Page 94 of Next Time I Fall (Excess All Areas 2)

Matt stared at Jase warily, but she could feel Jase’s body was relaxed against hers. “Waves?”

“I’m thinking Matt is more like a volcano. Less frequent than waves, more deeply buried, but the eruption ...” Jase pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Can you give us a minute? I need to talk to Matt.” He tapped her on the end of her nose. “I’ll come find you when we’re done.”

* * *

Jase watched Cerys walk away, wondering what the fuck in the world he’d done to deserve her.

“How much did you hear?” Matt asked.

“From Cerys saying how much alike we are.”

Silence settled over the room for a moment. He wasn’t sure what to say next. Cerys was the one who was so good with words. She’d been able to see what the two of them hadn’t. That their behaviour was never about what they were actually fighting about. It was an outlet, a vent to release the pressure of the real issues bubbling beneath. And Cerys was right. His vent was too loose, opening often, with such high frequency—it was like waves. And Matt’s was too constricted, keeping emotions so tightly buried and under control that he erupted periodically.

Matt ran his hands over his face. “I guess this is where I tell you I’m angry with you.”

“I probably deserve it. So, yeah.”

“I don’t want to fight with you. Not least because I don’t feel like getting injured today, but I’ve liked this. I’ve liked being in the studio with you, making music with you. I feel like if the past gets dredged up anymore, we’ll go back to how we were.”

Jase leaned his hip on the counter. “I think the point Cerys was trying to make is that it’s going to happen one way or another. If we don’t address it, it will continue to fester until we end up fighting about something trivial, like song order. If we address it, at least it’s out in the open, and we can begin to fix it.”

Matt looked at him. “When did you get so fucking smart?”

“The day I met Cerys. I like to think our IQs got added together and averaged. Sucks for her.”

Matt laughed, his shoulders eased. “It pisses me off that we lost a decade, Jase. I’m pissed off about every single day you made me feel like shit about my songwriting because you felt like shit about yourself. I’m mad that I’ll be thirty soon and this is the first time that I’ve felt like we’re actually going to make it. You stole a lot from us, and I understand you have really fucking good reasons as to why you did what you did. But most of all, I’m really fucking mad you slept with Izabel. You knew. You fucking knew how much she meant to me. You knew I found it impossible to stick to Luke’s rules, but I did it for the band. I’m mad you broke Luke’s rules. I’m mad you put the band second. But most of all, I’m furious because you knew it would kill me and you did it anyway.”

The wave came.

And it hurt.

It brought with it the detritus of guilt and shame and embarrassment. He breathed through it like Cerys had shown him. Not saying a word until he felt as though he was responding from that place deep in his gut that he found it hard to tap into.

Cerys had called it his truth, but he wasn’t sure what the fuck it was. It certainly wasn’t his brain.

He placed a hand on Matt’s shoulder and squeezed it tightly. “Nothing you said is untrue. I did cost us. I have no idea how many gigs we haven’t got or been invited to perform at because of my erratic behaviour on stage. I’ve no idea how many record labels have glossed over us, even though they liked our sound, because I’ve been unreliable. I’m sorry for all of it. But I promise you this, Matt. It stops. It stopped in Bexter’s cottage. All I can do each day is prove that it’s over by showing up for the band.”

“I don’t know how to stop being angry about it, Jase. I hear you. And I know it should make me feel better about things, but I’m still mad.”

“I know. It’s like shedding skin. It’s impossible to do it overnight.”

“And Iz?”

“It wasn’t love. Perhaps I was in love with the idea of being in love with her. Maybe I just wanted to be loved by someone. Maybe I just wanted something of yours.”

“What changed?”

Jase looked down the hallway in the direction of Cerys’s office. “Finding out what falling in love with someonereallyfeels like.” He thought back to the way they’d held on to each other that morning. After breakfast and conversation and laughter that had turned to making love with a croissant stuck to his arse, which had brought about even more laughter. Holding her in his arms, their bodies still damp and trembling.

Jase turned back to Matt. “I got a lot of shit I’m still mad about too.”

“You do?”

“Of course. You’ve always thought this was all me. But you let me down. You didn’t want me in the band from the beginning.”

“That’s not fair, I was happy for you—”

“No,” Jase said softly. “Nan bribed you. We all know it. A guitar for letting me tag along. And whether you admit it to me now or not, we both know it pissed you off that I was a better singer than you. And I’ve always believed that’s why you excluded me. Why you and Luke wrote the songs without me. Why you never gave me any input or say in anything to do with the business. You didn’t want me to have the chance to be better than you at anything else. You turned this, our life, into a silent competition I could never win.”

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