The Song Remains the Same (47 page)

He shrugged. “The truth. She’ll understand.”

“She’ll have my balls on a plate!”

Connor smiled sadly. “She already does, man.”

Mack opened the door, and Connor hopped out.

“Poor kid,” said Mack. “I liked that one.”

“He ain’t goin’ nowhere,” I snapped.

Full of angry thunder and raw nerves, I stalked back to the bathroom, ready to kick the door in when X opened it. His eyes were watery and red, and he couldn’t look me in the face.

“What was that shit you just pulled?” I demanded. “That kid is the best thing that ever happened to NOLA’s, and you just shat all over him ’cause of a photo of a woman he considers family.”

“I know.”

Jason came up behind me. “You have some seriously fucked up—”

“Can it, Jace. You ain’t helpin’,” I barked.

Jason huffed and stormed off.

“I just…I needed him away from us.”

“Why?”

X shrugged, and my irritation skyrocketed.

“Fuck, man! It’s the middle of a
Canadian winter
, and you fuckin’ needed to throw the poor man off the bus? What’s your fuckin’ excuse for that shit? We don’t treat our brothers like that!”

X finally turned his electric-blue eyes on me, and what I saw in them chilled me to my soul. An overwhelming sadness, a look of resignation, and a shit-ton of pain flashed in them. It knocked the breath from me.

“What is it?” I whispered.

Whatever was in him was infecting me. Fear sank its fangs into my heart and pumped it through my veins.

“I don’t know. I just know he needed to get out.”

“You ain’t makin’ a lick of sense—”

“I know!” he cried.

“Was Flipper onto somethin’? You takin’ some shit?”

He shook his head. “I’m fuckin’ tired, man. I just need some sleep. Maybe…it’ll be better after.”

“He deserves an apology,” I growled. “We’re pickin’ the girls up in a few fuckin’ hours. They ain’t gonna be happy, knowin’ Connor’s on the fuckin’ roadie bus. Kenna’s gonna be pissed, knowin’ you ran her little brother outta here.”

X nodded. “All right. Just…let me get some sleep. I haven’t been sleepin’ well lately.”

I knew the feeling. It sucked, not having Kenna with me. I couldn’t sleep in The Attic without her. It didn’t feel right. Flipper, Viv, Jason, and Sheri had all been taking turns with it. I’d been sleeping in the bunk I used when Kenna and I had that shit going down with Brigid and Devon.

I missed my Baby Girl something fierce.

I’d spoken to Devon right before we’d left Montreal. For a while, he’d been talking about some sort of spiritual pilgrimage, and he’d said he would be leaving for Tibet. Where he was going, there would be almost no way to keep in touch, so we’d spoken until his flight got called from Heathrow Airport. He’d seemed to be in a good place in his head and mentioned collaborating when he got back in a few months.

The idea had music tripping around in my head. I could well imagine something amazing coming out of that. Devon was beyond brilliant, and away from Cornered Cannibal, he had the room to grow and express that.

Back on the road, the way to Saskatoon was icy, and there was a snowstorm brewing, turning the sky a steel gray. Our next show was tomorrow night, and we’d decided to get a hotel. Nothing over-the-top, but I was dying to have my Baby Girl all to myself.

When I’d last spoken to Kenna, she’d sounded off—stressed, tired, even sad. She’d told me it was nothing, that she was just overworked and was hoping she was doing the right thing by leaving medicine. She and Alys had been at the airport, heading to New York.

X crawled into his bunk and slid the door shut.

What in the hell is up with him?

Sleep deprived or not, he’d never treated anyone like that—well, except for Jason, but Jason could be an insufferable douche at times. X was always lighthearted, always cracking jokes, and the fact was that Connor hadn’t done anything wrong.

Sighing, I took the seat next to Mack and watched the sky turn darker and more ominous.

“Looks bad,” the man grunted. “Weather report said heavy snow for the next few hours.”

As time went on, the world around us blurred. Mack took the speed down almost to a crawl, considering the whiteout we were driving through. We could hardly see three feet in front of the bus.

“Should we pull over?” I asked, feeling anxious.

The sun was long gone, and the headlights reflecting off the snow with the black backdrop was freaking me out.

Mack had driven us through worse conditions though while on chewed-up European mountain roads. “Nah. We’ll just take it slow,” he replied, looking unfazed.

In the back of the bus, a slide panel shifted, and I glanced over my shoulder to see X pulling himself out of his bunk. He looked like absolute hell, pale and shiny with a greasy sweat. Maybe he was coming down with something, like the flu.

“Hey, man,” I called out.

He looked at me.

“You feelin’ all right?”

He nodded and headed to the bathroom.

Somethin’ ain’t right,
I thought. Getting up to follow him, my heart was in my throat. There was something really wrong with X.

In a flash, the whole world tilted, slid, and careened around. In some sort of limbo, the floor was the ceiling, and then it was the walls. From everywhere came noise—screaming, shattering glass, shit just crashing all over, the tortured sound of metal ripping apart. White-hot pain exploded through me as the air got stunned from my lungs. Lights flickered and went out, and my Baby Girl’s sweet laughter trickled into my ears.

“Kenna…” I whispered, blinking, trying to clear my vision, trying to get up.
Useless.

The blackness from outside came in and swallowed me up. Wherever I was, Kenna’s laughter didn’t follow, and my heart…she splintered apart.

Kenna

“Hey, Baby Girl.”

Waking up with a start, I look around, finding myself on the plane. For a moment, my head fuddles through confusion. Next to me, Alys is asleep, her head resting on my shoulder.

There’s turbulence—not too bad, nothing to jostle me out of my sleep. Alys didn’t move, and she’s terrified of flying. I settle back into my seat, ready to continue my nap.

It’s so quiet. The sound of the engines whirring became a natural part of the silence.

Around me, everyone is asleep.

Everyone
.

There are no flight attendants, and craning my neck above the seats in front of me, I can’t see them in the service station.

“Alys?”

She doesn’t stir.

Then, I feel it. Someone else is here with me, someone who is awake. I love this person, and this person loves me.

Turning my head so as not to disturb Alys, I see him.

He’s smiling so brightly, filled with an abundance of love and acceptance, joy and a hint of sadness for everything that he can never experience now. He’s blazing with an aura the color of the sun, and I
know
why he’s here. I’m breaking up inside. He’s so beautiful, more beautiful than I ever realized.

“I gotta say good-bye, Baby Girl.”

“Oh, no…”

He smiles. “It’s gonna be okay. You know that, right?” He looks down at my belly, swollen once more. “Oh, wow.”

“You can’t go!” I whisper, my voice shaking.

“It’s already too late. Let everyone know, Baby Girl. No regrets.”

I woke up with a start.

Looking around, I was still on the plane, heading for Saskatoon. Turbulence jostled the plane, and next to me, Alys was pale and shaky. Déjà vu muddied my head for an instant, taking a few heartbeats before it cleared.

“Hey, you okay?” I asked, putting my hand on her clenched fist.

She nodded by way of answer, most likely because she was afraid that she’d vomit if she opened her mouth.

The weather outside the plane was horrendous. Our captain had warned of heavy snowfall and stormy conditions.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are ready to make our descent…”

Alys quickly flipped up her tray and tightened her seat belt.

“Just a few more minutes, and we’ll be on the ground,” I told her, sounding a lot more confident than I felt.

There was that strange feeling of
something
not being right. Suddenly, that strange feeling morphed into something being horrifically
wrong
. Without meaning to, my hand slipped to cradle my lower abdomen, pressing in firmly.

Something’s missing.

Although I hadn’t bothered taking a pregnancy test, I
felt
Phil inside me, a part of him firing up, multiplying, replicating, and splitting, cell by cell. For whatever reasons, I hadn’t wanted the confirmation. Something within me felt as though he shouldn’t know of this, not yet.

Maybe not ever.

Maybe it was just that
I
could not accept it. I wasn’t in denial. I
knew.
I knew it was there—a part of me, a part of Phil, its own separate being. Still, I loved the force of it, the spark that was uniquely Phil, growing inside me. As much as I wanted to ignore it,
I wanted it.

The landing was a rough one. Briefly, it felt as though we’d simply dropped out of the sky, and the plane had hit the runway hard. Alys let out a small cry of terror, and I clutched her hand with brute strength. She returned it, too, squashing my fingers in her viselike grip.

“Oh, thank God,” she whispered as we felt the pull of the brakes, the plane slipping into a crawl as it maneuvered into the terminal.

Feeling giddy to be back on the ground, Alys and I grabbed our carry-ons and scrambled to get out of there.

“Let everyone know. No regrets.”

I stopped in my tracks as an icy chill shivered its way down my spine. We were halfway through the gate.

Alys turned around, and whatever she saw on my face scared her. “Kenna?”

Her voice sounded submerged, my tinnitus kicking in. A high-pitched ringing pinged through my skull before slowly fading into the background, and her voice gradually became clear.

“Kenna? Shit, are you going to faint?”

“I’m feeling a bit off…” I told her.

She grabbed my arm to steady me. As we made our way through the gate, she brought me to a bench and sat me down. “I’m going to get you some orange juice or something, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed. I felt sheer, vulnerable in a way that was alien to me. I could only imagine that my face was as colorless as I felt.

As she hurried to a convenience stand, I willed the blood in my body to flow through easily before going up into my brain. Closing my eyes, I sank deep into myself, trying to relax.

“Hey, Baby Girl.”

Relief flooded me, hearing his voice. Phil was still with me. Somehow, I sensed that if he were gone from this world, my inner voice would simply be
my
voice.

“Where are you?”
My mind searched desperately, needing to feel him.

“Kenna?”

Alys’s voice pulled me from my depths. I opened my eyes to the bright fluorescence of the Saskatoon Airport. She handed me a bottle of pulpy orange juice, and I thirstily gulped half of it down.

“You look a bit pale, too,” I told her, handing her the second half of the juice. “Drink it.”

Taking the seat next to me, she downed the rest and then heaved a sigh. “Why does the world feel like it’s out of whack?” she asked me.

A shrug was the best answer I could come up with. My brain was grasping for something important. It was the answer to Alys’s question, I knew that, but it was just beyond my reach, dancing in the peripherals of my mind.

“You feel ready to hit up baggage claim?” she asked.

“Yep,” I replied.

We stood together, making our way.

Around us, people chattered and cheerfully carried on, their lives full of color. They didn’t see the smoggy film that had descended upon the world. Alys and I were going to walk into a shitstorm any minute…