Page 3 of Next Time I Fall (Excess All Areas 2)

Matt stood and grabbed Jase’s collar across the table. “Don’t fucking speak to her like that.”

“Let him go, Matt.” Nan’s hands pressed on their chests, Jase’s own rising and falling at a rapid rate as he glared at his brother.

“When you said one of us would crack, Nan. Was this what you had in mind?”

“No.” Rhoda sighed and coughed, and Jase was immediately reminded of her age. “It wasn’t. You’re right. You can go.”

Her gaze met his. Not once in all of his years had she told him he could go. He looked over at Matt, who had his arm around Izabel, whispering something in her ear while she stared, stricken, at her plate.

Jase pushed the chair back and stood. The half-eaten meal sat on his plate, the one made with care by his nan. The one that told him how much she loved him.

Fuck.

Pain speared through him as surely as a pickaxe to his spine.

He grabbed his coat from the back of the sofa and was in the middle of zipping it up when he felt a hand on his shoulder. His nan held four fairy cakes with his initial on them that she’d hastily thrown into a sandwich bag.

He swallowed deeply.

“I love you, Nan. I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“I know you do, Jase. And I love you too.” She placed her papery-skinned hand on his cheek. “Don’t ruin this for yourself. It’s the chance of a lifetime, and you’ll have a lifetime of regret if you blow it.”

Jase nodded, even though his brain couldn’t process the tangled web of guilt, shame, and anger he felt. He took his nan’s hand and kissed the back of it. “Look after yourself, Nan.”

“You too, lad. You too.”

He stepped out onto the street and heard the door click shut.

And he was on his own again.

* * *

Cerys Hughes-Bexter grabbed her bag from the passenger side of her car, a silver Mercedes her father had loaned for her three months stay. Her hands still shook from the near miss she’d had turning into the car park, no, the parking lot, of his Detroit recording studio.

It was funny how a man she barely knew would let her borrow such a flashy car when he’d still not invited her over to his home.

Her heart raced after driving on the wrong side. Learning to drive on the small Welsh town of Conwy’s narrow roads was no preparation for multilane highways twice the size of British motorways. Here, she was one look right, instead of left, away from causing an accident.

“It’s only been four weeks,” she muttered to herself.

Four weeks since, with her mother’s blessing, she’d travelled across an ocean to learn from a father who’d abandoned her. Four weeks since she’d moved into the catered apartment he’d provided, on the grounds that staying with him would be more than he was ready for.

Siân Hughes had been pragmatic. No one could help Cerys with her career like her father could. Siân had been nineteen when thirty-year-old Jimmy Bexter had hired her to do backing vocals for a track he was producing in London. Her mother had spoken about the beginning of their relationship fondly. About the romance of it. The secret trysts in a cosy bed and breakfast in Ironbridge Gorge. A wild weekend in Barcelona involving way too much sangria. The romance of a lazy long weekend in Lisbon where they’d wandered the quaint streets, pausing here and there for glasses of ruby Port and endlesspetiscos.

Until two lines on a pregnancy test changed everything.

Jimmy had been furious. His plans for a lavish happily ever after stained with nappies and bottles. It wasn’t the life he wanted. And so, he’d left. Gone back to Detroit. Beyond the monthly cheques that had always been more generous than required, they’d never had any communication.

Until Cerys had written to him with her dilemma. She’d been turned down for a bank loan to start her own studio. Not enough experience, they said. Not enough credible references. And while some might get on their moral high horse about how they’d prefer to make it on their own, Cerys was very much of the opinion that if her father could boost her up the career ladder and save her a couple of years grunting it at the bottom, it was the least he could do for her. The fact his well-known name could make her loan application sparkle was the cherry on top.

It wasn’t like she was going to him empty handed.

She’d studied music for four years at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, specialising in keyboard. Two years of working as a part-time and freelance concert pianist—filling in with slots in musical theatre she’d found boring—had nearly killed her soul. And after a particularly rough year where concert attendance was down and small companies closed, she had to look for work beyond playing.

She’d taken music production courses as part of her degree, so applied for a temporary position in a recording studio where she realised she not only loved the process but was intuitively good at it. So, she’d gone to the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London to do her master’s in creative music production. But getting a job in the space was competitive. And she needed better work experience.

When she’d called the studio and asked for her father, she’d been told he was in the studio and would get back to her. It had taken nineteen days and four more calls from her to get him to respond.

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