Page 27 of Dirty Rock

“When I told you about your real father, you barely batted an eyelid. You…” Julia waved a flippant hand through the air. “You shrugged it off, and you just walked away from it.”

“What else did you expect me to do?” I asked, ignoring the swirling grief that lingered somewhere inside of me—too far out of reach for me to feel it with any permanency, but there, all the same. “Breakdown and grieve over a man I’d never met? Lose myself to someone I didn’t even know?”

“It would have made me believe you were human.”

“You don’t think I’m human?”

“That’s not what I meant,” she muttered, wincing.

I moved forward to rest my arms on the table—to be closer to her. Her perfume suddenly felt like it was the foundation of my very own cloud nine, and I wanted to roll around in it for hours.

“What’s going on, Jules? You’re worrying me.” Her sad eyes rose to mine.“You’re not okay, are you?”

She shook her head slowly, no words coming out.

“Want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Please? For me…”

“My… my sister lost her baby today,” she whispered quietly. “She went into labour too early. There was nothing they could do.”

“Shit, Jules.”

I hadn’t even known she had a sister, never mind that she’d been pregnant. Truth was, I knew very little about Julia Speed outside of her life with this band. That single admission from her suddenly made her nothing but human, and I found myself moving to her as tears filled her eyes. Before I registered what, exactly, I was doing, I was knelt in front of her, looking up as I pressed my hands onto her thighs in support.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” I whispered.

“I don’t know what to do to help from so far away, and I don’t like the way that makes me feel inside. I fix things. For her, I always fix things. I can’t fix this.”

“Have you been dealing with this all day by yourself?”

“Kinda.”

“Jules,” I sighed. “You fucking idiot.”

A single heavy tear fell down her cheek, marking her perfectly ivory skin with a straight line of unhappiness I wasn’t used to seeing. I wanted to swipe it away, to take away her pain as this woman who I’d always thought was strong crumbled in front of me.

“She’s my twin,” Julia rasped.

“Twin?”

“Her name is Sarah. We’ve always been a team. S and J. Julia and Sarah. When she hurts, I hurt with her. It’s the way it’s always been. She feels pain. I take it away for both of us.”

“It can’t always work that way. If you save everyone else, who saves you?”

“I save myself.”

I had no response to that, so I squeezed her thighs and waited for her to speak.

“The baby was born at twenty-three weeks.”

“Boy?”

“Girl,” she whispered. “My niece. And I’m not there to say goodbye. I thought I had time. Why don’t we have more time? Why do bad things happen to good people, Rhett?”

I scrunched my eyes shut and swallowed down every ounce of regret I felt at having given her so much shit all day long. Had she been dealing with this while I was there, asking her if I should get my dick out for the cameras? Had she been handling this grief when I lost my shit with her in front of the band? Had she been taking care of all of us while I kicked off and felt sorry for myself like a damn child?

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