Learning to Breathe Again (17 page)

“
I’m sure they’re proud of
you.”

“
They are. They never
hesitate to show it. And they never hesitate to knock me down a peg
when I need it, either. They’ve been there for the highest of my
highs and the lowest of my lows.”

“
Your injury?” her eyes
roamed over his chest, as if she could see through his shirt to the
scars on his ribs and abdomen.

“
That, and when my ex left
me,” he admitted quietly.

“
Your ex? Ex-wife?” her
eyebrows shot up.

“
Never made it to the
alter,” he shook his head. “I’d proposed before leaving for the
desert and we were going to get married when I got back. Instead, I
was injured and she didn’t want to be saddled with someone who
couldn’t function as a whole person. So she left.”

“
Couldn’t function as a
whole person? What the hell does that mean?”

“
At the time, I had a lot of
issues. I was depressed, I wasn’t sleeping, and I was in a lot of
pain and taking a butt load of prescription drugs, and struggling
to make it into law school. Hell, I would have left myself if I
could have,” he bit off a laugh.

“
Did she even
try?”

“
Try what?”

“
Try to help you, try to
understand, try to get through it, try anything!” Bayleigh pushed
up into an upright position to face Jack.

“
I was shutting her out,
Bayleigh. I wouldn’t talk to her.” Jack didn’t know why he felt
like he had to defend his ex to Bayleigh.

“
So? That’s when you try
harder. That’s when you go to counseling together and find out what
you can do to help the one you love. You don’t just leave him alone
to deal with it by her…I mean himself.”

“
Is that what happened to
you? Did Will leave you alone to deal with everything?”

Bayleigh swallowed hard, her
gaze moving around the room before returning to Jack’s. “Will and I
were on the path to being over before it happened, but yes. Will
blamed me for the attack. Correction, he didn’t blame me for the
attack itself, he blamed me for everything that happened
after
it. He thought I
should have just let Andrew do whatever he wanted to do with me, so
that the bar wouldn’t have closed and we wouldn’t have lost our
gig.”

“
The fucker thought you
should have been
raped?
” Jack’s voice had gone soft.

“
I don’t think that’s how
Will thought of it, but yes, that’s what it boils down to. That’s
why I left the band. He was making the other members choose between
loyalty to me or to the band itself. I don’t need the band and I
don’t want to make my life as a singer, so I stepped down. Once my
injuries had healed enough that the doctors said I could travel
home on my own, I left England.” Bayleigh hadn’t realized she was
crying until a tear fell unto her hand. “At that point, I just
wanted to come home. I threw what I knew I would need into my bags
and booked my flight.”

“
You do know that no matter
what you did or said to that guy Andrew, he never had any right to
try and touch you in any way. Tell me you know that.”

“
I know that,” she repeated,
her voice soft, but firm.

“
Tell me you know that Will
was wrong,” he instructed her.

“
I know that, too,” she
repeated.

Jack sat up and reached for her hands,
tugging on them and pulling her across the makeshift bed until she
was sitting next to him with her back against the couch, tucking
her up against his side. He grabbed one of the fleece blankets and
wrapped it around them, snuggling up with her, his arm wrapped
around her. “Tell me your story.”

“
You know my story,” she
looked at him in puzzlement.

“
No, I know bits and pieces.
I want to know how you got from here to there and back to here.
Talk to me. We have all night, nowhere to go and no
distractions.”

Bayleigh stared into the fire for moment and
Jack gave her the time to gather her thoughts. “I was a music major
and my mom thought I’d use the degree to teach. But I’ve always
wanted to write my own music. I have the minor in computer science
as a backup because technology is never going to go away. I figured
it was good to have a back-up, you know?” she glanced up in time to
see his nod.

“
I met Will at an open mic
night where I was messing around with one of my songs. He liked my
song, invited me to hear his band, and then I started following his
band around to local bars. He started using some of my stuff and
then I started singing back up for him and we just sort of fell
into dating each other. It was a gradual kind of thing, over a
period of several months. But once I started dating him, I was all
about him. I thought he was it for me. My mom didn’t like him,
tried to talk me out of seeing him. Jason couldn’t stand him,
either. I just thought it was because Will wasn’t in college and
was the ‘starving musician’. I figured with time, they’d come
around. Then mom got sick and died and Will was there when I needed
him. I thought it was true love and we’d always be
together.”

“
How long did that
last?”

“
Until we got to England.
He’s got a wandering eye and a little thing like a relationship
doesn’t mean he can’t sample what else is there. We were probably
broken up more than we were together, if you want the truth of the
matter. But I didn’t want to admit to Jason that I’d made such a
colossal mistake in following him to England, so I stayed with the
band. Besides, I was gaining the experience I wanted and needed
with writing music.”

“
What happened last summer?”
he felt her shoulders tense against him when he asked the question.
He heard her heavy sigh and then she dropped her head on his
shoulder.

“
The owner of the pub where
we had our contract became obsessed with me. And I was the clueless
idiot. I had no idea he’d been stalking me. When the police went to
his house, he had a wall of photos of me. He even had pictures of
me backstage changing.” She paused and glanced towards
Jack.

“
I wouldn’t say you were the
clueless idiot. Had there been signs you were being
stalked?”

“
Not that anyone could ever
come up with. I mean, Andrew was around a lot but he was the owner
of the pub. He gave me a weird vibe, but to be honest, I got weird
vibes from a lot of the guys over there.”

“
What happened that
night?”

“
Andrew overheard a fight
between me and Will. I had threatened to leave England and come
home, so Andrew followed me back to my apartment. I heard him break
the window and went to investigate. He slammed me up against the
wall, wanting to ‘talk’,” she swallowed hard, but Jack still didn’t
see any of her normal tells of an approaching panic
attack.

“
Then what?”

“
I tried to talk him into
leaving. He slapped me around a bit. At one point I tried to scream
and he knocked me to the floor.”

“
Jesus,
Bayleigh…”

“
It was what I needed him to
do, though. It put me in reach of one of Will’s electric guitars. I
swung that sucker like a Louisville Slugger, caught him right in
the side of the head.”

“
Good for you!” he gave her
shoulders a squeeze.

“
My neighbors had heard all
the noise and called the cops. They were breaking in the front door
at that point. So compared to what it could have been, I was
lucky.”

“
Your injury to your leg
didn’t happen at the same time though, did it?”

“
Ah, my leg,” Bayleigh moved
her leg underneath the blanket. “So, this is the really stupid
part. For a while, after it happened, I was afraid to leave the
apartment. At all. Then one of my neighbors talked me into going to
a couple of kickboxing classes with her. Her reasoning was if I
knew how to fight, I wouldn’t have to destroy another guitar, if I
ever needed to defend myself again.”

“
You took a bad hit in
kickboxing?” Jack guessed.

“
Oh no, I hated kickboxing
and quit after a couple of classes. But I realized how out of shape
I was, so I started running. The problem was, I would hear sounds
or see someone who resembled Andrew and I’d slide into a panic
attack. Sometimes, it was more of a flashback. During one episode,
I took off down some stairs and fell. That’s when I did all the
damage to my leg.”

“
How much of this does Jason
know?”

“
I’m not sure. I never told
him any of it. I was too ashamed,” she admitted. “I know none of
it’s my fault and I’m not to blame, but at the same time, if I’d
never gone to England, none of it would have happened. What if
Jason throws that in my face?”

“
He won’t,” Jack assured
her.

“
I hope not.”

“
Something in your brother’s
voice the other day when he was talking to me tells me that he
knows about the attack. I would guess he did what I did and Googled
your name. But I know your brother. He is not going to turn his
back on you. He’ll be upset you didn’t call him when it happened,
but he’s going to be more upset with the fucker who did this to
you.”

“
Thank you for that,” she
whispered against his shoulder and he pressed a kiss to the top of
her head.

“
So what did happen to that
asshole?”

“
He committed suicide when
he found out he was going to lose his bar. Turns out I wasn’t the
only singer he’d been stalking and once the story broke a few of
the others came forward to press charges.”

“
Can’t say I’m sorry.” They
sat together for a few moments, the only sounds in the room the
crackling of the wood as the fire burned, its warmth reaching
across the room to them.

“
So now that you’re on the
road to recovery and no longer part of the band, what do you want
to do now?”

“
Write songs. I’ve had a
real mental block since last summer but I think now that I’m away
from the constant reminders of all of that, I want to get back to
it.” She pushed at the blanket. Now that the room was warming up,
the fleece was getting to be too heavy for her.

“
What will you do with
them?”

“
Sell them. I never pursued
it before because of a sense of loyalty to Will and the band. He
liked being able to say my stuff was exclusive,” she grimaced. “I
never realized what a controlling bastard he is.”

“
Now you know. So how do you
sell them, do you know?”

“
That won’t be a problem.
I’ve had some other bands and people show interest in the past. If
the word gets out that my stuff is on the open market, it’ll sell.
Once I get settled somewhere, I’ll find a studio so I can do demos,
too.”

“
Sounds like you already
have it all planned out.”

“
The basics, maybe,” she
shrugged her shoulders. “I need to bounce a few ideas off of some
of my friends here in the States. The nice thing about being a
writer is you can pretty much do it anywhere. It helps to be near
the center of the industry to make your contacts, but I’ve already
done that, thanks to Will.”

“
So you could live and work
anywhere?”

“
Within reason, I guess so.
I mean, I’d want to be somewhere there’s a lot of traffic in the
industry, like New York, LA, Nashville. Or even Austin would
work.”

She glanced over to the windows as the ice
started pelting them again. “Sounds like the storm is picking back
up.”

“
Looks like it,” he agreed,
glancing towards the windows. “I need to call the rest of my family
and check in.

“
I’m think I’m going to call
my brother again. I think maybe I owe him a long over-due
conversation.”

“
Why don’t you stay in here
where it’s warmer? I’ll go out to the kitchen, give you some
privacy, if you want.”

“
I, uh, I’m not sure, to be
honest.”

He gave her shoulders another squeeze and
then withdrew his arm before standing up. Stretching his back, he
reached down and held his hand out to her, helping her to her feet.
“Why don’t I go out to the kitchen, make my calls, and you check in
with Jason? I’ll come back in here when I’m done and if you don’t
want me in here, you can tell me to leave.” She nodded and he
paused and then lowered his head and gave her a brief kiss. “It’ll
be okay, Bayleigh. You made it to the other side. You do realize
that, right?”

“
I think I’m beginning to
believe that,” she gave him a soft smile. “Go call your
family.”

Jack gave her hand a squeeze and headed for
the kitchen, grabbing his phone off the end table where he’d laid
it earlier. He called his uncle first to check in with them, make
sure they were still okay in San Antonio and didn’t need him to do
anything around the ranch. He checked in with Mitch, Paul, and
Carly as well. He gave Bayleigh as much time as he could as he
could stand in the freezing kitchen, but even turning on the gas
stove to use the ‘old-fashioned’ coffee percolator he had didn’t
help warm things up much.

He headed back to the living room with two
cups of coffee, pausing in the doorway, his eyes scanning the
darkened room, finding her curled up in the corner of the sofa, the
phone clutched in her hand.