Rock Me Deep (36 page)

Grinning wide, I gave him a hard shove. “
Everyone
will be cheering for us, you mean.”

“Yeah.” Adjusting his shirt, he flashed me a knowing look. “Yeah, that's what I meant.”

Inside the auditorium, people were shouting; it was time.

Hoisting my guitar case, I paused with my hand on the knob. I didn't look back as I spoke. “Thanks, Colt.”

Together, we pushed into the room.

****

Seven Years Ago

T
he walls of my bedroom were decorated with trophies in silver or gold.

Mostly gold.

Winning singing contests had become easy for me. It didn't make me try any less; all I ever did was practice. Playing guitar, running through exercises for my vocal cords, I never stopped.

I couldn't.

I'm still not there yet. I still haven't made it.

At age fifteen, I was starting to feel old. Like my road to being a star was beginning to narrow. Seeing the pinched looked on my father's face as the years went by, I feared my future lay where his did now.

Failure.

I have to try harder. I have to be the best.

Dropping my backpack on the kitchen counter, I poured a glass of lemonade from the fridge. I'd downed all but a final swallow when I spotted the envelope. It was a fat, manila thing addressed to me and my mother.

Setting the glass aside, I wiped my hands on my jeans. The mail was heavy; an important kind of weight. Fingering the edge, I saw it had already been opened. I lifted the letter into the air and read it with mounting excitement.

It was an offer letter from Goldman's—an arts school known for its highly skilled students. Many of my favorite musicians had attended.
And they want me to attend.
When had I started shaking?

“Well, what do you think?”

Spinning, I looked into the watery, smiling face of my mother. The look in her eyes said it all—she'd been waiting all day for me to read that letter.

Wordless, I grabbed her in a hug, listening to her delighted laughter and hoping it would never end. I didn't want this feeling to ever go away.

This is the first step. I can really do it.

I can be a rock star.

She pried herself out of my arms, taking the letter gingerly. “It came this morning. I couldn't wait to show you.”

A thought burrowed in my guts. “Did Dad see it?”

Her small frown muddled the joyous occasion. “Not yet.” Smoothing her hair, she put the envelope back on the counter. “I'll tell him about it when he's... in a better mood.”

When he isn't drunk.
I knew her code. “Can we really do this? It means moving to Colorado. I won't get to graduate with my friends.”
Colt and Porter are going to hate me.

My mother reached out, kind hands holding my cheeks. “Anthony, honey, this is all up to you. If you want to go here, we—you—have to decide.”

Leaning in brought us together. I'd gotten taller than my mother—tall as my father—soon after turning fourteen. In my arms, my mother felt... small. Frail.
She hasn't been eating well since Dad started drinking so much.
I was familiar with the strain he brought.

I was also very familiar with the bruises he could leave.

Thinking about his misery made me hold her tighter. “Listen, Mom.” The words were escaping faster than my brain could make sense. “Let's just go together. You and me, we'll vanish and Dad can be the depressed fucker he clearly wants to be by himself.”

“Language, Anthony.” She squeezed me briefly, her voice low. “I can't leave your father like that. Not... without saying something.”

“He doesn't say much to me at all these days.”

Pulling away, my mom considered my bitter grimace. Her kiss on my cheek nullified some of my distaste. “He has his reasons. Don't take them personally. Now, why don't you go clean up before dinner.”

“What?” Grinning, I ruffled my dark hair. “You saying I smell?”

Together we laughed in the kitchen, a moment of peace that would forever remain cemented in my heart. I could never forget how pleased my mom looked, how she playfully swatted me and chased me upstairs to my room.

It was pure bliss.

Of course it had to end.

****

I
heard the screams—no, I
felt
them. It's such a primal, protective reaction when you hear your own mother in danger.

My hair was still wet from the shower, steam escaping me and my hastily thrown on jeans. There was no time for anything else; I just ran towards the source of the noise.

Inside my father's workshop, the scent of polish and pine brought confusing nostalgia. As a child, even a young teen, I'd spent so much time watching my dad work on what he loved.

The sight of him working over my mother—someone
I
loved—made me want to retch.

He had her on the floor, blood on his knuckles, blood on her forehead. He was saying something, but my ears were blinded to all but her pleading screams.

“Stop! Donnie, it's not what you think!”

“You're going to run off and abandon me, you little bitch! After
everything!
” He pulled his arm back to swing again. In the whites of his eyes, insanity bloomed.

I didn't remember moving. Circling my forearms around his shoulders, I wrestled my father backwards, down to the sawdust covered floor. “Get off of her! Stop it, Dad!” My skull vibrated, birthing confusion. How could this be real? What had gone so wrong?

He'd hit me before, but never my mother.

Scuffling, he threw me against the legs of a heavy table. “You'd try to fight your own fucking
father!?
” Hands clung to my throat, nails ripping my cheek. “You piece of shit, you fucking piece of shit!”

The back of my head slammed into something solid; the edge of a work bench. Dots of color fizzled inside of my eyelids. I was blacking out—I couldn't hold him, he scrambled free. I thought he'd attack me again, but instead, he swayed towards my mother.

She looked like a terrified animal. Sliding sideways, holding her palm to the crimson seeping from her left temple, my mom sobbed. “Please, please stop! Get away from me!”

“Ungrateful family,” he huffed heavily. “Think you'll just go off and become rich and famous, think you're
better
than
me.
After all of the time I put into making that son of yours so fucking talented!” Bending low, his fingers coiled in her hair. The sawdust at his feet had turned into sludge from the blood.

Under his boot, I saw the edge of my admission letter to Goldman's.

I'd started yelling at some point. My throat was ragged from it. Lurching onto his back, I struggled to get him to the floor—to anywhere away from my mother. Together we rolled into a tool bench, metal instruments he'd once used to lovingly carve his guitars showering down on us.

I didn't see the chisel until it was too late. Pure pain radiated from my lower back.

He'd stabbed me. My own father had stabbed me.

I was screaming again, just one long, strained vowel. Would this ruin my vocal cords?

Who cares if I can't sing again? It doesn't matter if I'm dead.

If she's dead.

Ignoring the sickening weight of the chisel in my flesh, I punched down into my dad's jaw. Again and again, the thud of my knuckles bounced off his face. I didn't stop until he went limp, wet bubbles of red hanging on his lips.

Groaning, I made myself stand. Purple and yellow tickled my vision, my insides threatening to come out of my mouth. Determined not to give up—if I stopped now, I was sure I'd never get up again—I stumbled towards the phone on the wall of the workshop. I could tell my mother was breathing, but wasting another second without calling for help was madness.

As I dialed for an ambulance, my bare foot found the ragged letter from Goldman's. Blood from my dad's shoe stained most of it. It was funny, how important that piece of paper had seemed to me just hours ago.

Now, as I looked over my beaten mother, endured the waves of pain from my wound...

I wished it had never arrived.

****

Present Day

––––––––

T
here were half-moon cuts in my palms from how hard I had been clenching my fists. For so long, I'd avoided thinking about what had happened that day. How my father had gone so far in his jealousy that he tried to murder my mother, and no doubt, would have killed me as well.

Standing there watching me, he said nothing. I almost preferred it that way, but that wasn't why I was here. I wouldn't waste this trip.

Honesty.

“Why.” The word had been on the tip of my tongue for years. “Why would you do it?”

“Listen, kid—”

“Don't!” Curling back my lips, I gripped my own skull. “Never call me that again. I'm not a fucking kid.” My guts balled up, thinking about how I'd called Lola 'kid' initially.
I'm nothing like him. I won't be—I can't be.
“Just tell me why.”

His mouth fell open, a pathetic expression that I just loathed more. “I've—been seeing someone about that. Therapy, you know? I'm—”

“
Tell me why!
”

Lines grew deep along his forehead, around his eyes; eyes that were so tired and nothing like they used to be when I was just a child. “Did you really come to see me, after all these years, to ask that?”

“No.”
The why doesn't even matter.
“I don't need your answer. I figured it out soon after they sentenced you. I wasn't stupid, I fucking got why you turned into such a pathetic, desperate piece of shit over the years.”

He crumpled like a dying balloon. “Then, what do you want from me? You want to talk to me, right? You're here for me.”

The back of my neck was sweltering. “I'm not here for you, I'm here for
me
.”
I'm here so that I can get over my past. I'm here for...

For Lola.

My dad eyed me with new suspicion. “Fine. You came here to mock me. You proud of that? You proud of looking down on your own father, Anthony?” My hackles went up in rows. “You proud of taunting an old man who struggled to give you what you have now?”

“I used to be proud of
you!
” My bottom lip split with my hard growl, the blood a distant note on my tongue. “I was so damn proud of everything you did, I looked up to you!”

Whatever perfect speech I'd written in my brain on the flight here, it was washed over by the one that had been scratching itself into place since the day my dad had started to ignore me.
He erased me. He hated how good I was becoming, how I'd surpassed him, so he turned me invisible.

Until he couldn't any longer.

“You looked up to a failure like me?” he asked, eyes going dull; doubtful.

“I did.” Raising my arm, I wiped at the burning cut on my mouth. “Until the very first time you hit me, I just wanted to be like you.”
I wanted to show you I could be the star you wanted me to be.

Turning away, Donnie closed his eyes and breathed out. “Well, you've made it further than I ever did. I've seen you on television, son. You're famous—like I always wanted to be." There was a hollowness in his gaze as he looked back at me. “Guess we weren't very similar, in the end.”

“No,” I said, feeling my lower back twinge where my scar was. “We're nothing alike.”
And we never will be. “
I'm here to remind myself of that. I'm going to make sure I never, ever become anything like you.”

In the shadows of the cell, my father didn't flinch.

From the start, I'd demanded perfection from Lola the way my dad had from me. I'd felt the fear when I saw her talent soar, recognizing the world would crave her as much as I did every second. I'd lost my mind at the idea she'd slip away, told myself I would do anything,
anything
to keep her at my side.

But I was not my father.

Even though our blood was the same, our hearts were not. I'd never let myself become the bitter man he was.

His face was a map of misery. I burned the memory deep into my mind. Turning on my heel, I stuck my hands in my pockets. “One more thing before I leave and never waste my time thinking about you again.” My lungs fluttered, mouth tasting like rust and satisfaction. “What does it take to be a good guitarist?”

He finally stood to his full height; I had his attention.

I'd never wanted it more.

“Honesty,” I whispered. The single word cut through the stagnant air of the prison. “The answer is honesty. That's why you could never make it.”
And why she could. That beautiful, genius fucking girl knew the answer from the start.

His lips moved, mouthing the word softly. “Honesty?" He was rigid and motionless. "You think that's what matters?”

“Yeah.” There wasn't a tremor of doubt in my voice. How could there be? “It's what allows people to be themselves, to be free and unconstrained.”
It's what will keep Lola and I together.

My heels sliced down the concrete hall like machines on a war path. I was slashing and burning everything in my past. Not to erase it, but to clear it away so I could see the roots of who I was beneath the blackened char.

I was finally done with my father.

But there was more to do before I could return to Lola.

Lola

––––––––

J
ohnny took a sip from his coffee. It looked cold, made me curious how long he'd been nursing it. I thought he was nursing the information, too, like he was counting the seconds, enjoying being the center of attention again.

Finally, Johnny bent low in my direction. “I'm only telling you this because you should know the kind of man Drezden is.”

The kind of man he is.
I reminded myself to breathe.

“His name isn't Drezden Halifax.” There were shiny purple circles under his eyes. “It's Anthony Holland.”

I was crushing myself, bracing myself, and then the reveal came and I just... deflated. Sean had already warned me that Drezden wasn't really his name. “So what?” I asked. “Lots of rock stars use fake names. Why does it matter?”