Page 70 of Catching Sparks

His swallow is so thick I can hear it and see the heavy bob of his throat when I glance upward. “My father has never understood that about me. Maybe if he had, he wouldn’t have placed so much of his attention on what I didn’t need him to do for me and focused on my mother instead.”

I tense up, the tidbit of information rattling through my head. Nipping at the inside of my cheek, I hug his arm a little tighter.

“What do you mean?”

He sets the tray of food on the mattress beside his leg. I frown at the oatmeal he hasn’t touched before thinking that it’s probably safer he doesn’t eat it. It looks a bit stale. Okay, a lot stale. At least he drank all the tea.

His eyelids fall shut when he settles back against the headboard and opens and closes his mouth three times before speaking.

“My mom has osteoporosis.”

“I’m not familiar with it.”

He swallows again. “It’s a disease that makes your bones incredibly brittle. When you have it, you grow more prone to breaks and sprains. Most of the time, you don’t even know you have it until you wind up in the ER with a broken bone when you’ve only had a minor accident.”

“That’s terrible, Garrison. I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t in town when my mother hurt herself the first time. At the time, Swift Edge Records was still small. It only had two offices. One in Toronto, and another in LA. The US office was new, hardly open two weeks before I flew down to look at how everything was coming. The team there was experienced in the industry, but it wasn’t enough to see their success on a resume. I wanted to see it with my own eyes.”

“I’d have wanted to do the same thing. Trusting others with something we love as much as our own companies can be incredibly hard. It doesn’t happen overnight,” I tell him, understanding burning bright in my chest.

He lays his palm over my knee and squeezes. His fingers trace the curve of it, making me shiver. “In my parents’ house, my father has a home studio that rivals the one we use for our artists. It takes up a majority of the basement, with soundproof glass and every piece of audio equipment you could ever think of. He always spent more time there than he had anywhere else. Alone or with his choice of artist, it never mattered. Making music is in his blood.”

I turn my face into his shoulder, dragging my lips over the warm skin as I wait for him to continue. My stomach cramps, the hurt in his voice obvious even through the scratchiness.

“You don’t have to tell me all of this right now, Garrison,” I say softly.

“You’re the only one I’ve wanted to tell in a long fucking time.”

My heart swells. “I’m listening, then.”

He inhales a long breath. “My mother called me from the hospital the morning of my second day in LA. She told me she was bringing food down to my father when she lost her footing on the second-last step and fell. Her knees took most of the impact, but it was her wrist that snapped when she caught herself before her face smacked the carpet. Yet, even with this bomb dropped on me that she was hurt, all she cared about was the food splattered all over the walls and staining the white carpet. Then she told me that Dad wasn’t there with her.”

I inhale sharply, and he tightens his grip on my leg, as if he’s using it for stability. For strength.

“She fell and broke her wrist, but he didn’t hear her cries because he was too busy in his studio. That stupid fucking soundproof glass kept him from hearing her when she needed help. And she didn’t want to bother him while he was working, so the stubborn woman drove herself to the hospital, half out of her mind in pain and fear, and then called me only when the nurses threatened to do it themselves if she didn’t. I’d always resented my father for spending more time with his work than us, only paying attention when it involved something he cared about. It had been that way for as long as I can remember. But it had never led to something like this before. Not with Mom.”

“You resent him for what happened to her,” I say on a long exhale.

“I do. My mom was in the hospital for five hours before my aunt had shown up to take her home. When she got back, he hadn’t even noticed that she was gone in the first place. I was already on a flight home, and once I got back . . . we fought hard. If it weren’t for my mom begging us to stop, I would have thrown him into his precious soundproof glass. Our relationship was never great, but it wasn’t this bad. After that, there was nothing left of one at all.”

“And your mom? How is she with all of this? You’ve forgiven her for not asking your dad for help?”

This is worse than what I was expecting to learn about Garrison and Reggie. I thought it was some petty fight between two stubborn men that led to their broken relationship. But hearing that there’s a genuine reason behind it? That everyone has assumed this was all Garrison’s fault and that Reggie was in the clear the entire time? Fuck, my stomach is in knots.

There’s no perfect solution here. Everyone is at fault. I’m not too biased to recognize that. But Garrison’s feelings are also valid regardless. They are so fucking valid.

“She had my forgiveness the moment she called me from the hospital. Everything just spiralled after we learned she had osteoporosis. I was terrified because what happened to her could have been so much worse than a broken wrist. And he just didn’t care enough to stop his work anytime that day to even check on her just once?” He spits the question, his anger and hurt and betrayal seeping through every word.

“Does anyone else know? About what happened and how it’s made you feel?”

“Outside of my parents, no. And even then, my father is more prideful than he lets on. He thinks he’s made up for what he did, but he hasn’t. Spending a few nights a week with his wife instead of working or fiddling with his soundboard doesn’t make up for the years he put us both on the back burner. The years he pissed away working that he could have been using to live life with his wife doing everything she can no longer do. I don’t care if he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. He was.”

“I’m not arguing with you on that, Garrison. I understand where you’re coming from. There’s nothing wrong with feeling hurt by what happened. Anyone who tells you otherwise isn’t worth sharing this with in the first place. If anything like that happened to my mom on my dad’s watch, I’d have kicked his ass to high heaven.”

A hard laugh cuts through the room before trickling off. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me for listening.”

---