Page 86 of Sweet Ache (Driven 6)
I oblige without hesitation. I start the car, merge onto the highway, and drive to no set destination as he sits in absolute silence beside me, hands gripping his thighs and eyes fixated on the world beyond the windows.
I squeeze the wheel beneath my hands to prevent myself from reaching out and grabbing one of his to give him some kind of comfort. My mind spins, thinking of all of the things every son would want his parents to be proud of and knowing that he’s had none of this. He’s been the rock, the support, the everything for himself, and I know that what I told him in the car on the way to the facility holds true. Every man has his breaking point, and his absolute silence makes me fear that he just reached his.
Chapter 27
HAWKIN
My arms scream and sweat runs down my chest. I have no fucking clue how long I’ve been banging on the drums, but I know that a part of me feels a little more whole while the rest of me feels a lot more empty.
The beat bangs in my ears like my dad’s words to me over and over and over. And as fucked up as my head is right now, all I can think about is how wrong he was. And how absolutely right he was. It makes no fucking sense though. So I pound a little bit harder, try to lose myself in the rhythm I can’t find to try to cover up the pain some when all I want to do is drown in it.
He told me love would make me weak, would kill me just like it did him. Well, I loved him, I loved my mom and both of them have brought me to my knees today with their lies and made me weaker than I’ve ever felt in my life.
How’s that for fucking irony?
Just when I’m ready to take a chance and step out of the goddamn box he put me in, I feel like I’m blindsided by the truth that I’m just as weak as he was. My mom just proved that by knocking me to my knees with the hidden secrets she’s kept locked in her erratic mind. The one woman I’ve loved … just made me weak. So these fucking drums are taking the punishment I’d love to throw his way right now.
When my mom screamed those words to me—the hatred, the accusations, the hurt—I swear that the image of the aftermath of my dad pulling the trigger flashed in my mind. But along with the old ones etched there came new memories. Ones so bright and powerful, they knocked the air from my lungs and no matter how hard I pushed them away, they just kept coming.
In that split second of time, I tried to rationalize that it was the Alzheimer’s fabricating lies but deep down, I knew they were true. It was almost like hearing those words opened my subconscious, allowed me to remember details that the fog of his suicide repressed: the crammed suitcase on my parents’ bed, my mom’s red-rimmed eyes that morning she’d blamed on allergies, the continual guilt my mom carried like a badge before she transferred it unknowingly to me.
The images spin out of control. They are so vague and yet are so fucking vivid at the same time. I can’t breathe. I want to throw up. I want to scream. To cry. To slide under the haze of alcohol and numb myself. To fade away for a bit.
Must run in the family.
The thought is distracting enough that my arms give out and the drumsticks slip from my hands to the floor below with a clatter. I grit my teeth and clench my fists and yet don’t even have the fight in me to want to throw a goddamn punch in the air.
I know she’s there, sitting on the couch she hasn’t moved from since she brought me home to bang on Giz’s drums. Something about the gesture, the fact that she remembered I said that’s what I do when I can’t process life, breaks momentarily through the haze of my confusion.
“I’m sorry I brought you there today, that you had to see that … but I wanted you to know.” The words are out of my mouth so softly that she shouldn’t hear them and yet I know she does because I hear her shifting on the couch. She must be wondering what the fuck to do, but truth be told, I don’t even know. I mean, who the hell am I? A man who has lived another man’s principles his whole life only to find out they were a lie?
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to stay or be alone….” Quin’s quiet voice pulls me from the goddamn tornado of incoherency in my head and heart. I can hear the hesitancy in her voice but I don’t have it in me to look at her just yet because I’m afraid if I do she’s going to see more of me than I can through this fog of confusion. Silence suffocates the room, both of us unsure of what step to take next.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Do I want to talk to her about it? Fuck no. How do I explain to her that the rug’s been yanked so fucking hard out from under my feet that I don’t even know where to land? Between punching Hunter and now this, the goddamn ground has shifted so much I think it’s going to take a long fucking time for it to feel steady
again.
But at the same time, I bite back all of the words on my tongue that want to come tumbling out because for the first time in forever, someone besides Hunter was there, someone knows what I go through to an extent. And as fucking cruel as it was for me to throw her into my fucked-up situation, I feel a tinge of relief for having her there.
“I don’t even know what to say.” I shake my head back and forth as I pick up my shirt beside me and scrub it over my face to buy myself time. When I lower my shirt, I raise my eyes to meet hers, and I don’t know what I expected when I look at her but what I see causes my throat to burn. I see compassion instead of disgust, acceptance in lieu of judgment, pride not shame, and the combination of them all is more than I can process in my already overloaded system.
Her quiet empathy makes me feel things that are wrong to feel right now in the midst of me questioning everything about myself. And yet it’s still there. That need to pull her against me and just cling to her, to have someone be there when before I would have probably pushed her so goddamn hard the other way.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I know, it’s just … fuck …” I run my hand back through my hair again and don’t know how to explain the emotions inside me. Almost like a cargo truck has turned on its side and all of this has come spilling out all over the place. “The only way I can explain it is like this. What if my dad told me that day that the sky was green? That no matter what anyone said, he was right and they were wrong. So I’ve spent my whole life believing that the sky is green. Fighting against the tide to prove otherwise, wearing blinders to the obvious. Would stake my life on the claim. And then one day someone ripped the blinders off for me to find that this whole time, my entire life, I’ve lived fighting to believe something, love a certain way, and it’s fucking wrong. The sky is really fucking blue.”
Tears well in her eyes as she nods solemnly to tell me she understands what I’m saying although I know she has no fucking clue. No one does.
“I don’t know which way is up right now, what to believe anymore.” I don’t want to talk about anything and yet I keep doing just that.
“Well, everyone’s version of which way is up is different so don’t try to figure that out just yet. Who cares if you’re sideways for a bit? That’s allowed, Hawke, and perfectly understandable.”
I squeeze my eyes shut momentarily. Memories flicker and flame through my mind. The four of us happy. That horrible day, the sound of the gunshot, the blood, the smell, the scream that never came frozen in my throat forever. The three of us mourning. Hunter and me trying to survive as our mom held on to the thin thread holding her to reality. Losing my twin bit by bit. Fighting like hell to keep it all together, protect them, provide for them. The times I’d start to feel that twinge of something in my gut for a woman only to shove her away because she just might make me love her. How hard I fought against so many things, how alone I’ve felt … and it was all a lie.
Every fucking thing.
