Page 68 of Broken Chorus

“Then I’m getting Kelly to come here so I can come to you,” Hawk declared. “That’s non-negotiable. Please tell me you don’t intend to stay at your grandparents’ place?”

“No, was gonna see about a room at the B and B, only I gotta go tell them first, I guess. I don’t wanna go back there again today. I didn’t even make it through the door before my Aunt started in about how I looked and my tats and our music and…why the fuck did she leave me with them? She had to know they wouldn’t want me anymore than she did.”

“Did you get to ask her that, or any of the questions you’ve clung to for all these years?”

“She didn’t know me. Even when I told her who I was, her mind was just….not really there. All she said was that she’d lostme like she’d lost Erik. I guess he’s my father, but there was never a name under father on my birth certificate.”

“I know,” Hawk said, his heart breaking for Aaron right now.

He sounded so lost and devastated that Hawk could hear the ragged way he was breathing and the hitching stammers that punctuated every words. He was in absolutely no condition to do anything, let along look out for himself, which was terrifying. He knew Aaron, which meant he knew how he processed things, and he was one liquor store away from completely undoing all the progress he’d made in rehab. As much as Hawk wanted him to just go to the B and B and wait to do anything else until Hawk was with him, right now, he didn’t even want him to get into whatever vehicle he’d rented.

“I don’t want to tell them she’s dead,” Aaron moaned. “I’ll just say something else they don’t like and Pop-Pop will prolly throw something heavier than a glass this time and I really wanted to throw it back and yell at him ‘cause why’s he gotta be hurting me all the time. I don’t mean to be bad.”

Shit.

Not only was Aaron spiraling, but he was slipping out of this reality and into some past moment that he and Kelly had always suspected but never been able to get him to confirm.

“You’re not bad,” Hawk said, struggling to keep his own tears at bay now. “You just wanted to follow your heart and be true to yourself.”

“And look where it got me!” Aaron spat. “I got me hated. It made me a disappointment. How can you say I wasn’t bad! She left me and never looked back. People don’t do that to good kids, they do it to kids that they can’t love!”

The wounded whimper he let out tore at Hawk’s heart. Never in his life had he felt this impotent or useless. How the hell was he supposed to get Kelly moving when he needed to keep Aaron on the phone and make sure he was going to stay safe?

His laptop.

Hurrying down the hall, grateful not to hear the sounds of children stirring, he fumbled to get the door to the music room open and made a beeline for the laptop the second he was in the room.

Answer.

Answer.

Answer.

Dammit.

He glared at the screen, trying to will Kelly to answer the annoying ass messenger ringtone while steadily speaking to Aaron, wishing he could send him to the damned hospital chapel where there might be someone who would sit with him, but his grandparents had made even that impossible.

“Aaron, where in the hospital are you right now?”

“Outside on a bench, smoking and trying to figure out what to say to my grandparents and my aunt,” Aaron answered. “Though what’s the point? They didn’t expect her to make it more than a few days, said she’d rotted herself from the inside out and I should be grateful she’d left me with god-fearing people who made sure I had everything I needed, only they didn’t. I needed them to love me, but I could never be good enough to earn it.”

“Children should never be made to earn love,” Hawk said as he hit the icon beside Kelly’s name again and snarled as it just rung and rung.

Wasn’t his god damned messenger linked to his phone?

He glanced at the clock and realized that the band was probably rehearsing, which meant he might have it ondo not disturband wouldn’t look at it until they took a break. Motherfucking shit!

He could hear Aaron’s choppy breathing and the way it only paused when he took a drag.

“I need to get it over with and tell them,” Aaron said. “They can organize whatever the hell they want and tell me where to be and how much it cost, but I just wanna get this over with. I don’t even wanna think about why she didn’t put Erik’s name on my birth certificate or give me to him if she didn’t wanna keep me, because the way she said his name when she thought I was him, there was more love and more longing there than I know what to do with right now ‘cause that would mean thinking about why she couldn’t feel that way about me.”

“Aaron, I think you need to breathe and wait before you go over there, okay, get yourself settled down first before you get behind the wheel. You don’t want to wind up in a ditch.”

“Why not? At least I’ve got the means to afford that bill too, unlike all the times I went and my grandparents, who love reminding me about all that shit, had to pay for whatever ways I’d fucked myself up.”

“Because I don’t want you to, okay,” Hawk said. “That’s why not. Don’t do something that might get you hurt just to spite them. They aren’t worth it. You are and not for the damn music either, but because I love you and I need you safe. Can you sit there and stay safe for me, please?”

“You shouldn’t,” Aaron said, voice low and hollow.

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