Chapter 28

ROWAN

Teo doesn't notice that I'm frozen. That's no surprise—I've never seen him this excited, and I'm apparently the reason. "This is who I told you about, Cam!" He directs this at me. "And this is Cam, Mr. Byrn. Cameron Trebeck." I can't help noticing how close he stands to this new arrival, so close their hands brush until his friend grips his wrist. He pulls Teo back as if I'm a dog without a muzzle, one he doesn't trust not to hurt his best friend like I hurt other people once in public.

I'm not that person.

I never was.

Cameron doesn't know that, and I don't blame him for being protective. It's only another reminder of Liam that means a hand steals to my chest, rubbing. Cam's hand slipping from Teo's wrist is another reminder when his little finger hooks with Teo's. It makes me slow to process—I almost miss what Teo says next. "Cam, Mr. Byrn is who that TV production company mistook."

"Production company?" My mouth dries, and my heart seizes. "What production company?"

Teo fishes out his phone. "One that used to run some contest. Look. I got a message from them. And an offer."

He turns the phone my way, and the car park fades. So do all these happy reunions and bright laughter. The world fogs as I absorb what he shows me.

Absorb it?

I choke on a mouthful of old ash while surrounded by delighted people. I'm also back in that walled garden with Luke telling me I don't ever have to volunteer my story. That I could write it down and leave it behind, and he'd respect my choices. He'd given me other options, hadn't he? Offered to help me plan coping strategies for this moment.

I wish I'd done that with Luke now that Teo describes an offer he has no idea is apoison chalice.

"See, sir? They offered me a chance to use a professional studio and they're offering a big chunk of cash for the school." He's rueful. "Got all my hopes up for a minute." He turns to his friend. "All because you added a hashtag to that Reel."

"What Reel?" I ask as people pass us.

The school bursar backs up to ask a different question. "Big chunk of money for the school?" Austin keeps one hand on Maisie, who wobbles in pirouettes around him. "How much money, and for what?"

"Ten grand, sir," Teo tells him. "From a TV production company if Mr. Byrn would sing for some reunion show, only they've mixed him up with someone else." He directs this at me. "Wish it was you, sir. I don't stand much of a chance otherwise, do I?"

We've spent enough time together for me to know what admitting this must cost him.

"I haven't got real talent. Not like Cam's." He isn't bitter. If anything, he's proud of someone I can't help thinking is more than a friend.

No wonder he missed him.

All those lonely evenings behind a drum kit make sense the moment he switches his focus to Cam. "That sound tech course was my chance to go to uni with you. Get shortlisted with what I've recorded so far?" He shakes his head. "Not without pro remixing." He shakes his head again, and this is grittier. "Still gonna try."

His hand doesn't brush against Cam's now, but I can almost feel how much he wants to keep that point of contact and how much he wants what this offer could make happen for him.

It's gutting.

So is him aiming a burst of real warmth in my direction. "If I do make it, it will be down to how much you've helped me." This sigh is heartfelt. "Still probably won't be enough. Not without some real studio time on my application. And that's what this production company offered—real studio time for me as well as cash for the school. They said they might make it a feature of the reunion show they're planning. Second Song, it's called. Said I could be part of it if I helped convince you."

Teo describes golden handcuffs I can't let him snap on. Not for studio time or for money, and not only because their cash offer is a drop in the ocean for what their poison cost me, even if how it all came about is still fuzzy. And that fuzziness? That uncertainty about what the fuck happened to make me a different person?

That's what I can't let happen again. Not to a kid only a few months older than I was when I first backed myself against a studio door that turned out to be a ledge I fell from. There's no way I'll ever say yes to what a growing crowd of staff and students gather to hear when Teo doesn't spit his usual bullets. He's so fucking wistful.

"Imagine if you were the singer they're trying to track down, sir." He could mention me being his golden ticket. Instead, he mentions other people, suddenly shy. His head dips, and this guts me even harder. "Thought we could use some of the cash to get instruments for the little ones. Real ones, you know?" His eye contact lingers, painful in a whole new way. "Nice wooden ones like in the box of tricks like you said your mum used to take to festivals. Shame they mistook you for someone else in that Reel."

I know it's my voice that repeats, "What Reel?" I hear it as a faraway whisper now that my heart doesn't only pound, it thunders. Teo rocks back like I yelled it at him. Like I've come out swinging.

His friend swings too, only Cam plants a phone in my face, not his fist, and there I am on Instagram, drumming on a picnic table. On metal water bottles and on an upturned bucket. Drumsticks fly in this video and get caught by me. I'm caught too, only by a hashtag in a comment that might as well have been blood spilled into shark-filled search-engine waters.

Cam: Your Mr. Byrn looks like someone who sang in the #BritPop contest with one of my uncle's besties.

A second comment explains why Cam hasn't stopped staring at me, why I'm familiar to someone who couldn't have been more than ten or eleven during fifteen minutes of fame that I've always regretted.

Cam: There's a photo of him next to the dartboard in Ed's kitchen.

I bet that both Ed and Pasha have thrown plenty of darts at me in the years since that contest, and I can't blame them. Not after I read a third comment that isn't entirely accurate but sums up why Liam's own potential reunion leaves me twitchy.

Cam: He called Ed scared for leaving the army. What a tosser. Ed's a legit hero with medals. And that tosser never mentioned Pasha's name without hinting about terrorism just because he's half Afghan.

Those weren't my words, but the fourth comment is so truthful I stagger from it.

Cam: It can't be him. Liars don't belong at Glynn Harber.

I didn't speak up during the contest. I can't now either. And here's proof that I've spent too much time listening to men like this school's headmaster. All of Luke's walking and talking means I can name why my voice box locks and the urge to run is overwhelming.

Flight's taking a turn at the wheel, and I hate it.

Teo can't know I'm in the grip of a hormone dump of panicked instincts way out of proportion to a few online comments. They're also what stopped my pen every time I tried to write my way around what happened to me. It's exactly what Luke told me at our first meeting.

Brains lock away whatever's too traumatic to relive, sometimes in compartments that leak poison across a lifetime.

If something too traumatic to remember happened to me, how can I risk the same poison tainting Teo?

I can't.

His brow creases, showing me that Glynn Harber has already worked its caring magic on someone who used to be mistrustful. He must trust me to sound this convinced that I'm in his corner. "There's no way Mr. Byrn would say any of that."

My heart breaks at having to admit this.

"It was me."

I swallow down more poison.

"It is me the production company wants to sing again." I force this out. "But I won't let you get trapped in a studio with them." This bark is louder. "And you absolutely cannot take their money."

I don't know what I expect. It isn't for this school's ferocious bursar to look so worried. For me. Luke does too. He appears just as I ruin every inch of progress I've made with one of his toughest students.

As I break him.

Teo shatters as soon as I say what I should have yelled years ago, only today I grit it out at the wrong person. "I'm saying no. It's not worth it and that's final."

He reacts like I've summarised his entire future—that he isn't worth a single song from me—and this man-sized boy fractures. His eyes gloss while mine sting.

I'm fucking this up so badly.

No shit, Sherlock.

Liam isn't here. I don't know why I hear that in his low-pitched tone. All I know is that panic spikes when I see another soldier. Ed Britten arrives, bringing home the last of the students in a minibus bearing a logo stating what I should have a seam of running through me.

True Grit.

I've got fuck all grit left when Ed does a double take that means he has to recognise me. So does his passenger. I lip-read Pasha saying, "No way," and I don't blame him, not after standing over a crater filled with blood-red Afghan poppies in a garden for fallen soldiers.

Ed gets out, wearing a similar desert camo T-shirt to the one Liam left in. His wide-shouldered stance is another reminder, and when he heads for me, Ed doesn't walk. He marches.

If my next reaction is a trauma response, it's nothing like freezing or fawning, and I've run before so I know what me backing away looks like.

I must look scared to anyone watching. A coward. All the things whispered into my earpiece that I repeated in front of TV cameras. I know that. But this feeling? This flood? This survival instinct?

Flight can fuck off.

Fight takes a turn at the wheel, only not for my life.

I take off running for Teo's future.

My sprint endsat the stables where I grab my car keys along with what I've worked so hard on. Then I drive, only stopping at the car park for a few short moments. That's where I do the opposite of retreating. I advance on an ex-soldier, wishing he was Liam, but it's Ed that I thrust a letter at, one I started in a sculpture garden but finished in a stable. And here's a totally on-brand reaction to his raised eyebrows—I choke, wordless in the shadow of a willow in the same spot where Charles called my first failure spectacular. He also called it lucky, a second chance, and so I try again, this time forcing out a single sentence.

"Sorry, Ed."

I'm even sorrier that there's no sign of Teo. Or Charles. Even Luke is missing, and somehow that isn't a relief, but I can't let regret fuck with this momentum, with this urge to fight for once, so I do that by driving away before it can chase and catch me.

Liam was right about Friday motorway traffic.

The M5 north is carnage as I head for the only place where I can put any of this right with only a roll of paper and a workbook as passengers while the sky ahead turns stormy. Or perhaps that's only my mood as the afternoon turns to late evening. All I know is that it's almost dark by the time I wind down my window and check my phone, making myself ignore message after message and missed call after missed call. I scroll through a message chain I don't usually respond to, and that's where I find the entry code for this keypad.

Tall gates open onto a long and sweeping driveway leading to a very different school than the one I just ran from.

But that isn't true, is it?

"I'm not running." My voice shaking like this is annoying. At least there's no one in this car park to hear it now that the half-term break has started. A single light spills through an upstairs window. I picture who sits behind the desk in that study, and my voice shakes even harder. "I'm fighting."

I'm not sure that's true when I can't even make myself stop gripping the steering wheel until my phone pings.

Liam: You staying away from cliffs, Row?

No.

No, I'm not.

His second message gets me moving.

Liam: Try staying alive until I get back tomorrow x

That means I have to get this done. For good or evil, the only way through is to keep moving forward. I carry that determination all the way into the school, walking past cabinets full of trophies that gleam like the sign at the foot of the staircase.

Headmaster's Study This Way.

I've never wanted to go anywhere less, and I wish to fuck I had some of that grit Liam thinks I've got stocks and shares in. All I've got are a workbook and a roll of paper that I'm not sure were a good idea to bring here.

I hold them tight as I climb, only faltering at the top of the staircase where a red light shines over a door I used to avoid. I don't knock or wait this evening. I don't wait for that light to turn green either. I march into a headmaster's study and throw myself off an edge with no one here to stop or save me.

The man behind the desk I've pictured so often lurches to his feet. "Rowan!" His accent is a soft Irish blast from the past.

"Sir…" That title doesn't feel right now that I'm not a student. I can't make myself voice another, but I've been silent in this room so often since this man called me out of lessons to tell me the worst news ever. Tonight, I clutch a book with a whole section on grief I'm now pretty sure I ran away from instead of processing.

And after so much time to do nothing but play and think my way through tough emotions at Glynn Harber?

I'm also pretty sure there's another section in this book that kept me silent after returning here with my tail between my legs and my bottom out on show in public.

That means I can't be quiet now.

Dig deep, Row.

That's the one order I can follow, only I use a different name to do it.

"Eoin?"

That name doesn't feel right for this man either.

I try out a final title, one that made Mum so happy.

"Dad? Can you help me?"