Page 97 of Worlds Collide

“For what?”Trent asks, sounding confused as hell.

“For that night. Mom was celebrating her big win, and I kept bugging Birdie. In my head—and my mom tried to discourage this thought and I’m working on unlearning it—but in my head everything that happened that night was my fault.”

“But you were just a kid, mate. You were five?”

“Seven,”Wolf corrects him and takes another deep breath.“And I do know that. Just a few weeks ago my therapist asked me if a seven-year-old kid came up to me and said the same thing, would I blame that kid?”

“Ah,”Ed pipes in. “You wouldn’t. ’Cause you’re not a dickhead.”

“I’d like to think so,”Wolf says with a tiny chuckle.“There’s also genetics to consider. All my adult life I’ve been scared shitless that I’m like my dad, and alcohol was just another way for me to prove to myself that I was. I’d like to think I do have some of my dad’s qualities. We can say a lot of things about him, but one thingthat will always be true is that he was smart as hell. He had an eye for talent, and he knew how to develop it.”

My jaw is on the floor with how transparent he’s being. I never thought Wolf would do something like this.

“I’m biased there, as you know,”Trent says, sounding rueful.

“Exactly. You and Sam were both discovered by him, and though you didn’t succeed only thanks to him?—”

“He was the springboard for us, and we met thanks to him,”Ed interrupts again.

“You did. The man was mean as fuck when he’d drunk a few and was in a foul mood at home, but I bet you never saw that side of him.”

“Never,”Ed confirms.“In the end, maybe a little, but he helped so much when we got pregnant. He helped more than anyone will ever know. But...”

“But he also did something unforgivable. At least in my mother’s eyes it was unforgivable.”Wolf finishes Ed’s statement.

“Not in yours?”Ed asks incredulously.

“It’s starting to sink in, finally, that if my mother hadn’t killed him that night, he probably would’ve killed all of us. I’m finally starting to accept that.”

“I hope it helps you get rid of that stupid, unhelpful, and undeserved guilt, mate.”

“Thanks, now let’s talk about something different.”

“Okay, who’s your favorite singer?”Ed asks without missing a beat.

“I can honestly say that my favorite singer is Birdie. Of course, I’m biased, and I know he doesn’t have the best voice in the world. Neither of us do, we’re very aware of it, but Hawk has a way of translating emotion into song that’s very powerful to me. We wererecording a song, I think about five years ago, and it was a sad song, about feeling unloved.”

“My Cross To Bear,”Ed throws out there.

“Yeah, the title track. We didn’t have the whole song written yet, but he’d had this melody stuck in his head for so long he would just hum to it, and the things we were trying to find the words to say, which we felt were just out of our grasp, he could just hum to them and I would understand what he wanted to say.”

I keep listeningfor the whole hour but I can’t stop thinking about the way Wolf talked about his mom, his dad, and about Hawk. He sounds so damn happy.

So... liberated? I don’t know if that’s the right way to think about it, but maybe being out there by himself is what’s best for him.

In just less than two months he’s supposed to move here where he was haunted by his past?

Maybe that’s not what’s best for him. MaybeI’mnot what’s best. Fuck, if that’s the case, then?—

Two sharp knocks sound on the door of my apartment and my heart gets lodged in my throat from the scare. I was so engrossed in my own head that I even stopped listening to the podcast.

“Coming!” I shout and scramble to pause the episode, then walk quickly to the door. It’s probably the doorman, he was supposed to bring Gracie some?—

“Hey, little rich boy.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

WOLF

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