Chapter 33 #2
Hayden looks wounded at Walker jumping in, not necessarily defending me, but not immediately taking his side. Even when we were a solid four, it was always Walker and Hayden, and Nikolai and me. “And that’s my fault that it wasn’t cohesive?”
“No one’s saying that,” I tell him. “But everyone can admit that we had no cohesive vision when we tried working on that album because we lost all our cohesion as a group.”
“And who’s fault is that?” Hayden glares at me, telling me exactly who’s fault he thinks it is.
The accusation grates against my nerves. “You wanna say it?”
“Say what?”
“Just say that you think it’s my fault.”
He leans forward, arms braced against his legs. “It is yours. I’ve never shied away from that. After the break, you treated us like shit.”
I scoff. “After you spent a year blocking me out.” I point at Walker. “And after you started working with other artists while we were supposed to be taking time away.”
“Woah, I only helped on a handful of drum productions for a band while their drummer was sick.” Walker holds his hands up. “You’re the one who heard that through the grapevine and ran with it. If you would’ve told me that was your fucking issue two years ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“I didn’t—” I cut myself off, rage simmering. “I didn’t know how to fucking say it.” All the progress I’ve tried to make with Penny, talking about things rather than smothering them down. If only I had done that then, instead of now.
Walker runs his hands through his hair. When he glances up at me, he’s visibly cooler. “I get it. I didn’t then, but I get it now how it looked to you.” With your past, I understand. The unspoken words shine on his face. I give him a small nod in understanding.
Hayden visibly shakes with barely restrained frustration. His head swings back and forth between the two of us. “You know, you two really seem to have started patching things up. Did you both clear the air?”
I narrow my eyes at him, not sure where he’s going with this. Walker frowns slightly, equally unsure.
“Did you both come completely clean, no secrets between the two of you?” This time, he looks pointedly at me. There’s a knowing glint in his eye that instantly sets me on edge.
Nikolai sinks down in his chair to my right, hand covering his mouth.
“Where are you going with this?” Walker asks Hayden.
Hayden throws an arm over the back of his chair, the portrait of false ease, as he says coldly, “Did you know that I’m the only one of your best friends sitting around here to not sleep with your sister?”
The fucking bastard.
Walker blinks at him, like he’s not sure if he heard him correctly. Nikolai’s knee bounces nervously. I sit still, waiting for Walker to understand and turn his predatory glare on me.
And when he does, I feel the icy chill all the way through my bones. “What?” he says so quietly, I barely hear the single word.
Hayden sits back, having lit the match and ready to watch the fire burn. Watch me burn.
Nikolai looks like he’s going to throw up.
Walker repeats himself. “What’s he talking about?”
There’s no sense in lying. Clean slate? No more secrets? It wasn’t Hayden’s to tell, but here we are anyway. “It was one time,” I say, and leave it at that.
Maybe Walker was expecting I’d deny it. That Nikolai would jump in and make some sort of joke and we’d all laugh, like we’re pulling one over on him. Because for a second, his brows are still dipped in confusion.
But once he registers my words, they twist in anger. “It was one time?
“I promise it wasn’t how you’re thinking, man. The three of us…we’ve experienced some shit together—”
Walker pushes to his feet. “You—it was—together?” Red splashes across his neck, creeping onto his face. “You both with Jane at once?”
I hold my hands up, trying to placate the shitstorm I’d hoped I’d never have to deal with. “Like I said, it wasn’t like that.”
“Then tell me what the fuck it was like,” he spits. He whips toward Nikolai. “How the hell could you use her like that? Let him use her like that?”
“I didn’t fucking use her—” I yell.
Nikolai’s face turns hard as stone at the accusation.
“Don’t you dare try to say that I used her.
Or that he did either.” His voice is colder than I’ve ever heard before, icy rage undercutting every word.
“She makes her own decisions. She’s her own woman.
And what we do in the privacy of our bedroom is none of your fucking business. ”
“Well it’s been made my business!” Walker roars. “And clearly it’s his business, too.” He swings his gaze to me. “How the hell did this happen?”
I wring my hand together, trying to keep a level head even as my brain is screaming at me to fight back. “It wasn’t a planned thing. It just happened, and it was supposed to stay between the three of us.”
“How does that just happen?”
I’ll never be able to give him an explanation that makes sense.
That’ll satisfy him. Especially not while he’s so enraged by the idea of me sleeping with Jane.
I don’t know if he’d ever understand, even if he knew the full story anyways.
It’s his twin sister after all. It won’t matter that it wasn’t just about sex. That it ran deeper than that.
So I just say, “I don’t know what to tell you. It happened. We’re all good. You’re just going to have to accept it.”
His head looks like it’s going to explode. “Accept it? Are you fucking—”
“I tried to kill myself.” Nikolai’s words silence everyone. Even the wind seems to pause. Walker and Hayden have both completely frozen, faces leeched of color in an instant.
I wish I was sitting closer so I could put my hand on Nikolai’s shoulder. Be a silent support. I was never sure if he’d tell them. It certainly wasn’t my place to do so. And even if it meant Walker and I would go back to barely speaking, I’d do it to protect him.
He draws in a steady breath, shoulders pushed back. A portrait of strength, telling a story when he felt like he had none.
But Nikolai’s the strongest of all of us.
“After the shooting. When we were on break. I couldn’t—I didn’t know how to deal with everything I saw. I mean, you guys could see I was in a free fall. But I never let it show how badly I had lost my way.”
A lump sits in my throat, thinking back to the night Jane called me, pleading with me to hurry over to his house.
“I had texted Jane, who called Reid since she was in Boston and couldn’t get to me.
The two of them…” Nikolai turns glassy eyes to Walker, who sat back down.
Tears streak down his cheeks. “If your sister wouldn’t have called Reid, I probably wouldn’t be here right now.
The two of them have shared that burden of that night, of seeing me like that, and never told a soul.
It’s something I honestly planned to take to the grave.
I don’t like thinking back to that time in my life.
But I’m telling you now, because I know you both have held it against him that he never took his anger out from the break on me.
” He nods in my direction. “And he could’ve told you both.
Could’ve explained himself and why he wasn’t angry with me.
Because he saw the darkness I had descended into firsthand. But he didn’t.”
I clench the bottle in my hands.
“He didn’t, for me. And the moment the three of us shared, much later on, it wasn’t some dirty thing, Walker. I’d never disrespect your sister like that. You know it.”
His jaw ticks but he doesn’t deny it.
“And it’s her business just as much as it is mine and Reid’s,” Nikolai says with a pointed look toward Hayden, who at least has the decency to shrink back in shame.
“So I’m not going to get into it with you about it.
We are all consenting adults, and it went much deeper than just sex for the three of us that night.
” With that, he stands and slips into the house with his head held high.
Walker and Hayden sit in stunned silence. I can’t stand to sit here while they process what Nikolai just told them while he sits inside by himself. Especially not when he felt backed into a corner to share it.
I level Hayden with a look that could scorch the earth around him. “Is that the clean slate you wanted?”
He opens his mouth to respond, but venom crawls up my throat. My heart races with anger as I look at him, tongue itching to throw darts his way, but I contain them. Swallow them down. It’s not easy, breaking habits, but I’m fucking trying.
And that’s exactly why without another word, I get up and walk away.