A red tainted Silence (72 page)

Steven laughed. “You missed that part, too.”

“It’s all on him. We’re not to worry, Brandon.”

“Think of it as an advance, Brandon. You boys need to get out of here. You’re both sick, and you aren’t going to get better in this place. I’m investing in your future, and I think it’s going to be a bright one. Getting you well is the first priority. I’ll see you tomorrow.” So began the whirlwind. I thought we’d go to some cheap motel, but no, when the car came for us and our two suitcases and a box (we left the soup behind), we were taken to the nicest place I’d ever been to up to then. We did as ordered, me not believing that we should, and Nicholas finding such relief in our sudden turn of fortune that he got well far more quickly than he would’ve had we been in our apartment still.

I guess I was a skeptic, but over the next few weeks my skepticism turned to an all-out worry that we were losing control. Nicholas became a madman, bursting with creativity, writing song after song, discovering what he had a knack for, and learning just how crazy our lives were becoming -- learning that he loved it.

While I hated it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for what we had. For the amazing money we made, are still making, off our songs. We’ve been able to help friends and family. We’ve met incredible people, and I’ve loved watching Nicholas become the superstar he deserved to be.

But even as he glowed and grew and we escalated into stardom -- saw our first releases become hits in the US, then Australia, and Asia and Russia and Europe and everywhere across the world -- I began to diminish. Fade. Become less and less myself.

Nicholas loved it. The photography sessions, the interviews, the talk shows, the flying, the creating, the studio work.

I hated it. The photography sessions terrified me; the interviews wore me out; the talk shows made my stomach hurt; the flying -- I hated the flying. And we flew a lot.

The keeping myself separate from Nicholas, unable to touch him, hold him, love him, even when we were in the same room.

The odd thing ... yeah, the odd thing was, Nicholas didn’t seem to miss that. He got so much attention, so much love from his fans and everyone he talked to, that he didn’t feel starved like I did. He didn’t ache to touch me. He ended every day high as the tallest mountain and elated as the luckiest man in the world. Which he was -- lucky, I mean. Really lucky.

But luck can carry one only so far. It takes hard work to get to the top, and stay there.

And Nick’s energy was boundless; nothing fazed him, not really. Even when the diva in him came out -- which it did, more and more often -- everyone loved him so much that his nonsense was tolerated. Even encouraged. Superstar.

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Carolyn Gray

Superstar.

Not superstars.

He didn’t need me.

I’m not sure exactly when I realized it. He didn’t need me. I was incidental, the tail end of a glance, the thought after the last comment.

By then, we’d all but stopped sleeping together. By then, his flirting with me had fallen to just on the stage, and only barely. It hurt, and still hurts now, remembering the thrill I got even then -- as I was dying, killing myself by living on beer and handfuls of vitamins that didn’t help much, more underweight than I’d ever been in my life -- the thrill I got from his touching me on stage. A hand here, a lean there. That’s all I was getting by then.

Our lives. Not what I wanted. Marisa -- yeah, I could blame her -- Marisa worked it that way, but she didn’t do it alone. Nick did, too. Maybe so did I. I’m not really sure anymore. When he moved to London between albums, citing a creative need to get away from California, which I could not leave, well, I only know by then I couldn’t take it anymore.

You know the history. You know what happened. No need to say anymore. Plenty of articles, stories, lies about it, but the truth is, once the third tour was over, that was it for me.

For me and Nicholas.

So, I quit. It was me all along -- in desperation to try and get myself through the days, I latched on to the creative side of things, began to imagine life beyond the tour, what I would do. I knew Nicholas wanted to try a solo album, which was fine. I needed time to recuperate before we started work on the next album, and with his wild energy I knew he needed to keep busy or go crazy. I understood that; it was okay; I didn’t mind at all. I wanted him to be happy. Anything to keep him happy, since I couldn’t keep him happy, since he didn’t want or need me anymore.

* * * * *

“Nick! Hey, Nick, stop crying, it’s okay,” Lee said.

“I can’t! I can’t, Lee. He thought --” Sobs wracked me as I folded myself against Lee. His arms held me tight as I lost it, bewildered and confused.

“I know, I know. That’s why I wanted to be here with you when you read it.”

“Why, Lee? Why didn’t I know? I’m such a fucking selfish bastard, I thought -- even then, I mean, I knew of course when he lost it -- but I thought ... I thought it would be okay!

I thought we’d be okay. Oh, God, why did I stop? When did I stop touching him?” Hate roiled through me -- hate for myself. Hate for what I’d put him through. Oh, Brandon ...

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“I played him -- his music, his mind, his heart -- and I destroyed him,” I practically yelled, sitting up. “I did it. It was me!”

“Nicholas, cut it out,” Lee said, grabbing me by the shoulders.

But I shook my head. “No. No. It was me. I destroyed him. I should’ve never listened to any of them, but I thought we were doing the right thing. I believed them when they told me Dream would die if it got out we were lovers.” I paused, then laughed bitterly. “But the fucking thing was, by then we weren’t lovers anymore.” I buried my face in my hands. I couldn’t take this, couldn’t read anymore of the pain, the harsh black pain Brandon lived with. The rejection. The loneliness. The bitterness. I’d loved touring, thrived on it, drank it up and ate it up and exploded with it, and all that time, even though I knew, I didn’t truly believe that it was killing Brandon.

I couldn’t see what was before my eyes.

I couldn’t see that the man I really loved, who I took so much for fucking granted I’d even moved across the world, just assuming he’d be there whenever I made the time for him, was dying.

He said it himself, he was dying.

He’d been raped repeatedly for over a year, and I hadn’t seen that, either.

How could I forgive myself? How had he ever forgiven me?

“He’s a better man than me, Lee.”

“Nick --”

“No. I nearly destroyed him. I destroyed Dream. He blames himself, but it was me, selfish bastard that I am. It was me. How hard would it have been for me to just say ‘okay, Brandon, enough of this, I need you’?” I fell back against the pillows, stared at the ceiling.

“How hard would it have been for me to say ‘I love you Brandon, and we are going to show the world’?”

“It might’ve caused a lot of problems. You had no choice.”

“No, I believed I had no choice. I was led to believe it. It wasn’t true.” I looked at Lee.

“It wasn’t true. None of this should’ve happened, Lee. I should never have let him go.”

“You didn’t --”

“No, I let him go, Lee. I let him insist we were better apart, and I opted out the easy way and said, ‘Okay, it was good, wasn’t it?’ I’m still not sure why I said that, you know. I knew what I was saying. I knew he would hear and I guess ...” I shuddered. “... I guess, like the fool I prove myself to be time and again, I guess I believed I could shock him into saying,

‘No, no, no, we’re not over, Nick.’”

“But that isn’t what happened,” Lee said, turning to face me, crossing his legs.

“No,” I whispered. “No. He was so hurt. He was shaking with hurt, with disbelief. But he took it, Lee. He said, ‘Okay. It’s over.’”

428

Carolyn Gray

“You didn’t expect that.”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

Lee sighed. Shook his head. “So tell me, how does this all tie in with what happened later?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. The blackmail, he hasn’t even written about that.”

“Missing things, remember what your psychiatrist said.” That was a big one. “Yeah, especially since he set out to write this to go over that very thing. It’s like he forgot what he was writing about.” Lee eyed me. “Maybe he did forget.”

“Blanked it out, you mean?”

“Yes. Defense mechanism. When was he writing this part?” I shook my head. “I don’t know. He wrote an awful lot of this when I was still in the hospital.”

“Too bad we don’t know. But if the timing is that he wrote this part while he was starting to really get sick --”

“Before he ran away from Mutt?”

“Yeah, that would explain why he didn’t write about it. The guy who blackmailed him is dead though, right?”

“Yes. The bastard.”

“And the other is in jail.”

“Yes.”

“And the guy who kidnapped you was not, as far as the police could determine, in any way connected with them.”

“That’s right.”

“And the psychiatrist says what he saw shocked him so bad -- What would shock him that bad? I mean, other than walking into a room and seeing a video of yourself being raped.” He grimaced. “Sorry.”

I thumped my fist on the bed. “I don’t know! That’s just it. I don’t know!”

“Which means we’re no closer to figuring this out than the police are.”

“Which means he’s still in terrible danger maybe. And not just in his mind,” I said.

Lee got out of the bed and held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s go on up and see him, okay? I think you need to.”

I smiled wanly and grabbed Lee’s hand, let him pull me up. “I do need to see him. To tell him I’m sorry. To apologize. Smother him with kisses. Crawl into bed with him and never let him go again.”

Lee grinned at that. “Come on, then. I’ll go tell Jeff, okay?” A Red-Tainted Silence

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I nodded. Lee left, and I turned my attention to the computer again, dared to look beyond the point at which I stopped.

Anything to keep him happy, since I couldn’t keep him happy, since he didn’t want or need me anymore. That was all that mattered to me. I could live the rest of my life alone, as long as he was happy.

And safe.

Oh, please, God, let Nicholas stay safe. Why didn’t you let him stay safe?

Why did you let them take him from me and steal him away just when I thought maybe, maybe it would be good again between us, maybe he would have time for me again, want me again like he had that night, that one magical night that he came back to me and told me, “I know you’re lying, Brandon. I know you still want me, love me, and I’m going to figure out why you’re doing this to us. You better believe it. I will figure this out. I just have to go home and settle a couple things. Then I’m coming back here, and I’m moving in with you, and fuck the world. You are mine. We are meant to be ... even though you say ‘no, not true, go away, it’s the only way for you to be safe, you’ve got to be safe, I have to keep you safe, go back, go away.’” But he said, “No, I’m coming back for you, Brandon Ashwood.” I’m coming back.

But he didn’t get to. He left, and then he was taken away from me. And OH, MY GOD, I thought he was going to die. I couldn’t live without him ... not without you, Nicholas, I won’t. I won’t live without you again.

I won’t.

“Let’s go,” Lee said, walking up to me and closing the laptop.

“It’s really bad, Lee.”

“I know.”

I stared at the computer. Wondered if the answers I needed would be found in there, or if they were, as I feared, still locked tight in Brandon’s battered mind.

430

Carolyn Gray

“I’m scared, Lee,” I whispered as I watched Brandon sleep. Not a natural sleep. Oh, no.

Drug-induced. When we arrived at the hospital to take Brandon home, we learned that wasn’t happening. I wasn’t sure whether I wasn’t a little relieved.

“What happened, exactly. Did they say?”

I shrugged, stroked Brandon’s fingers with my thumb, lifted his hand and kissed each knuckle. Such beautiful hands, Brandon’s. Hands that were limp and lifeless, except for their warmth. They’d had to sedate him, they told me, when he’d plunged into hysterics after a nap.

“He had a nightmare.” The results of which were devastating. “He’ll be so upset when he wakes up. He’d wanted to come home today so badly.” Lee sat on the arm of my chair and rubbed my back. I laid my head on Brandon’s arm, closed my eyes as Lee clued in that what he was doing was most welcome. I tried to relax as his strong hands massaged my neck, worked my tense muscles. “You’re one big knot, Nicholas.”

“I know. I can’t -- ouch! Oh, wow, that feels good,” I said as he worked on a spot just about my shoulder blade. “Where’d you learn that?” He chuckled. “Oh, this girl I’m dating is a massage therapist. A really good one.” I lifted my head and looked at him. “You have a girlfriend? Why didn’t you tell me?” He blushed. Blushed. “Yeah, well, I’m not the high priority here. You’ll meet her soon, I promise. Now tell me --”

“What’s her name?” I said, letting him push me back down.

“Maya.”

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I sighed as his hands found another tender spot. “Maya. That’s a lovely name. Is she pretty?”

“She’s beautiful. You’ll like her, I promise.”

“Going to marry her?”

“Yes. If she’ll have me.”

“She’ll have you. You’re awesome.”

His hands paused. “Thanks, Nicholas. That means a lot.” I lifted my head and looked at Brandon. Still sleeping, peaceful, undisturbed. The nurse had assured me the dreams couldn’t torment him while he was under sedation. I wasn’t sure I believed, her but I needed to believe her, so I did. Dreamless sleep, that’s what he needed, in order to heal.

Lee dropped his hands and stood, leaning over Brandon to push his hair out of his face.

Lee’s so tender, so sweet. Maya’s one lucky woman. “We need to keep reading, Nicholas,” he said.

“I know. But I’m scared to, Lee.”

Lee turned around and leaned against the nightstand, arms folded over his chest. “I know you are. But we have to keep reading so we can tell his psychiatrist what we’ve learned. Jon’s bringing our computers up.”