had been busy getting dressed.
I’d clutched my phone to my chest, rushing into the toilets. I’d locked myself into a stall, dropping to my knees and hurling.
My eyes watered. I’d wiped my hand over my mouth.
I hung my head, staring at the screen.
What if I finally showed D’Angelo? He’d help me to expose and arrest Blythe, right?
Except, by the time that happened, she’d have revealed those photos and videos, and once they were out, I would never get them back.
Revenge porn can’t be erased from people’s memories.
Trembling, I opened my phone and began to type.
Blythe forced me to remember everything that she did to me when I was bad.
I typed it out and sent it to her.
She underlined in red my spelling and grammar mistakes.
There were a lot.
It doesn’t matter how carefully I check things, words blur and jumble for me. Letters appear backwards and out of order.
This is why books are my nemeses.
I gripped the phone like I could break it.
Someone would notice that I was missing any moment.
I rewrote the essay three times, reliving the punishments in my mind each time.
Then in a daze, I stepped out to face the Caps.
“Again.” D’Angelo raps on the back of my knuckles.
I take a deep breath, resting my hands on the keys. My foot jitters on the pedal, and it squeaks.
D’Angelo arches his brow at me.
I cringe. “Sorry.”
D’Angelo softly lays his hands over mine, before removing them from the keys. “Before you murder any more songs tonight, along with my ears, how about you sit and listen for a while? Sometimes, we’re not in the headspace to be Mozart.” He searches out my gaze. “And that’s okay.”
I nod with difficulty.
D’Angelo adjusts his posture, resting his elegant fingers on the keys. His face relaxes.
Then he starts to play a haunting classical piece by some dead bloke.
It’s spellbinding.
D’Angelo is a virtuoso.
He is as much a legend on the piano as he is in skates. Watching him play, entrances me. It relaxes me more than anything else, apart from playing hockey with him.
The fact that he’s willing to share this talent with me, when I’ve spent my life wishing that I could learn an instrument, feels like a dream.
But I’m hiding a secret from this man.
I’m fucking up my lesson because I’m distracted by working out how to admit the truth. Yet D’Angelo isn’t scolding me.
He’s serenading me.
Guilt burns through me, doubling me over.
Bile rushes up my throat.
I’m going to hurl.
D’Angelo breaks off playing, looking at me in concern. “What’s wrong? Are you going to be sick?”
Eden immediately drops his book. “Do I need to get a bucket?”
“Stop it,” I grit out.
“Stop what?”
“Stop being so nice to me.”
I close my eyes, taking ragged breaths.
I can hear movement behind me, then smell Robyn’s floral perfume, as she leans over me from behind, stroking my hair.
Why won’t they stop being so bloody kind?
“Do you want an early night?” Robyn sounds concerned like I’m not the bastard who has been keeping a secret from her. “If you’re not feeling well, then I can fetch the med kit or call Mike and—
“I don’t deserve it,” I burst out, throwing myself backwards off the stool.
Somehow, her kind words and touches burn more than her anger.
My guilt is eating me up.
I open my eyes and scrabble backward.
Robyn is standing frozen in shock next to the piano. D’Angelo is still sitting on the stool. He twists to stare at my retreat in surprise.
Eden is standing now next to the couch. He is watching me with an inscrutable expression.
“Just tell us the truth,” Eden says, simply. “You will feel better.”
I meet his gaze.
“Promise?” I whisper.
“Promise.”
Shaking, I drag the phone out of my pocket, unlocking it and then tossing it like something that has turned rancid across the floor to D’Angelo. My hands feel dirty even for touching it.
I want it as far from me as possible.
My eyes sting with tears, which I don’t deserve to shed.
My voice is raspy, however, like I’ve already wrecked my throat with sobbing. “It’s all on there. I’m so bloody sorry. I just can’t…I c-can’t s-say it out loud. Please?”
“It’s okay,” Robyn says far more gently than she should.
But then, she hasn’t looked through my phone yet.
D’Angelo stoops to sharply pick up my phone like he wants to touch it as a little as I do. Eden prowls to stand at his shoulder and peer over it, dragging Robyn protectively against him.
D’Angelo scrolls with an increasingly darkening expression through the texts.
I rest my back against the wall, pulling my knees tightly against my chest. I hug my arms around them, trying to stop my breathing from tipping into a panic attack.
It’s agonizing watching someone else read through those texts.
Shame curls through me, flaming my cheeks.
I duck my head, wishing that I could disappear.