Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
LUCY
But he isn’t two seconds.
He isn’t even two minutes.
I’m beginning to worry when I feel a hand on my shoulder, but as I turn, breathing a sigh of relief, I find it isn’t Bram. It’s Dean.
‘What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?
’ he asks, a drawl to his voice like he’s been drinking, though he doesn’t seem drunk.
He doesn’t move his hand from where it’s settled, but he seems harmless enough.
I scout the area out of habit, but it’s still teeming with people – busy enough that I don’t feel scared.
And besides, Bram should be back any second.
‘Hi, Dean,’ I say, ignoring his question. ‘It’s good to see you. I hope you enjoyed the show.’
His smile in return has an edge to it which I can’t define, but I know I don’t like it.
‘It was quite something,’ he says, and he lets out a breath, his free hand going to smooth his dark hair.
‘The party’s still on at my bar – best one in town.
’ He tilts his head towards me. ‘I’d love for you to join me. ’
I keep the smile plastered on my face, my tone light. It’s almost automatic when I’m trying to turn men down, especially if they’re drunk. What I actually want to do is tell him to take his hands off me, but that won’t end well I’m sure. I’m half his size.
‘I’m actually waiting for someone,’ I say, which is also part of my script for these situations, but this time it happens to be true.
‘Bram?’ he asks, and I nod. With that his energy changes, and the curl of his smile into something darker sends a creep of ice down my spine.
‘You know,’ he says, lowering his voice as he leans in towards me. ‘If you were with me, I wouldn’t let you out of my sight for a second.’
The hand on my shoulder slides up to my neck, and that’s when I start to panic.
Over Dean’s shoulder I can see a small group of people nearby, who I recognise as being part of the cover band. As I make eye contact with one of them, a lanky young guy with dyed black hair, he raises one eyebrow like he’s asking if I need help.
Dean’s hand tightens on the back of my neck. ‘Let me show you what it’s like to be with a real man,’ he snarls, and that’s all the incentive I need to glance back at the youngsters before I say, loudly enough that I know they’ll hear, ‘Leave me alone.’
I see the man who was watching me say something to his bandmates, and the race of my pulse drops a notch as they start to head in our direction. But before they reach us, Dean is suddenly yanked away, with such force that I lose my balance and fall to the ground with a grunt.
The young guy with black hair helps me to my feet, and the group surrounds me, a woman about my age with black lipstick and concerned eyes pushing her way through the protective wall of skinny jeans and leather.
‘Are you ok?’ she asks, painted black eyebrows tugging together as she checks me over. ‘Did he hurt you?’
I shake my head no. ‘Just scared me a little.’
‘Dean Ratcliffe,’ one of the other men says, like it’s the answer to a question, and the whole group groans.
The young woman’s smile is sympathetic. ‘He’s a dick,’ she says, and then her heavily lined eyes follow the gaze of her friends. ‘Looks like he might get taught a lesson now though.’
When I look round, Bram has fistfuls of Dean’s jacket and is pinning him against the red brick wall of the building next door. There’s a small crowd of people who’ve circled them, watching as they spit insults at each other. A couple of people are filming them, a few more egging them on.
I hear one of the men in the group I’m with suck in a breath between his teeth. ‘He’d better be careful. Bram’ll redecorate his face again.’
My stomach tightens as I remember the scar on Dean’s face. Bram’s handiwork, he’d said, and I suddenly feel sick. I can’t let them hurt each other again. Not over me. Not to mention the amount of trouble Bram could get into if he gets arrested a second time.
I rush over to where the two of them are still swearing at each other, fighting my way through the assembled crowd as I call Bram’s name. He doesn’t hear me at first.
‘Just fucking hit me, you coward,’ Dean is saying, leering at Bram. ‘You know you want to.’
‘Yeah, I do want to,’ Bram growls in return, though he makes no move to hurt Dean. Just keeps him pinned against the wall by his jacket. ‘I want to throw you off the end of the pier.’
The mob around them cheers like we’re at high school and there’s a fight in the playground.
‘If you touch her,’ Bram snarls, ‘if you hurt her, I swear to God…’ He doesn’t finish his sentence, but he doesn’t back down either, just keeps staring straight at Dean. Dean, I’ve noticed, is making no attempt to escape. He’s just eyeballing Bram, taunting him.
‘You’ll what?’ Dean spits out. ‘Kill me?’
‘Bram!’ I yell, more forcefully this time, and both men turn to look at me with a start. Bram’s eyes are wild, his pupils blown so wide that they look entirely black, while Dean’s are totally calm and focused right on me. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
I reach my hand over Bram’s, still clenched around Dean’s lapels, and it slackens under my touch. ‘Leave it,’ I say, a strange confidence coming over me. ‘Let’s go.’
Every person in the assembled crowd turns to look at me. Someone boos.
But Bram listens. He releases Dean like he’s throwing him away, then lets me grab his hand again and lead him down the hill and into that narrow alley, where it’s quieter.
He doesn’t say anything at first, just stands stock still, staring at nothing.
Then all of a sudden he reaches for me, pulling me into a tight hug.
I can feel his body pulsing like a heartbeat even through his leather jacket, the rasp of his breath, the quiver of his arms as he holds on to me for dear life.
We stay there for a long time, well after the crowd gets bored with the lack of action and dissipates into the night, until it’s just us, holding each other in the darkness, my breath sending billows of mist into the night air.
‘I’m sorry,’ is the first thing he says, after a long while, muttering the words into the crook of my neck. The second thing he says, a few minutes later, is, ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I whisper back, and then he’s kissing me, gentle and needy at the same time, his thumbs stroking tracks under my jaw, down my neck.
As he pulls away, his eyes search mine. ‘Did he hurt you?’
I shake my head. ‘Just scared me. Some people helped me – it was the cover band from tonight, I think.’
‘Good.’ He nods slowly, like he’s had some kind of out-of-body experience and he’s slowly coming back into himself. ‘They’re good guys.’ He takes a deep breath and then blows it out.
‘What happened back there?’ I ask after a beat, and he nods his head and tucks a wayward curl behind my ear. I feel him steel himself before he begins to talk.
‘You remember how I told you that I was in a band when I was younger?’
I nod. ‘With Dean?’
‘That’s the one.’ The twitch of his lips stops short of a grimace. ‘What I didn’t tell you was that the third member of our band was Elias.’
‘Moreno?’ I ask, like there are a hundred other Eliases that we could be talking about here.
But Bram just nods. ‘We were twenty, and Dean and I had just met Elias in music college. Elias and Dean never really saw eye to eye, but with me as a buffer it worked, and for a while the three of us were unstoppable. After a couple of years on the circuit we were selling out small venues, catching the eyes of people in the industry. We’d just found out that a record label wanted to sign us when I got the news about Gilly. ’
‘The Alzheimer’s,’ I say, more to myself than anything, and when I do, Bram looks every bit as devastated as if he were hearing it for the first time. It takes him a moment or two before he can carry on, clearing his throat before he does.
‘Honestly, I think I’d known something wasn’t right, but I never thought it could be anything like that.’ His voice is rougher now, shot through with pain. ‘She wasn’t even fifty.’
My heart sinks for him. I know how devastated I was when my grandparents first got ill, but they were much older then. It was hard, but it wasn’t unexpected. I can’t imagine how much it would hurt to be blindsided by it.
There’s a drag to Bram’s inhale, which seems overly loud in the cramped space of the alleyway.
‘I’d already lost one parent,’ he says quietly.
‘I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d missed out on the rest of my time with her.
So I walked away from the deal. Came home.
Elias understood, said family should always come first, but Dean was furious. ’
I frown. ‘Couldn’t they just replace you?’
‘They tried.’ He shrugs. ‘No one stayed longer than a couple of rehearsals. I can’t tell you that it was because of Dean, but I can tell you that three months later Elias replied to an ad for a singer to front a new metal band, and within a year that band had hit the charts in nine countries, so I’m not sure it was him that was the problem. ’
There’s a flicker of sympathy in my chest then, regardless of what I think of Dean now. That’s a villain origin story if ever I heard one.
‘That must have been hard for Dean to watch,’ I say carefully, and his reply is a slow and solemn nod of his head.
‘I managed to stay friends with him for a while.’ He pauses a beat, his hand scrubbing at his jaw. ‘But then there was Jessica.’
There’s a strange weight to the way he says the name, a gravity to his expression that pulls at my heart.
I remember thinking that someone had hurt him, and I know without a doubt that, whoever Jessica is, she was that someone.
I reach for his other hand, winding my fingers between his, and he smiles lightly at me before he carries on talking.