Page 60 of Next Time I Fall (Excess All Areas 2)

He needed to know Matt was okay.

“Jase,” Ben said as he walked over and hugged him. “Do you feel that way about all of us? Because I’m so fucking sorry, mate.”

Jase shrugged. “Yeah. I do. I know, logically, that’s unfair of me. You were all kids too. But I’d come home some weekends after coughing blood at Dad’s, and you’d all had a fucking amazing time. Down at the park, going to the cinema. Even fucking bowling. I remember how you were all complaining how you wished you’d gone to the footie, and I would have given anything to have gone bowling with you instead of going to my dad’s, getting a slap around the head every time he felt like it.”

Luke remained still, but his body language had changed, his arms no longer folded, the sneer gone. It was a step. It was enough.

He looked to Alex and Ben. “You sort of understand. That feeling of relief when your dad went back to the rigs, the relief you feel when you know he’s on his way out of Manchester. I felt that every other week I had to go stay with him. I’d start gearing up to go to his house on a Wednesday. Dread would creep in on Thursday. I’d probably puke on a Friday. Then not sleep for two nights, keeping one eye open, waiting for him to get drunk or beat me up for no reason. Then Sunday, I’d feel the relief, that home was in sight. Constantly riding that roller coaster of feelings. And Dad threatening to contest Nan keeping me if I breathed a word of it. Said if I told her, she’d fight him for custody and lose because it was my word against his, and he was my father. She didn’t have legal rights to keep me, and he only let her because it was convenient. I knew I couldn’t tell her. And I was fucking six, trying to make sense of why.”

He let out another breath. Letting the words leave his body, taking some of the buried emotions with them.

Matt stood, and without looking at him, crashed through the double doors.

Normally, he’d let him go.

Normally, he’d shout out, call him a pussy or some shit. Perhaps throw a chair in the direction he’d just left. Instead, he followed him. Jase felt Cerys’s concerned gaze as he passed her in the hallway. He gave her hand a quick squeeze, but he kept his eyes on his brother who stepped outside into a snowstorm so violent, it matched the churning in his gut.

Matt turned abruptly. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he yelled.

Jase felt the anguish on Matt’s face like a slap to his own. “Because one word and I’d have been taken from Nan. From you.”

“No. You wouldn’t. We’d have figured it out. Nan would have found Mum.”

“I was six, Matt. Six. He threatened to remove me from the only place I actually felt safe in the world if I told anyone. Would you have risked telling? Two days didn’t seem so bad. It felt like a fucking good deal just to be able to stay with you all for the other twelve days. And yet, I hated you all for it. I hated you, especially. Like, how many times did I beg you to switch bunks? Every other week, and you always said no. You want to know why I asked? Because climbing to the top bunk on a Sunday with bruises was torture. But what could I say?”

Matt shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at the snow.

Jase shivered, and it wasn’t just the cold searing through him. The thought struck him suddenly that he’d ripped a tear in the fabric of his family, created a schism that wouldn’t close. But bridges could be built over it. At least, he hoped they could.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to give Izabel a call. I owe her an apology.”

Matt looked up at that. “I don’t know what the fuck to say to all this. Beyond I’m really fucking sorry.”

“Why? You didn’t beat the shit out of me. You didn’t know. And you couldn’t stop it.”

Matt looked up at the sky and blew out a breath. “I think I did know, though. We couldn’t share a room that small and not know. I tried to convince myself that the bruises were just all the football and rugby Nan and school had us play, but I think I knew. And I’m really fucking ashamed that I did nothing.”

Jase couldn’t figure out whether the painful twist in his heart was a good thing or a bad thing. “We can’t undo it. It’s my truth. It is what it is. I’ve just got to stand in it and step forward.”

Matt grabbed Jase and pulled him into a hug. He couldn’t remember the last time it had happened. “I’m really fucking sorry.”

Jase held on to his brother for a moment. “This isn’t fixed. It’s going to take a lot of work.”

“What can I do to help?”

“I don’t know. I want to make it right with the band. I want to contribute more. Write maybe, play definitely.”

“You said you weren’t confident playing.”

Jase huffed. “Yeah, well, you wanted us to be a trio, and I knew how much it meant to Ben to be in the band, so ...”

Matt stepped back and looked at Jase as if meeting a stranger for the first time. “This is a head fuck.”

“Yeah. It’s been a long fucking four days.”

“Cerys?”

“Cerys.”

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