Page 93 of Next Time I Fall (Excess All Areas 2)

“Are you prepared for today?” she asked.

“I am. We get to start on ‘And Kiss Me’ and I’m looking forward to hearing it with all the instruments instead of just me and my guitar.”

“I can’t wait to hear it.”

“You have to stay out of the studio while I’m working in it, though, because I want to surprise you with the finished song.”

Cerys pouted. “Please. Your guitar is right there.”

“Put the lips away, sunshine. You know I’ll fold. Don’t make me.” He leaned forward and kissed her. “Let me surprise you.”

“Okay. But it’s like waiting for Christmas.”

Three hours later, with her stomach still digesting her huge breakfast, she headed to the studio kitchen to refill her water bottle. Matt stood with his back to her, making a coffee.

“How do you feel the morning is going?” she asked.

Matt grabbed his cup and leaned back against the counter, ankles crossed over each other. It was a position she’d seen Jase in many times before. They were so similar, yet not. They had the same floppy black hair, but Matt kept his shorter than Jase’s curls. They both had the same dark scruff, but Matt’s face was more angular, his jaw a little sharper, than Jase’s handsome features.

“I think it’s the best we’ve ever sounded. Everything about what we’re laying down sounds true to us. What do you think?”

Cerys thought for a moment. “I agree. I like the density of a second guitar with Jase playing. Gives a roundness to the song. I think Alex is a goddamn genius when it comes to layering sound. I feel like ‘Next Time I Fall’ might need paring back down a little, but—”

“Thank you,” Matt said quickly. His eyes flitted down the corridor, then returned to her. “For bringing Jase back to us.”

There was such sincerity to his words that she viscerally felt them. “Jase is the one who is doing all the work.”

Matt looked down at his coffee mug. “No. Cerys. It’s generous of you to say it’s all him, but the thing is, we’ve tried. We’ve tried to reach him. And I think that somewhere along the way, we all gave up. Perhaps not Nan. But I think we all began to write him off. I figured we’d be split by the end of the year. And by split, I mean Jase would be gone and we’d have a new lead singer, or I’d be singing. Whatever the record label would allow.” He placed his mug on the counter and walked closer to her. “How much did he tell you? About me and him?”

“If you are talking your childhood and about Izabel, he told me everything.”

Matt’s shoulders sagged. She wasn’t sure what to read into it. Relief. Sorrow. “I felt guilty for loving her, you know. When she told me that for Jase it was more than ... shit, I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

“Do you feel the need to make sure I know your side of the story? Because at the end of the day, it’s not really my business.”

“No. It’s not that. It’s just ... fuck. I’ve always come out on top by any normal scale people judge this shit on. Smarter because I passed more exams with better grades. More successful, because I write songs and play and own our catalogue. And I had Iz. And I felt guilty as fuck because of it.”

Matt’s eyes met hers, and while he was an attractive man, they didn’t cause her stomach to flip. “Do you think you’re better than him because of all that?”

“No.” Matt shook his head. “Of course not. I’ve thought many things about him, but none of them were about being better than him in some way. But I’ll be honest and say I did think he was going to ruin something I’d spent most of my adult life trying to build, and I hated him for that.”

“This feels like a conversation you should be having with him, Matt.”

“We’re trying to move on as a band. And honestly, this,” he said, pointing in the direction of the studio, “is more than I could have wished for. I don’t want to say anything else that might disturb the fragile peace we have in place now.”

Cerys smiled softly. “You and your brother are very much alike. Did you know that?”

“We are?”

“Confident, yet not. Filled with internal conflict, yet conflict averse.”

Matt scoffed. “We fight all the time.”

“Yeah, but about the wrong stuff. You fight about set lists, and pacing, and bookings, and tour dates, and whatever else the million fights that have appeared online are about. Fighting about that stuff was easy. It gave you an outlet for the anger. You could yell and pound on each other and then fix the set list or change the bookings. Whatever it was. And that anger you both felt was temporarily dissipated. But it never went away. You couldn’t escape it because you hadn’t dealt with the real reasons you were angry. For Jase, it was feeling alone and separate from you and your cousins for all those years. Processing all those things that happened to only him. And your anger is what you just said. It’s Izabel, and how he treated something you were tenderly, and with dedication, trying to build. He stomped all over the sandcastles you’d built. You need to get angry with each other about that and let all the hurt out now, or it’s just going to fester.”

Matt sighed. “Are you like this with him?”

“Yeah, she is.” Jase came to stand next to her and threw his arm over Cerys’s shoulder. “Did she talk to you about waves yet?”

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