Chapter 12
I swallowed, hard. Was this really Calum asking me to run away with him? I had not seen this coming.
Or maybe I had.
In any case, a forgotten memory was now making a comeback... 10 years ago, Calum and I were sitting on the rooftop of an apartment building, talking about life and the future and our band.
"Wouldn't it be nice to just run away?" Calum asks idly, staring into the deep blue sky. Some pastel colours linger at the horizon from where the sun was earlier.
"Sure, but we'd be leaving behind an awful lot for everyone else to deal with," I reply, not really engaging or taking Calum seriously. "Don't you think?"
"Hmm," he murmurs. "Perhaps. But we'd be escaping a lot more."
At the time, I didn't know what Calum meant. To me he was just being an overdramatic teenager who'd had a few beers to drink – now looking back, maybe he'd been eluding to something completely different? Maybe he'd been hiding something from me, despite me being his best friend and boyfriend. Maybe, it was a cry for help for something a lot scarier than I had ever imagined.
"Luke? Did you hear me?"
"Is there a deeper reason as to why you ran away before?" I whispered, not daring to look him in the eye. "Or did you really just want to get away from the fame?"
He hesitated, either because he was preparing to tell me the truth or because he was thinking up a lie. Whichever of the two, he was being awfully shifty about it.
"It doesn't matter," he said dismissively. I sighed, rubbing my forehead with a palm.
"You can't ask me to run away with you if you won't even tell me what was wrong!" I replied in exasperation.
"Okay, okay. It's a long story-"
"I've got time."
"Fine. Just... okay. Do you remember Damien, the front man of our rival band 20SOA?" I nodded. Damien hadn't been a nice guy, that was all I could recall. "Well, I got in a bit of trouble with him back before we'd written She Looks So Perfect. Basically, we'd been writing together in secret (since management never let me write with him) and there was a song I thought would really suit our band. It was light, with a good guitar riff and decent rhythms section, but because I was there in secret, he couldn't credit me for the lyrics... And you know how shit his band was – they only covered super heavy metal songs and I knew that the song would be wasted on them."
"What did you do?" I asked, gulping as part of me really didn't want to know.
"I did something awful. I stole the song and told him it had been lost. Decided I would change a few of the lyrics then introduce it to you guys... except he found out. His career had been going downhill so apparently this song was exactly what he needed. I was adamant and said he could buy it off me if he really wanted it. Then he saw that we were about to make our massive debut into the music world with SLSP and used it as his opportunity to get revenge... He threatened me, saying that if I didn't leave the band he'd release to the newspapers what I'd done, and I couldn't possibly let you, Michael and Ashton deal with that... So I packed my bag and left, only I had no money."
"All that for a song? You could've come to us, Cal – talked it through, we could've mentioned it to Matt and management would've helped you!" I argued. He shook his head.
"I got into the mess, I had to get myself out."
"Okay, so you left – why ten years? And why did you come back for money? So you could keep on living in the shadows?"
He bit his lip. "I thought I could earn some money by gambling."
"What – why!" I shrieked.
"Yeah, so I did that for a while, gambled away my savings and backpacked for a while. Got into some dangerous stuff with pimps and all that-"
"You went into prostitution too?!"
"No! Well – kinda..."
I flipped my hair back and started pacing the living room. "All that and not one phone call? Really?"
"I tried, a year after I left. Before it all started getting bad – I called you from a public phone in Fiji, but you didn't reply nor did you call back. I waited by that phone box all day for at least two weeks." I remembered that – I got super creeped out at the time so I didn't pick up. What an idiot I was.
I was just so overwhelmed, having finally been told the truth. "So you need money to pay off your debts? And you thought you'd come to me because I'm so rich or something? I'm so kind I'd pay off some illegal gamblers and a bunch of pimps?"
"I was never in debt – you wanted the truth so I was starting from the beginning-"
"You know what, I've heard enough. If you weren't in debt then why did you need money? I'm fed up with this now – I'll give you the money I have if you leave and never come back."
He stared at me as if I was telling a joke. "Are you serious?"
"Yep. You've messed up my relationship with Harper enough, to the extent that you'd even drag her ex into everything – what makes you think I'll believe you?" I snapped. Call me unreasonable, but I couldn't deal with him any longer.
All of a sudden, he lifted his shirt up, revealing a circular scar with skin much lighter than that around it. I squinted in confusion, wondering just why on earth he was showing me this.
"I was shot, Luke. By the pimp leader. I wasn't bringing in enough cash so he sent his henchmen to come attack me. They thought they'd killed me, but a kind lady took me in and turned my life around," he said in a quiet voice, letting go of his shirt and fiddling with his thumbs. "She nursed me back to health, in return for my help in the orphanage she ran. She fell in love with me, but my heart-"
A small tear escaped his damp, glistening eyes, but we were interrupted by someone stumbling through the doors in heels – and of course it had to be Harper.
"Harp? Are you okay?" I asked frantically, rushing over before she fell over. She leant on me, full body weight dragging me down. "Harper, why did you drink yourself to this state? You're pregnant, you shouldn't be drinking anyway!"
She simply groaned, and the stench of sick was rising from her damp hair. I retched, hobbling over to the bedroom, disregarding Calum as I tried to sort out my fiancée. First I undressed her, having to peel off her layers which were drenched in alcohol and sweat, then I got her to the bathroom where I leant her head over the bathtub and washed her hair of food remnants. I washed her face, then dressed her into her usual nightwear, before tucking her in bed and tiding up.
Rummaging through the clothes, I found her engagement ring in her pocket. That was strange – she usually kept it on all the time, with the exception of cooking and cleaning. A hint of doubt in my mind, I went back over to her and checked her left hand – strangely enough there was another ring in its place.
I took it off first of all, inspecting it. It was silver, had a decently sized diamond on the front, but there was something about it that had a cheap feel. It seemed almost like a ring you'd buy in a teen jewellery shop, rather than an expensive adult engagement ring.
Either she had simply replaced my ring with a normal ring (though that in its own respect was weird considering it was on her ring finger and the ring did look a lot like an engagement ring), or someone had actually given it to her. I didn't really want to think about it.
Dropping both rings on the bedside table, I went back to the living room where Calum was sat, no longer crying. Instead he had a look of strength, a hint of anger even. "Your fiancée seems to be looking forward to giving birth to a fully developed baby," he commented sarcastically.
"Hey, there's no need for that. The only reason she's been going out drinking is because of me – because I'm not spending enough time with her."
"So you're blaming this on me?" Calum said in shock. "Unbelievable."
"It's not really, if you think about it. Before you came, we were fine – we were in a stable relationship with nothing interrupting or trying to cause trouble."
He stood up. "I'm not gonna let you get swept away by her lies, okay? I'm trying to protect you here-"
"It's um, getting pretty late. Maybe we should call it a night," I suggested tentatively.
He scoffed. "Did you not see the... whatever. You're clearly delusional. You don't even want to hear the rest of my story?" he inquired. I shook my head.
"I think I've heard enough. You should go to bed – tomorrow I'll head to the bank and wire you the money. After that... I don't expect to hear from you again."
***
will luke change his mind or is this the end of cake???
kimmy xx