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I went on. “I never liked being the center of attention, particularly from people I have to work with. Especially when it felt like… Like Strike was laughing at me and everyone else was staring. It's like when you have a, ‘kick me.’ sign on your back and everyone knows but you. And they laugh but you have no idea why."
He lowered his arms and stepped over to take my hand. "I'm starting to think this goes deeper than what happened in the airport. Did you get bullied at high school?"
"Who didn't?" I replied. "High school was nasty. I was the nerdy kid with braces who like musical theater. What chance did I have? But, it wasn't as bad as other people went through.” Not by a long way. Some of the kids in my class got hell for all sorts of stupid reasons. Sometimes for no reason at all.
I squeezed his hand. This was harder than I thought it would be, but I needed him to know and understand.
“It was just difficult because my parents shared custody so I was at one house one week and the other house the next. That made it hard to take part in things and invite friends over. They kept asking why I was somewhere different and I never had any answers."
Thankfully, they lived close enough that I got to stay in the same school the entire time. Changing from week to week would have been a million times worse for me. Not seeing my father at all would have been the worst of all though. I was lucky my parents were civil to each other. In front of us kids anyway.
"That sucks." He tilted his head and gave me a smile. "Where you young when they split up?"
I let my eyes blur as I remembered. "I was about four. My older brother was eight and he understood what was going on. My younger sister was two and doesn't remember any of it. I remember my father leaving. I cried and begged him to stay."
I blew out a breath through pursed lips. "I told him I would be good if he stayed, because I thought I must have done something really bad for him to want to leave."
I found myself with my head resting against Axel's chest and his arms around me.
"You know you did nothing wrong, right?" he asked softly. "But I think I get it. You're worried that if you do something wrong, you're going to lose everything. So you try not to do anything wrong."
"Something like that," I agreed. "Whenever my father was around, or we were with him, I tried to stay in the background, just in case I upset him and we never got to go there again. That probably sounds really dumb."
"Not at all." His hand slowly rubbed up and down my back. "I know that anything is tough on kids and when you are only four, how are you supposed to know what's really going on? Even if the grown-ups sit down and explain it, it wouldn't have made sense anyway."
"Not really," I agreed. "Once I decided it was my fault, there wasn't much anyone could say that would convince me otherwise." I exhaled out my nose. "Anyway, now you know why I like to stick to the background. If no one sees me, then they can't point fingers at me."
"Is this your way of saying you don't want to be with me?" he asked softly.
"No, this is my way of saying I'm scared," I said. "I care about you. A lot. I'm scared of what might happen between us if we even try. Worse than that, I'm scared of what will happen if we try and fail, and I don't want you to think you have to stay with me because of what happened when I was a kid. If you think it would be easier to walk away now, then you know where the door is."
"That's a lot to process," he admitted.
My heart sank. I was right to be honest with him, no matter what might come of it. And if he was scared to be honest with me when he wanted to leave, then we'd both be better off if he said so now and walked away. Otherwise it might feel like emotional blackmail later. That was a game I didn't want to play. It would only end up with broken hearts all around.
"I understand if you need to go," I said softly.
"I don't know if I need to," he said, "but I need to think about it and I think we both need to eat."
"I could eat," I said. A little bit, since my stomach was churning. I had a sinking feeling my heart was about to be shattered into a billion tiny fragments.
12
Axel
"Thank you Los Angeles and good night!" Strike shouted into the microphone.
The crowd roared in response and shouted for another encore, but the stage lights went down and the house lights went up around the stadium. The audience started the slow file toward the doors and out into the night.
Adrenaline and rhythm still pumping through me, I slipped my guitar strap off over my head and set it down on the stage.
"They went off," Strike said as we headed down the steps and into the backstage area.
"They always go off, it's us," Cord said. He didn't sound like he was bragging, just stating a fact. One I couldn't disagree with, so I didn't.
"I need a beer," Jude said.
"Me too." Los Angeles was the last stop on our North American leg. Tomorrow, we were flying out to London. In the meantime, we had a couple of hours to unwind. There was no sleeping right after a concert anyway, even if we wanted to. We were all too wired for that.
