Page 19 of To Bring You Back
“About Fitz? Maybe I wouldn’t. But you can’t say what he was thinking or would’ve wanted either. He rarely gave hints about how deeply he struggled. I didn’t connect the dots until after he died, but he dealt with depression the entire time we knew him, and I don’t think the time he succeeded was his first attempt.”
Her hands fell limp to her lap. “What?”
“He crashed his car once in California, and his explanation …” Gannon winced and shook his head.
Adeline remembered that, how he’d strangely waited a day to tell her. He’d claimed he hadn’t wanted to worry her. “He said the turn was sharper than he expected.”
“He drove that road all the time.” Gannon watched her, what he wasn’t saying as loud as any words. “I saw his sister once a few years ago and learned he never had mono either. He disappeared on us because he’d been hospitalized on suicide watch.”
Her blood ran cold. “No.”
It didn’t make sense. They’d known then that a label was interested in signing them. Fitz should’ve been as ecstatic as he’d sounded. She’d never for a moment doubted that illness had kept him from the stage at such a pivotal time.
And it had been an illness.
Just not the one she’d thought.
“He put on an act with all of us. Lied to all of us.” Gannon’s words washed over her like melancholy waves on a calm, cloudy day. One sentence after the other, slowly he carried her old beliefs about Fitz out to sea. “He was especially careful with you. While he was alive, I thought the way he brightened up around you was his way of keeping you from worrying about things like his grades or the band’s prospects. Looking back, he was hiding his mental state most of all. I think he knew you’d read more into his behavior than we thought to.”
Because she should’ve known. Should’ve helped. Her back ached with the effort of keeping herself from doubling over right there in her chair.
Gannon continued, and she listened, though she couldn’t imagine how anything he had to say would alleviate the pain. The remorse. “What we did—especially what I did—piled on more wounds, but in the end, his choice wasn’t based on one or two experiences, as awful as those were. He lost a war that had been raging for years.”
“And that’s how you justify going on to live your life. That he was depressed. That he had it coming.” Two fat tears dropped, one to each cheek. She swiped them away.
His voice gained a gravelly edge. “That’s not what I said or what I meant.” He folded his arms, muscles tense. “This is how you’ve been coping all these years, isn’t it? Penance and blame. Vilifying me and denying your own dreams to feel good about yourself.”
She didn’t feel good, though. Sometimes, when she volunteered for the umpteenth committee or cared for a rescue animal, the pain stopped. But good? No. Because Fitz was dead, and she could never have what she most wanted: a do-over so she could break up with Fitz when they grew apart. That way, she wouldn’t have gotten between Gannon and Fitz. Gannon wouldn’t have fired him. Maybe she would’ve ended up with Gannon or maybe she would’ve lost touch with both men that way, but at least Fitz would be alive and thriving with Awestruck.
He would be alive, right? Thriving? Eventually, someone would’ve learned his secrets and stepped in to help.
Maybe.
But those chances were dead and gone.
So maybe she had vilified Gannon. She was as guilty as he was, but going easy on him was one step toward letting her old feelings come back, and what good would that do? Their past was tainted beyond repair with sins she couldn’t bring herself to confess.
She shook her head and stood. Since he’d plunked his chair in the walkway, blocking her exit, she turned her back on him and set her jaw as she waited for him to go.
A rustle signaled him rising, then he sighed, close in the small space behind the desk.
If she took a step backward, she’d run into him.
Gannon Vaughn, the man she’d thought so much about for so many years, was finally close, but they could never bridge the gap.
“You sought me out that night, not the other way around.” His voice rolled with tightly controlled anger, but that faded as he continued. “I shouldn’t have responded the way I did. For your sake, for Fitz’s, for my own. But it was you, and I was nineteen, and I had liked you for years.”
Guilt squelched the thrill his admission gave her. If only his voice weren’t his strongest feature and she weren’t so close to bawling, she’d stop him there. Or maybe she wouldn’t. If she let him say this out loud, would the burning in her own throat stop?
Until the night he was talking about, she’d had nothing to feel bad about. She and Gannon had gotten to be good friends through Awestruck. Sure, she’d felt occasional moments of attraction toward him, but she was with Fitz, and she didn’t want to be the kind of girl who’d end a good relationship over a fleeting, one-sided crush. When the band left, she and Gannon had mostly lost touch. Still, when she’d heard he was in town that Christmas, she’d been desperate to see him.
That should’ve been her warning that what had started as an innocent connection had grown across time and distance, like a ripple amassing into a tsunami.
“We were striking out in California,” he continued, “and I wanted to feel good about something. None of that justifies my choices, but when you kissed me after that party and wanted the same things I did—”
“Enough.” By now, he’d probably done much worse than sleeping with a bandmate’s fiancée. But for her, that night had been the worst mistake of her life. It’d been so wrong, so incongruent with her beliefs. Gannon claimed to be ashamed of his behavior, but if he’d come to talk about it, he didn’t know the meaning of the word shame. “We’re in a church. The pastor’s right down the hall. I won’t rehash every detail.”
Gannon’s frustration was audible in his exhale. “Fine. Just tell me you haven’t rewritten all of this, that your version doesn’t involve me seducing you or forcing you or asking you to hide it from Fitz.”
