Page 132 of Sing For Me

I whirl on him. “Yeah, and do you have any idea what that felt like for me? To see her getting worse and worse, every damn day? To wake up in the middle of the night and hear her on the phone with some asshole dealer? To find the bed empty in the morning and no idea where the hell she was? To wonder, all the time, if this was going to be the day she didn’t make it home?”

I’m breathing so heavily it’s a wonder I can get the words out. I want to rip the tired, sad expression off his face. Want to stomp into that music room and start ripping it all apart, every guitar, every platinum record he has hanging on the walls.

“Do you have any idea,” I gasp out, my voice breaking, “what it was like to know that I couldn’t help her? To know that she waschoosingthat shit over me?”

“Actually, Will, I do,” he says, his voice very soft. “Because that’s exactly what my mother did. She chose drugs over her family. And that’s something that I, and all of your uncles, have had to deal with our entire lives.”

Just like that, all of the fight goes out of me, leaving me weak and slumped and gasping for air.

It’s not a secret, what he just told me. I’ve always known that my grandmother—not Ruby but my real grandmother, a woman I never even met—had left her husband and children because she refused to get help for her addiction. My dad and my uncles were always open about that, about what it did to them, how much it hurt, how much it fucked them up.

But I somehow never connected what happened to them with what happened to Skye. I’ve been so pissed off and so hurt and so desperate for someone to blame that I never stopped to think how much I actually had in common with the men I condemned for helping to bring about her death.

“Dad…” I whisper, the word broken, and I feel him wrap an arm around my shoulder.

I’m not someone who cries. I haven’t let myself shed a single tear since the day I found out Skye had OD’d. It felt like a disservice to her, like I’d be tarnishing her memory somehow if I allowed myself to show that kind of emotion over anything less than the utter agony of losing her.

But I’m pretty sure I’m going to cry now.

“It’s my fucking fault,” I mutter, rubbing my hands over my eyes. “It’s my fault, Dad.”

His arm gets tighter. “No, it’s not, Will.”

“It is! All this time I’ve been blaming you guys because I couldn’t face what I did.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m the one who found her!” I yell. “I was with Reed and Wyatt that night we found her playing in that shitty bar. You weren’t even there!” I take in a deep, gasping breath. Why does it feel like my lungs are going to explode? “I’m the one who pushed you guys to sign her. I’m the one who insisted she could be the next big thing.”

“Because she was good, Will. She was really, really good. We all could see it. We just didn’t realize she was sick.”

“Ishould have realized she was sick!” I squeeze my eyes shut. “She was my girlfriend. I was supposed to take care of her! I was supposed to be the person who kept her safe and I…I couldn’t…I…” It’s really a struggle to speak now, wet heat building behind my eyes, clogging my throat. “I couldn’t help her.”

My dad’s sigh is deep and knowing and filled with all the pain of a child who grew to know far too much about addiction and loss. “That’s the shitty thing about life, Will. You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t.”

The first tear slips out and I brush it away, my hands rough and impatient. His strong arm somehow gets even tighter around my shoulders. “It’s okay, Will.”

“It’s not,” I croak out.

“Itis. You can cry, Son. You can scream at me. You can hit me. You can break shit. You can do whatever you need to do. I’m still going to be standing right here.”

The dam finally breaks and hot tears scald my cheeks. It doesn’t matter how hard I try to hold them back, how hard I try to keep a handle on things, I just can’t do it. Because Skye is dead and I’ll never know if there’s something I could have done differently to help her. And I’ve been so angry and scared and guilty about it that I’ve spent years pushing away four of the most important people in my life.

And a few hours ago, I pushed away the woman I love more than I ever thought I could love anyone again. And I have no idea if I’ll ever be able to make that right.

“You know what I think about sometimes?” my dad asks, and I wonder how in the hell he’s managing to keep his voice so steady when it feels like the entire world is falling apart around me. “I think about how Silas is the same age you were when you and Reed found Skye in that dive bar.”

That brings me up short.

“You always acted older than your age,” he continues. “You were always taking care of your siblings and your cousins. Always wanting to be one of the guys with Wyatt, even with me and your uncles. You were so fucking talented, too,” he lets out a short, sad laugh. “It was easy to let ourselves think you were a hell of a lot more grown up than you really were.”

I open my mouth to argue but I have no idea what to say to that.

My dad isn’t finished. “But then I look at Silas. And I think about how he’s sixteen. And he’s a great kid—smart and funny and loyal and talented and way kinder than I’ve ever been in my life. But he’s akid, Will. You would never expect him to be able to hold the weight of the world on his shoulders. You would never expect him to be able to save a sick girl who had no desire to be saved. That wouldn’t be fair, and you know it.” He’s quiet for a beat. “So why in the hell do you expect it from yourself?”

“Because I—”

He doesn’t let me cut in. “You were sixteen when you met Skye, Will, and she was already using. Being thrust into this industry didn’t help. And I wish to God,” his voice cracks and he has to swallow several times before he can continue. “I wish to God I would have realized what was happening sooner. That we would have looked into her family more before signing her, realized how shitty and manipulative her parents were, figured out how they were going to use her.”