He shakes his head like he’s refocusing his thoughts. “She had wet tracks running down her cheeks when she picked me up, and I just thought she got caught in the rain. My little mind didn’t realize she was crying.
“My mom did her best to hide it from me, though. She wiped her face, asked about my day, and her voice was so sincere when she responded to all my nonsensical ramblings.”
Those chocolate brown eyes of his that I love so much flick up again, but they don’t focus on me. He gazes out the window, lost in the rolling waves.
I get that.
But at the same time, I yearn to comfort him—even if it’s simply passed through my own gaze. Eyes are the window to the soul after all. His story is dripping with pain, every wordsomehow edged with a razor-sharp point that cuts without you realizing. By the end, I worry we’ll all be sliced to ribbons.
“It started to snow, but I barely noticed. I knew better than to distract her from the road, but Ineededher to look at the ornament I made. We had a plastic bulb that opened into two pieces. Inside was some fake snow, a tiny sprig of pine, red berries, and a miniature present. But the best part of all was my school picture. I knew she’d be so proud of it, and I wanted to hear how she couldn’t wait to hang it on the tree when we got home.”
The longer his story continues, the tighter my throat becomes, emotion accumulating in preparation to explode. I know this isn’t heading toward a happy ending. Keaton is full of pain over this memory, and I want to take it all away before he relives it, but I know I can’t.
“Mom! Look! Look at what I made!” Keaton adds enthusiasm to his voice, and I know he’s recreating the way he said it back then. “I repeated it over and over until she turned her head to look at me in the back seat.”
He stops and stares into space, reaching unseeing for my hand and wrapping his fingers around my palm. Tears cloud his eyes, his grip tightening around mine. “That’s when we hit the black ice,” he murmurs, voice barely audible over the stillness that blankets the group.
In an instant, the room is so thick with emotion you could almost choke on it. Tristan’s arms tighten around me, a mix of protective and something achingly tender. Nash leans back, his face strained as if he’s fighting his own memories that might mirror Keaton’s pain. Blake, ever the observer, averts his gaze to his hands, perhaps uncomfortable with the raw honesty slicing through the air.
The weight of Keaton’s admission hangs between us like a dark cloud ready to burst. “I remember suddenly jerking to theside before the sound of glass cracking,” Keaton continues, voice breaking as he fights for composure. “The world spun so wildly, and then… nothing but darkness and cold.”
The weight of his revelation seeps into every crack and crevice of the room, filling it with a sorrowful chill. Dare shifts uncomfortably, clearly out of his element. He’s so new to the group, I’m sure he’s questioning whether he should even be here.
I squeeze Keaton’s hand back, wishing I could erase that moment for him, knowing full well that some pasts were etched too deeply to ever be fully smoothed over. Little did I know his story didn’t end there.
“But you survived,” Nash finally says, trying to put a positive spin on the heartbreak working its way through each of us.
“I might have, but the force of the car jerking sent my mom’s head into the glass… she never woke up. I screamed her name for hours. I had to unclip myself from my car seat and crawl into the passenger seat to try and wake her up. Nothing worked, and as time passed, it got colder and colder. We were on a stretch of road leading out of town that’s rarely used, and it took a day for them to find us. I was hypothermic and in shock.”
He rubs his thumb across my knuckles, scooting closer. “I tell you this because I understand not wanting to speak. It took me years of therapy to realize that calling for my mother to look at my ornament isn’t what killed her. It wasn’t my desire for her to pay attention to what I wanted to tell her. Even if she had been focused on the road, we probably still would’ve crashed.
“Music therapy changed my life. I used my drumming as a way to communicate. My sticks became my voice, I channeled all my emotions into the beats I could create, it’s how I spoke for years.
“It’s still obviously difficult for me to want to use words. Spending so much time silent is a hard habit to break.” Hebrings my hand to his lips, brushing them softly against my skin. “I don’t want that for you. Learn from my mistakes.”
He presses his sticks into my palm and reaches for my face, cradling it between his hands to wipe away my tears with his thumbs. “Your voice is precious to me. I need it in my life.” He must read my thoughts on my face because he says, “Even if it’s permanently damaged. I’ll always love the sound of you.”
As if Keaton’s vulnerability opened the floodgates, Nash clears his throat. “My parents were shit; Dad walked out when we were kids. I barely remember him, and my mom was more worried about finding her next fix than raising the two kids she had.”
His immediately jumping into his story gives me a much-needed reprieve from the pressure of saying anything under the weight of my drummer’s begging eyes. He wants to hear me say something so badly... I take a deep breath, trying to clear the emotion clogging my throat.
Keaton turns to give Nash his attention. It might give me some time to process—well, everything—but I know this will only add to the storm roaring inside me.
“My mother was a piece of shit. She let her dealer abuse my sister. I don’t want to go into details, it’s still too painful to relive those memories, but I had to listen to everything he did to her through the wall. The screams. Her begging for it to end.”
I’ve never heard Nash sound so lost. He stares out the window watching the waves crash against the sand. “By the time I got us out of there, my sister was too broken. She stopped eating, wasted away, lost the will to live. It was like her soul left her body long before she died.”
He shakes his head, trying to keep himself from falling head first into the past. “I researched ways to help her, but in the end I wasn’t able to get her the professional support she needed. I’m not sure anything could’ve brought her back.”
I’m suddenly reminded of how he acted the first time we were intimate; how he gave me control, the careful way he treated me. It was exactly what I needed, and he knew that.
“Baby girl, I love you, but you trying to wall yourself off and go through this alone is killing me. Please let us help you. Please choose to be here with me.” His eyes plead with me to agree. He moves from his place on the couch and kneels in front of me, making Keaton move out of the way. “I’ll beg if you need me to.”
I stare at Nash, the raw pain etching lines around his eyes, his mouth set in a firm line, and I feel something inside me crack. All this time, I’ve been so caught up in my own darkness that I forgot others have their abysses too.
Okay, I mouth. Nash’s expression shifts immediately, a mix of relief and lingering sadness washing over his features. He reaches up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear, his touch gentle.
“Okay, you want me to beg? Or, okay, you’ll let us back in? For reals?” he asks playfully. It makes a small, husky chuckle spill out of me. I can’t help but shrug my shoulders coyly, like I very well might want him to beg.
