Because of You (4 page)

Unfortunately, the distance I put between myself and my parents over the years also affected my baby sister. Gwen never agreed with their opinions of me, but at that time in my life, contact with her just brought the pain to the forefront. In order for me to excel at my job, I needed to remove all the negativity. I had thought Gwen was well taken care of and that was all that mattered. Even though I cut off contact long before that fateful SEAL mission, I still kept up with the news. I read all about her famous plastic surgeon husband and saw pictures of the smiling, happy couple at events throughout the years. I never really cared much for my brother-in-law the one time I met him at their wedding seven years earlier. He was pompous, had no sense of humor, and our parents treated him like the son they always wanted.

“What time does your flight leave?” Gwen asked, looking up at me while I spun her around the dance floor, trying not to trip over the train on her Vera Wang wedding gown.

I removed my hand from her waist and checked the time on my black, waterproof tactical watch required by the SEALS.

“In about two hours. I need to get going. Don’t want to miss my first mission as a big, bad Navy SEAL,” I told her with a smile and a wag of my eyebrows as the song we were dancing to slowly came to an end.

My father's loud, booming voice echoed through the vaulted ceilings in the ornate banquet hall. “Son! My favorite man in the room. Come over here. There are a few people I want you to meet.”My shoulders tensed as I turned my head in his direction. We hadn't spoken one word to each other since I flew in the day before for Gwen’s wedding. I should have known he wasn’t talking to me. My eyes narrow in undisguised irritation as I watch my father throw his arm around Gwen’s new husband’s shoulder as they shared an obnoxious laugh, continuing to walk past us and towards a group of men I had never met.

“Hey, look at me.”

Gwen’s soft voice forced me to tamp down my anger, and I turned around to meet her bright blue eyes.

“Nothing he says or does means anything. Your happiness – that’s all that matters,” she told me with a smile as she pushed a stray piece of long blonde hair behind one ear.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I smiled. “That’s a two-way street, Gwenny.”

“I know. Don’t worry. I’m happy. I found my Prince Charming, just like mother always wanted me to.”

Not wanting to place any type of wedge in Gwen’s relationship with our parents by forcing her to choose sides or clouding her happiness by voicing my opinion of her husband, I spoke to her less and less until one day we just weren’t speaking at all anymore.

I felt like shit after the SEAL mission―physically and mentally. After losing my partner and watching two young people die right in front of me a few months later, I fell into a black hole of booze and women that I still couldn't remember half of.

Three months ago, Gwen showed up out of the blue at my townhouse at four o’clock in the morning. Aside from the initial shock at seeing my sister standing on my doorstep after she'd traveled over a thousand miles in the middle of the night, the two black eyes she hid behind dark sunglasses, the cast on her broken wrist, and the way she gingerly held her hand against her side to protect her two broken ribs threw me into a murderous rage. Not to mention the curly-haired, towheaded six-year-old little girl that stood next to her sucking her thumb and looking up at me with the same big, bright, curious blue eyes my sister used to have before that asshole broke her.

To ward off the memories of that dark night, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The guilt still overwhelms me every time I think about all of those phone calls I never returned and voice mails I deleted without listening all the way through. If I only got off my high horse and returned just one of those calls, I might have been able to save Gwen from the monster she married. If I’d listened to her voice mails, I might have been able to prevent my niece from witnessing her mother having the shit kicked out of her on a weekly basis for the first six years of her life.

I open my eyes and stare across the room at Gwen as she mirrors me, drumming her own fingers on top of her desk. She still isn't one hundred percent healed from her years in an abusive marriage, and I fear she might never be, but at least the spark is back in her eyes. I would do anything to make sure it remained there.

“Fine. Whatever they offered for this stupid ass job, call them back and add twenty percent. If they agree, I’ll do it.”

I rock back in my chair, confident in the fact that they'll turn down my obscenely high request. I mentally calculate how much money I have left in my savings and how long it will last while Gwen lets out a squeal of delight, turns around in her chair, and pulls out her cell phone to make the call.

With my eyes closed, I reverently wrap my left hand around the neck of the guitar, letting the weight of the instrument rest gently on top of my jean-clad thighs. I drape my right arm over the wide, flat side of the hollow piece of wood and rest my palm against the strings. With my head tilted to the side, I listen quietly, half expecting to hear a pulse or some other sign of life—something to break me out of this funk I’m in.

My name, Layla Page Carlysle, practically screams amazing musician thanks to my father naming me after his favorite Eric Clapton song and his most beloved guitarist, Jimmy Page, twenty-four years ago. Lately, I’ve spent most of my alone time pulling this guitar out of its hiding spot from the back of my walk-in closet, buried underneath clothes and boxes of shoes, and cradling it to my body in the hopes that the nineteen-sixty Gibson Hummingbird will bring me back to life, breathe
something
back into me so I don’t feel so empty. I long for the sixteen inch wide, flat top, mahogany acoustic guitar to play something with meaning, something with substance. Something to help me belt out the chords of a song
I
wrote that will shake my fans to their cores and call to their souls.

But just like every other time I have a few minutes to myself without the shrill, ear-piercing scream of adoring fans, the incessant questions thrown at me from curious journalists, or two dozen members of my management team, production team, wardrobe consultants, and every other well-meaning member of the entourage that's paid to hover over me, the guitar won’t do anything other than sit in my lap waiting for
me
to wake it up.

I can’t do it. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get my fingers to strum the Hummingbird. I can’t produce even one note and haven’t been able to since my father, Jack, walked out the door. The guitar had been a gift from him on my tenth birthday. That was the year I discovered the one thing in the world that made me happy, aside from him.

“Where’s my little hummingbird?!”

My dad’s booming, happy voice carried through the house even though I was down in the basement in his home recording studio.

Despite the fact he knew exactly where I was, he'd still shout for me when he came home from work and walked through the door. Every day since my birthday, I'd go straight to the studio and play the guitar he gave me after school. I loved my guitar and I loved my dad. It was his guitar, given to him by his dad when he was a kid, and now he had given it to me.

He had showed me where to place my fingers on the frets and how to strum a basic chord progression.

“Okay, the first chord you’re going to learn is the C major chord open. Put your ring finger on the fifth string, third fret,” my dad explained as he took my hand and placed it in position on the neck of the guitar. “Then put your middle finger on the fourth string, second fret,” he continued, once again finagling my fingers to the right spot. “Lastly, put your pointer finger on the second string, first fret.”

He moved his hands away from mine as soon as they were exactly where he wanted them, stood back, and smiled down at me.

“Now, strum down from the fifth string twice, slowly.”

I could never forget the look on his face when I strummed the guitar those first few times. Within a half hour, I could play every note without having to look down and make sure my fingers were in the right spots. His face lit up with the biggest smile I had ever seen, and he immediately started teaching me how to read music and play songs.

We'd spend hours down there together every single day, and I couldn’t think of anything else I would rather do than spend time with him. Plus, it made Mom mad and that was okay with me. Mom didn’t like anything that made me happy, but Dad said I should just ignore her.

“Layla Page! You are supposed to be working on your speech for my charity event at the children’s hospital!” my mom yelled angrily down to me. Her order was drowned out by the sound of my dad’s footsteps coming down the stairs.

“Oh, leave her be, Eve. That event is weeks away, and all she has to do is talk about her two-day stay with them last year when we thought she had pneumonia,” my dad yelled up the stairs to her as he walked off the bottom step and gave me a wink. I immediately stopped worrying about how irritated she would be when we finally surfaced from the studio in a few hours now that my dad was there. I had a surprise for him, and I was too excited to care about my mom yelling at him, complaining he spends all his free time with me and never pays attention to her.

“There’s my beautiful girl! How was school today?” Dad asked as he rushed over to my side and placed a kiss on top of my head.

“It was boring. But I got an A on my spelling test.”

My dad laughed and pulled up a chair next to me, resting his elbows on his knees.

“Never tell anyone I told you this, hummingbird, but school never stops being boring,” he said with a smile. “Now, show me what you’ve been practicing.”

I tried to hide my excitement, but it showed all over my face with a smile that stretched from ear-to-ear and my eyes dancing with anticipation. I could barely sit still.

“Well, I got tired of playing
Leaving on a Jet Plane
. I know you said it’s good for beginners because it only uses three chords, but that song sucks and it’s depressing,” I told him honestly as I positioned my fingers on the right frets and concentrated on what I was about to do.