Love's Rhythm (19 page)

I’ll hold you till you let me.

He straightened, the line whispering through his head again, but this time, there were more. So many more. Words on a rhythm. Words he couldn’t ignore. He ran to his overnight bag, dug around in its contents, the words not just whispering to him now, but singing. Singing.

I’ll hold you till you let me.

And then plead for time…

“Yes!” he shouted, finding what he was looking for. A pen. His notebook.

He spun to the bed, dropped to his knees and opened the book, uncaring that it wasn’t to the newest clean page. It didn’t matter. The words, he needed to get the words down.

I’ll hold you till you let me.

And then plead for time

To let you know I’m sorry

To make you mine.

I never should have left you

Never should have caused you pain.

But in the hearts of fools and men

Love will come undone again.

I can’t promise no tears

But I promise utter truth

And in that truth I’ll show you how

I’ll hold you for all time.

My heart, I give you mine today

Today.

My heart, I give you mine today

Today.

The words flowed from him, coming so fast his hand could barely form them. He scratched out notes, indicated inflections, pace, but it was the words that made him burn. The words that spoke of his soul.

They kept coming. Verse followed by chorus. Chorus followed by bridge. Bridge followed by verse and back to bridge again.

Words that promised. Words that sang.

An outpouring beyond constraint.

He saw the music and heard the words, writing it all down, notes and rests marked on a hastily drawn staff, key signatures indicated, time signature likewise. A song called “Today”.

He was still writing, his knees beyond numb, his hand beginning to cramp, when the door to his room opened and Aslin stepped across the threshold.

Nick’s heart leapt into his throat. If Aslin was here, that could only mean Lauren and Josh were as well. His bodyguard wouldn’t leave them to the mercy of the paparazzi. His heart hammering faster, he stared at the man, waiting to see Lauren step from behind Aslin’s menacing frame. Waited to hear his son’s voice—deep with looming adulthood and yet still the voice of youth.

Holding Nick’s stare, Aslin closed the door behind him.

Nick frowned. “What are you doing, As? Where’s Lauren? Josh?”

The ex-SAS commando shook his head. “Sorry, Nick.”

“What do you mean, sorry?” He threw the pen on the bed and pushed himself to his feet. His knees, bent for so long on the hard wooden floor they screamed at him. Blood rushed back into his calves, his toes, like a million fire ants biting into his flesh. He gave Aslin a puzzled look. “You didn’t leave them there alone, did you?”

Aslin shook his head again, his expression…bleak.

Jesus, why was Aslin’s expression so bleak?

He swallowed, the pit of his gut heavy. “Where’s Lauren, As? Where’s Josh? Is he okay?” A thought struck him, cold and terrible. “Did he come home last night? Shit, I have no fucking clue. So fucking deep in a bottle I have no clue. Is he okay? Is that why—”

“He came home, Nick,” Aslin spoke over him, his voice more like thunder than ever. “He’s fine. They’re both fine. After I got you into bed last night I went back there and kept an eye on the place.”

Nick felt his frown deepen. “So why are you here now?”

Aslin studied him for a long moment, as if he wasn’t sure how to answer the question. Finally, with a muttered curse and a shake of his head, he looked at Nick and said, “They’ve gone.”

Nick blinked. “Who? The paparazzi?”

“Lauren and Josh.”

The two names hit Nick like a double blow from a fist. “What do you mean, gone?”

“Fifteen minutes ago, Lauren and Josh climbed into her car with two overnight bags and left. She almost ran down one idiot who thought he’d take a photo from the middle of her driveway.”

The heavy weight in his gut grew cold. Tight. He dragged his hands through his hair, his gaze going to the notepad opened upon his bed. To the music, the lyrics written there. Overnight bags. Jesus, she’d left with overnight bags.

He turned back to Aslin. “Where were they going?”

His bodyguard let out a sigh, the unsteady sound utterly alien from him. “I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. I followed her out of town though, long enough to be satisfied none of the pap were following. She drives fast, Nick. Wherever she’s going, she isn’t being followed by the scum with cameras.” He pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and handed it to Nick, that same bleak expression falling over his face again. “She gave me this and asked if I’d give it to you.”

Nick swallowed, taking the offered note. He opened the folded paper, reading the three words written on it.

Three words.

Like a curse.

He looked up from the message, his throat thick. “Did she take her satchel?”

For the fourth time, Aslin shook his head.

It was the fourth shake that told Nick what he didn’t want to know. Lauren had left her satchel behind. He knew the significance of that. Knew what Lauren was saying to him through it. Last night she’d told him she was scared of him, how she felt for him. Today she was telling him he was like a curse. And right now, as he stood here in the
penthouse
room of The Cricketer’s Arms, with the country’s media no doubt swarming outside, awaiting a press conference where he would announce he was quitting the biz for her, she was driving out of Murriundah. Driving away from him.

Taking his son with her. His family gone from his life. Again.

Closing his eyes, Nick dropped onto the edge of the bed, hung his head between his knees, crumpled Lauren’s note in his fist and cried.

Chapter Twelve

Eight days had passed. Eight days of confused pain, wretched doubt, raw truth and solitary tears. Eight days camped out in a two-bedroom holiday apartment in a coastal town almost as small as Murriundah seven hours north. Eight days spent walking the chilly winter beach alone, thinking about it all. Eight days talking with Josh, apologizing for her stupid behaviour. Eight days listening to every song Nick Blackthorne had ever recorded over and over again.

Eight days reading the national papers, the gossip magazines. Eight days of seeing her own face in them, seeing the image of her standing in her open front door, dressed only in her pyjama shirt, her hair a mess, a half-dressed Nick behind her, his hair equally so. Of seeing Josh on those pages, his image inevitably superimposed next to ones of his father—her son looking stunned and nervous, Nick always looking sexy and confident and every inch the rock star he was.

Eight days of speculation about her history with Nick, interviews with people she barely knew who called themselves her close friends and trusted sources, people who spilled facts so ridiculous she would have laughed if she wasn’t so pissed off. Facts about her so-called obsession with Nick, how she stalked him, blackmailed him. Facts about Josh’s so-called developmentally delayed abilities, about Nick’s shame that his son was impaired and that’s why he’d been hidden from the world. Facts that stated Josh was a musical idiot savant who mimicked Nick pitch-perfect. Facts that were nothing more than fabricated bullshit, written to feed the masses hungry for gossip on Nick Blackthorne.

None of the papers and magazines, it seemed, had any real clue where Nick was during her eight days in hiding either. There’d been no statement from him, no response to the articles revealing Josh and Lauren. The only hint someone had talked to him was a press release from Walter Winchester, Nick’s record producer, who announced Nick’s latest album, simply titled “Blackthorne”, would be releasing in two weeks time. There was an image of the man beside an enlarged version of the cover, an image of Nick taken who knows when holding up a hand as if fighting off unwanted media attention.

Lauren didn’t know how he lived with it. By the end of the eight days, she was ready to scream. Josh however, had taken a different route.

He’d stubbornly refused to talk to her for two days, had done little except text Rhys on that first day, telling him his mum had “lost her freaking mind”. He’d shown her the text, eyes flat, glare angry, just before hitting send. Whatever Rhys had texted back had made him angrier, and he’d shoved his phone in his pocket and ignored it for the remainder of the day. At the end of the second day of silence, he’d found an article in the
Sydney Morning Herald
that went on at length about Nick and Lauren’s life before Nick became famous. Lauren had found him regarding her with a contemplative stare more than once. By the middle of the third day, and after numerous text conversations with God knows who, he’d flopped onto the sofa beside her and given her a relaxed hug. “I freaked out a bit back at home, didn’t I?”

She’d shaken her head, letting him see her understanding smile. “You had reason.”

He’d chuckled, the sound so like his father Lauren had caught her bottom lip with her teeth. “Guess I take after you when it comes to the dramatics, ’eh?”

Lauren had rolled her eyes. “And you don’t think your dad’s got any talent for putting on a show when he needs to?”

The words were meant to be cutting. She was still angry, damn it. The trouble was they didn’t sound angry at all. They sounded…sad.

Josh’s smile had turned lop-sided, another Nick trait. “I think I’d like to learn all sorts of things about my dad that the rest of the world hasn’t read in a magazine, or watched on MTV.”

He’d dropped a quick kiss on her cheek then, and scrambled out of the sofa before she could do anything stupid like cry and try to kiss him in return. He knew her well. He was her son, after all.

“Josh,” she’d said, and maybe it was the hesitancy in her voice that made him stop, turn back to her and grin.

“I read an article today in one of the papers,” he said, the lop-sided smile stretching a little wider, “that discusses my apparent ability to attract members of the opposite sex at ease already. It seems that, even at such a young age, my ‘burgeoning good looks and soulful voice’ are the stuff of teenage girls’ fantasies. Apparently, I’m going to get lucky a lot.”

She’d crossed her arms and given him an exasperated look. “Your point being, Joshua William Robbins?”

He’d shrugged. “It’s good to know where all these ‘burgeoning’ good looks come from, I guess. Who I need to thank. Not some faceless guy who may have been a fuckwit.”

Lauren had groaned at his language. “Josh.”

“Sorry, Mum.” He’d frowned then, his hands sliding into the back pockets of his jeans, his eyes intent. “
Is
Nick a fuckwit? Is that why we’re here, hiding out?”

The sigh left her before she could stop it. A serious case of the knots twisted in her stomach. “No, Josh. Your father is not a…not a fuckwit.”

His frown had deepened. “So why are we here, then? ’Cause it seems to me the best reason for having Nick Blackthorne as my dad is because he’s a nice guy who makes you laugh and smile like I’ve never seen you do before.”

Lauren’s heart had smashed into her throat. She’d stared at him, unable to think of a thing to say.

After that, it had just been her on a solo quest for resolution. Josh seemed to know exactly what he wanted—to get to know his dad better—and spent the days fishing on the beach and making a scrapbook of cuttings about his infamy and his infamous parents, suggesting regularly she was being a bit of a drama queen and really should at least call Nick. She’d told him so often he was too young to understand that the words made little sense. But then again, perhaps they never really had. Josh had found his father. His father had made him laugh and grin and promised to keep him safe. What else was there to understand?

And so it was that on the eighth day she packed them both up and drove home. She still had no bloody clue what she was going to do about the whole Nick situation, but life had to go on. She’d taken a week off work she couldn’t really afford. KR needed her. Awaited her return.

If she was lucky, Murriundah had moved on and she could slip back into her normal life with just a smile and a, “you know, it was one of those things” to pass off the whole thing.

Jennifer had other plans.

Her best friend was waiting for her when she arrived home early Sunday night, a grin on her face, a bottle of champagne in her hand.

“Heya, Jen,” Josh called, climbing out of the passenger seat of Lauren’s car before she could even engage the handbrake. “What are we celebrating?”

“We are celebrating your mum being the most famous person I know.”

Lauren rolled her eyes, slamming her car door shut behind her. The icy winter night wrapped around her. “I’m pretty certain you know someone more famous than me, Jen.”

Jennifer smacked her forehead, her breath white clouds puffing from her lips. “You’re right. I know Josh.”

Josh laughed. “Sign you an autograph for fifty bucks.”

Jennifer’s eyebrows shot up with exaggerated shock. “Fifty bucks?”

He shrugged. “I want to buy a guitar.”

“Why don’t you just borrow one of your dad’s?”

Lauren gave her best friend a flat glare.

“Because
she
—” Josh tossed his head in Lauren’s direction, “—hasn’t decided if we’re talking to him or not.”

Jennifer rolled her eyes this time, walked down the front porch steps, kissed Lauren on the cheek and then handed her the bottle of champagne. “Well, Josh, I think it’s time I save you from your dithering old mum and take you somewhere fun. Oh, did you hear that? I’m a poet and didn’t know it.”

Josh groaned. “That’s lame, Jen.”

She grinned. “That it is, sorry. Anyways, grab your bag from your mum’s car. I’m dropping you at Rhys’s for some teenage therapy after your week of maternal suffocation. Mrs. McDowell has your bed made up, as far as I know there’s a bowl of spaghetti bolognaise waiting for you and I’ve already got your school clothes and stuff in my truck.”