Summer On Fire (The Rock Star Series 4) (Kings of Leon)

Use Somebody

...I'll abide till the end, I'll take it on the chin for you my friend...

*

Minutes had passed since she'd crumbled in his arms. He still held her, he hadn't let go the entire time. When her head eventually came up, she was half expecting him to be watching her, but he was staring out over the horizon. Until he felt her eyes. His gaze locked with hers and neither of them spoke. He waited for a sign from her that said she was okay. That it was all right now. But the look in her eyes told him it wasn't, and so he listened and he let her talk.

'Mama, she was...Lord, she was beautiful,' she said quietly and her smile was shaky. 'When she walked into a room, heads turned. It was like...a light came on or somethin'. She took everyone's breath away. Mine included.'

Caleb was familiar with that feeling. His hand came to her face, thumb tracing gently over her cheek and her words got jammed. She had to fight to stop herself from closing her eyes and forced herself to go on.

'They say beauty's skin deep, but it carried all the way through to her insides. My daddy often said he was the luckiest man alive. She could have any man she wanted but she chose him.' She paused. 'They loved each other...once. I'd hear them out in the yard chasin' each other with the hosepipe, she'd be yellin' at him to stop and he'd be laughin' coz he'd soaked her and...' The memories overwhelmed her. '...I remember thinkin' I was the lucky one. To have them as my parents. I wanted what they had. I wanted a fairytale just like theirs.' She swallowed, giving her head a little shake. 'But they were never meant to have a happy ending and now...when I think back on those times...it's like they happened to someone else. Like I'm on the outside lookin' in.' She shifted and her hip nudged up against the whiskey bottle by her side. She needed a drink. But if she stopped talking she may never start again. 'I'm just watchin' the fairytale unfold, bit by bit. I tell myself it has to be someone else's life because...everythin' that came after, it hasn't, it couldn't, have happened to them. Not them. Not me. Then I get to thinkin'...maybe it was me. Did I do somethin' wrong? And if so, what did I do? Why did it happen?' She shook her head sadly. 'It's like I said...you just keep payin'.'

'You did nothin' wrong,' Caleb told her. 'And you got nothin' to pay for, Edie.'

But she wasn't listening. Not really. Her eyes had begun to mist over and she was willing herself not to start crying again.

'I miss all the moments I'll never get to have with her. The shoppin' trips, the days out drivin' in the truck and stoppin' for ice-cream, the daisy chains we'd make in the backyard. Her kisses at bedtime. The songs she'd sing in the middle of the night when I'd wake from a nightmare. He took that away from us.'

A broken sob escaped her lips as she reached up to finger the crystal heart at her throat and now Caleb understood what the necklace meant to her. His arms tightened around her. He didn't say anything. He just held her and he listened.

'After she died and he was locked up, they put me in a state home and - '

'Wait, they put you in care? Why? When you could've come here to Nora's.'

'My daddy wasn't ready to sign away his parental rights and so he refused to say where she was. Kinda wished he'd followed through on that,' she added with a wry smile. 'Livin' with her is a whole lot worse than that place ever was.'

He could only imagine and so he could only nod. 'I'm sorry for cuttin' in. Go on,' he gently urged her.

'Anyway...this one night I had a dream that she was alive and she was comin' back for me, and it felt so real that I convinced myself it was. I'd sit out on the stoop and every day for a whole month I waited for her to come get me.' She needed that drink now and finally reached for the whiskey, swallowed down a mouthful and offered the bottle to him. But he shook his head. It would mean letting go of her and he wasn't prepared to do that. 'When she didn't show up...I blamed myself,' she said.