Page 33 of Fractured Rhythm

“Can I get you guys another round?” the waitress popped up out of nowhere and asked.

“No. I’m good. Bash?” I asked. I hadn’t seen him without a half-full glass of whiskey all night. Actually, how drunk was he? Was everything he said tonight booze-induced? This wasn’t the time or place for this conversation, but I needed answers.

“No, nothing for me,” Bash said.

“How drunk are you?” I asked.

“What?”

“How drunk are you? Because you just dropped a bomb on me and I want to make sure this is real and not some whiskey-laden fantasy. You’ve been drinking a lot tonight.”

“I’m not drunk, Cas. And I know my limits,” he said.

“Jamie used to say the same thing.” The words were out before I could stop them and I bit back the pain.

“I’m not Jamie, Cas. I promise,” he said, taking my hand, but I pulled free.

“Please explain how you never cheated. You told me you kissed the girl from those pictures. Then you broke up with me.”

My heart raced as I waited for him to respond.

“I didn’t deserve you. You’d just started college, and it was important to you to get out of your house. The band was taking off, and I was never around. Long distance rarely works.”

He was rambling, and I was trying to focus on what the hell he was telling me.

“No. Wait. There were pictures of that girl all over you. She was kissing you, crawling all over your lap.”

“She tried to kiss me, and I pushed her away immediately. Nothing happened. You can ask anyone.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” It came out like a shout, and a few people turned to look at us.

“Cas. That’s not everything.”

“Oh, please, tell me more, Bash, because I’m pretty sure you let me believe that you cheated on me and then broke up with me because you wanted me to go to college. Because long distance was hard and we couldn’t have figured it out. Because we’d been friends long before we started hooking up and that meant nothing to you.”

He reached for my hand, but I leaned back, away from him.

“You don’t get to touch me right now,” I bit out.

“Cassie. That’s not all of it. Yes, I decided to end it. I let you believe that I’d cheated because it was easier that way.”

“Easier? No, that’s a coward’s way out. Why couldn’t you have said, ‘let’s take a break,’ or god forbid, ‘let’s see if we can make this work’? You took that decision away from me.”

He sighed heavily, and I resisted the urge to punch him in the face. Maybe I should have gotten Holly up here since she kept offering to kick his ass.

“I never wanted you to find out this way, but Jamie knew about us.”

“How? He never said a word to me.”

“I don’t know how he found out, but he confronted me the day before you saw those pictures. He told me you were going places. You were getting out. Away from your parents. Away from him. I had to let you go so you could live your life.”

“Are you serious?” I gasped. “He never said a damn word to me about that. About you.”

“I hated hurting you, but I’ve seen so many people follow around their musician boyfriends and girlfriends. It rarely works out, and then they end up resenting each other. I wasn’t going to hold you back.”

“So you gave in to my brother, and instead of resenting you, you let me hate you for years. Let me think that I wasn’t enough for a big rock star like you. I was just your hometown girlfriend, the kid that tagged along behind you and my brother.”

He grabbed my hand before I could move away, his grip tight as his eyes blazed. My breath caught in my throat, a mixture of pain, shock, and anger rolling around inside of me. My brother had a hand in this, and knowing I couldn’t yell at him for it infuriated me and broke my heart. How fucking dare they do this?

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