Sound Proof (Save Me #5) (10 page)

I text AJ on my way out of the courthouse to check on the girls. Since my parents were both needed with me today, AJ was nice enough to agree to stay with the girls. Not that I had to ask because he volunteered before I had a chance. It’s crazy, but he acts like loves them like they are his own. I guess that shouldn’t shock me, though, since he’s been there every step since the accident. He’s there even when I don’t realize that I need him and he gets the girls anything they want. It’s actually cute really how he waits on the girls hand-and-foot when he’s with them.

I wish someone could explain to me how someone goes from being such a well-known manwhore who didn’t care about anything but the next woman who fell on his dick, to this wonderful, caring, and insanely perfect with my daughters type of guy. Part of me, that little tiny voice in the back of my head, is starting to wonder more and more what is happening between us. The other part,the rational, successful, still technically married lawyer, is telling me to back off. I’m just not sure what part of me to listen to yet.

I slide my phone back into my pocket after replying to Payton’s text and continue trying to jab this tiny little straw into this juice bag thingy. Once I finally get it and get back to the living room, I stoop down next to the couch. Sage groans when I hand it to her and smooth her hair out of the way carefully.

“I’m going to take that as a ‘Thank you, AJ’.” I chuckle when she gives me a thumbs up and continues watching whatever is on the TV. “What about you?” I ask Willow.

She shrugs, barely even looking my way when I talk to her. So, instead of forcing her to talk to me, I do the same thing we’ve been doing for the past few weeks. I sit back in the chair next to her, toss my feet up on the edge of the coffee table and remind her it’s not her fault.

“Did you always know you wanted to be a drummer?” Willow’s question throws me. Not because of the question, but because it’s the first thing other than “leave me alone” that she’s said since they came home from the hospital.

“Uh… yeah, I think I did.” I relax back into the chair and rest my arms behind my head. “My mom always tells these stupid little stories about how when I was a baby, I would haul the pots and pans out of the cupboards and beat on them for hours every day. I remember when I was eight, my parents got me this beat up old drum set and told me to have at it. We didn’t have the money to send me to lessons but I wanted to learn so damn bad…”

“Damn’s a bad word,” Sage interrupts with her mumbling without taking her eyes off the TV.

I raise my hands and apologize. “Anyway, anywhere I went, I always had my sticks with me. Any chance I got, I would be beating on something. I’d get a beat in my head and I had to get it out. If I didn’t, I felt like I was drowning until I finally had a chance to. I had to teach myself, though, so I never knew if I was doing it right. I could have been the worst drummer on the planet but it didn’t matter.”

“What do you mean it didn’t matter?” Willow whispers, still not looking at me.

“What I mean is, I didn’t start out playing to be where I am now. I did it because I
needed
to play. If I didn’t play, I wasn’t me, and I didn’t want to be anyone else.”

“I used to be like that…” she trails off.

I want to move. To sit on the floor beside where she is on the couch so she knows I’m paying attention, but I’m afraid if I do she’ll stop talking. So I stay where I am and wait for her to keep going.

“I guess I used to pull the pots and pans out too and it didn’t matter how loud I banged because my mom couldn’t hear it. I guess the neighbors hated it though and were constantly complaining.”

“So why’d you stop banging, Willow?”

She sighs and turns her face toward me, but still won’t look at me. “I didn’t really. I just had to change the way I did it. My mom met Max and Max hated the noise, so I started using anything I could to make the beat with a muted sound so I wouldn’t get in trouble. I’d beat on my mattress, books, and my lap. None of it matters anymore though anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

For the first time in weeks, Willow turns her head, finally making eye contact with me and it breaks my heart to see the pain in her eyes.

“Do you not see this? Have you missed why you’re sitting here all the time? AJ, you’ve seen my thigh. There’s no way I could actually do what I wanted to now. Not anymore.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to be a drummer before?”

“Before what?” she snaps. “Before I ruined everyone’s lives? Before I paralyzed a girl and ruined her chances at a normal life, as well as mine? Or before I almost killed my sister?”

“It’s not your fault, Willow,” Sage speaks up, wincing as she talks.

Willow turns to where Sage has turned away from the movie and grimaces. “Tell that to your face. And your lung. And your leg.”

“So you think that’s it? That one bad thing in your life means it’s over?” I ask. I feel my temper rising, not at her, but at the situation. I want to be able to take all the pain away but I can’t, and I hate it.

“It is!” she screams back. “I can’t do the one thing I really wanted to do now.”

“You know, for someone who found a way to get the beat inside her out, even when she had to do it quietly, you gave up on your dreams awfully fast.”

I sit there for a few minutes waiting for her to say something, anything, but she doesn’t. Instead, she closes herself back off and continues to hide in plain sight. I have to get up and walk away because watching her give up so easily isn’t something I can do. Instead, I make a few phone calls, figuring out a way to pull her back from the hell she’s created in her head. I need to make her realize that just because something bad happens doesn’t mean you can’t work around it. I’ve seen proof that just because something bad happens to you doesn’t mean you can’t follow your dreams and get everything you want out of life.

“I swear, AJ, if you’re blindfolding me and bringing me into a dark room to finish off the parts of me the accident missed, I will haunt your ass for life,” Willow mutters under her breath when I pick her up.

“Kid, if I wanted to kill you—” I laugh just thinking about it “—I wouldn’t need to blindfold you and take you to a dark room to do it. Oh, and watch your mouth.”

I shift her a little higher in my arms, being careful not to hurt her leg as I carry her into her bedroom. I wink at Payton when I walk through the doorway and settle Willow on the edge of her bed. She reaches for the blindfold but I push her hand away before settling down on the stool I set up earlier.

Taking a deep breath, I finally start to talk. “So I got you something to help your recovery since you’ve decided you want to wallow and not do your physical therapy.”

“AJ,” she starts, but I cut her off.

“No, listen to me before you start complaining because you haven’t even seen what I got you. I’ve sat here—” I look over at Payton and give her a small smile “—
we’ve
sat here watching you since the accident. You’re giving up, Willow. What happened to the girl you were telling me about the other day on the couch? The one who was hell-bent on getting the beat out of her even when she couldn’t make noise. We all know that she’s somewhere inside you still, maybe you just need something to help pull her out again. So you’re going to wait until we’re out of the room before you take your blindfold off. What you do with what is here is up to you, but I hope you’ll make good use of it because I think it could help.”

By the time I’m finished talking, the tears are leaking down Willow’s face through the blindfold. I stand up, brush them away, and kiss her cheek. Wrapping my arm over Payton’s shoulders, I tuck her into my side and lead her back into the kitchen. I figure this can go two ways: either Willow will work through whatever she’s going through and use the drums, or she’ll dig herself in deeper and they will do nothing but collect dust and take up space.

We know the second she sees the drums because she sobs loud enough to hear it and after that the house is completely silent. Thankfully, Payton’s parents came to take Sage for the night so we could do this. Payton didn’t want her here in case things went badly and I’d consider the sob to be bad. For the next hour, Payton and I sit in the silence until my phone rings and I get asked to come in to the studio.

“How many times am I going to walk into this studio and find you when you’re supposed to be somewhere else?”

Izzy chuckles and rolls her eyes at me. “Somebody has to do your job while you’re out playing house.”

“Hey!” I cry.

“I’m just kidding.” She turns and gives me her full attention, talking to me over the sound of the studio band. “Seriously, though, how’s Willow? No sugarcoating please. I’m tired of being treated like I’m five. She hasn’t been in school and she’s avoiding my messages.”

I scrub my hands over my face and lean back in the chair. “Honestly… honestly, Izzy, she’s not good. The accident messed with her head and she isn’t handling it very well.”

“What do you expect, AJ? She was driving when her sister and some random girl almost died. Not to mention her own injuries on top of all that guilt. And now, the only thing she ever dreamed of is something she won’t be able to do.”

“Who says she won’t be able to play the drums?” Izzy’s eyes narrow at me. “Yeah, she told me. She may have been drugged up on high dose pain meds when she did, but she still told me.”

“Well the lack of muscle in her thigh now might have something to say about it.”

“Izzy, you have to understand that stuff like that will only hold you back if you let it. She just happens to be letting it right now.” She nods and goes back to doing what she was doing for a few minutes while I go through a stack of paperwork a mile high.

“All we’ve ever talked about was working here. All she wanted to do was play and I wanted to do this.” She taps her hand against the counter. “You know what, though, AJ? I’d give up everything here to have Willow’s head back where it needs to be.”

I grab her hand and pull her closer to me, tucking my arm around her back and pointing at the band to get her attention back on them. “Well, as of tonight she has a kit in her room at her disposal. It’s up to her what she does with it.”

I don’t know what I was thinking when I got in the car but I needed some time alone, just a little while. It’s hard to process everything when you have a hurt five year old crammed up your ass, wondering when she can see her daddy. How do I tell her that she can’t? That alongside with Willow tearing up every time she goes into her bedroom is killing me. She wants to play the drums AJ dropped off the other day so badly that even I can feel it, but she won’t let herself touch them. So I dropped the girls off with my parents and took off with no clue where to go. My father kissed my cheek and told me to take my time. My mother, well, she still hasn’t forgiven herself for telling me to not get divorced before the accident, so she didn’t even come out to see me.

That brings me here. Standing on AJ’s porch without a damn clue as to why I came here. I’ve been here for a good five minutes or more. It could definitely be more since I seem to get lost in my thoughts lately, losing track of time completely. I also know I probably shouldn’t be here with my head the way it is since I still have no idea what the feelings I’ve been having for AJ mean. I know that this is probably the worst thing to do, but I couldn’t think of anyone who could pull me from this funk like AJ and for the first time since the accident, I haven’t seen him in days.

I finally reach up, rapping my knuckles against the door a few times. My eyes drop nervously to my feet, suddenly finding the polish on my toes interesting. The door opens and AJ’s feet come into my view but I still can’t look up.

He drops his hand into my line of sight and waves until I’m finally able to drag my eyes away from my feet but I get caught somewhere in the middle. With his arms braced against the top of the door frame he leans his head against his bicep and grins at me. I try to force my eyes to stay on his but I can’t. He’s shirtless and the way he’s standing causes every muscle in his body to be accentuated. The cut of his abs catch my attention and I trace them with my eyes, wanting nothing more than to touch them, and follow the deeply cut V that disappears behind the waistband of his jeans.