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I chuckled, but the sound swiftly morphed into a yawn.
His brows snapped together. “Why are you so tired?” he asked, gruff. Like it offended him.
“I had a crap night’s sleep, and then I spent the day lugging boxes around and unpacking them for Izzy. She moved in with Cole today. I forgot how tiring it is to do all that stuff.” It had been five years since I last had to do it. “You’ll remember, you only recently moved house.”
“I had someone else take care of it for me,” he said, facing forward. “I hate packing and unpacking.”
I tipped my head to the side. He hadn’t used the word ‘hate’ in an offhand way. He really meant it. “Any particular reason why?”
His jaw went tight, and he kept his eyes firmly fixed ahead. “I had something of a nomadic childhood. Me and my mom moved constantly. It’s why I don’t find touring hard. All I know is the road.”
My heart squeezed. “How come you both moved around so often?”
His gaze shifted to mine, shuttered. “Why do you want to know?”
“So I can sell your answer to the tabloids,” I deadpanned. “Because I’minterested, idiot.”
He snorted, his lipseverso slightly twitching. “My background is not interesting. Or original. Or anything worth hearing.”
“I’m not expecting it to entertain me. I just want to hear about it.” But the look on his face told me that he didn’t intendto offload it. I sighed. “Look, I get that it’s probably become instinctive for you to hold in personal stuff. I’m the same, because it’s too often sold to the press. But you and I made a deal that we wouldn’t do anything like that, right?”
He didn’t respond, visibly hesitant.
I angled myself to better face him. “I’ll tell you what … I’ll ask a question. Then you’ll ask a question. We’ll keep going until someone cries foul. Which you’ll probably do in less than two minutes, because you prefer to be broody and mysterious.”
He sighed. “You’re incredibly annoying.”
“I’m a delight—it’s an inescapable fact. So come on, why did you and your mom move a lot?”
He blew out a breath, his gaze dropping to the hand he was stroking up and down my thigh. “Because she was always worried that my dad would find us if we didn’t. He was an abusive piece of shit who liked to beat her until she was bloody and bruised. It wasn’t until I was six that she found the guts to leave him. I think it often takes more strength to run than to stay.”
My heart went out to him. How awful would it be to see your mother in such a state at the hands of your own damn father? And if Kaiser had witnessed the beatings, it would have made it so much worse.
“Your turn,” he continued. “Your grandmother said that you didn’t bother with the rest of your family. Why not?”
Judy was a damn chatty Cathy. “I don’t know where my mom is. She’s a drug addict; fell off the radar after leaving me and my dad when I was two. Though she’d gotten clean a year before I was born, she couldn’t hold out in the long-run. Her relatives—with the exception of Judy—had no time for her even when she was clean, because she’d burned a lot of bridges over the years. By extension, they had no time for me, so they weren’tin my life.” I paused. “Have you seen or heard from your dad since you were a kid?”
“He caught up to me when I was eighteen. My mom had died the year before. Cancer. I told him to fuck off, and he did.” His eyes narrowed. “You explained why you don’t see your maternal relatives. What about your dad and his side of the family?”
“He fell out with his family when he was eighteen, left New Zealand, and moved to America. He had no contact with them, so neither did I. If they’re anything like him, they’re toxic assholes. Quite a few came crawling out of the woodwork when my career took off and sent me letters—they weren’t interested in knowing me, they wanted cash.” I hadn’t bothered responding to their attempts to contact me.
“Including your dad?”
“No. That would mean acknowledging where I am in life, and he’ll never want to do that.” Not after years of drumming it into my head that I’d never make anything of myself.
Kaiser’s brow furrowed. “He didn’t support you?”
“Quite the opposite. But I have Judy. She made all the difference. Did your mom support you?”
He nodded. “If she hadn’t made me promise to find a band, I might not have joined Absinthe. She had an amazing voice but no guts to use it. There wasn’t an ounce of confidence in her system. She wanted different for me. Did you think you’d win the talent contest?”
“I point blank refused to doubt myself at any stage. I didn’t allow myself to believe for one single second that I wouldn’t win.” More, I’d been determined not to listen to the critical voice in my head that was pretty much my father’s voice. “But when I did win, shock set in fast. And I realized that I hadn’t really been so certain at all. Did you think you’d get where your mom wanted you to be when you first joined Absinthe?”
“I didn’t ever let myself consider that I wouldn’t. Not even when we played in shitty, dingy bars for months and months on end.”
“Ah, the whole paying your dues thing. You told me a little about that the day we first met,” I added, feeling my mouth curve.
“I was harsh on you that day,” he admitted. “I’ve seen so many young people buckle under the pressure of fame; watched them go down self-destructive roads and fuck up their lives, especially when that fame dwindled.”
