Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3) (43 page)

“Not about me, mate.”

“Right, because you have no hint of a disability.”

“You want to keep drinking at this bar, right?”

“This bar, Moon Blink, the place you opened because you and book learning have a hate-hate relationship and you didn’t get into business school, and because you were a hopeless failure you figured you might as well just pour dumb drinks for a living? You’re wondering if I want to keep drinking at this bar, the business you run so efficiently, so sensitively it’s a case study in how to print money.”

“I had help. You for the loan. Jamie for the books. If it weren’t for Taylor, or Heather…” And now Angus was catching on. “That’s the point, right.”

Damon chomped on a nut. It was better to say nothing.

“You know it’s just you and me here, no kitchen staff, no cleaning crew. I could smack you around and say you walked into a wall, who wouldn’t believe me?”

Damon gestured to the floor. “Mel is a highly trained attack dog. One false move and your life is forfeit.” He had a suspicion she was asleep.

“You do know she’s snoring.”

They both laughed. “You really want to hit me, don’t you?”

“I really do. Heather won’t let me, even though she still blames you for the tattoo.”

“Whipped.” He tossed a nut in the air tried to catch it in his mouth. It pinged off his shoulder and flew off somewhere. “I had nothing to do with it being so lame.”

“It’s a sprig of heather, it’s not lame.

“Mate, the tattoo artist laughed at you.”

“Bloody hell, I want to hit you.”

He waved his hand. “Bring the nuts back first and can we change the subject?”

“Yeah, let’s do that. What are you doing about Georgia?”

“Nuts.” The bowl brushed the back of his hand. “You mean other than flying for twenty-two hours to tell her I’m sorry, I had life altering surgery, wasn’t right in my head about that, and I’d give up my voice to get her back.”

“Yeah, other than that.”

“What are you suggesting?” He popped a pinch of nuts in his mouth.

“How about something mega?”

And nearly choked on them. Fantastic. Survive cancer, suffocate on a beer nut. Angus put a glass of what he hoped was water in his hand and he drank. “Oh God, just hit me, but not in the throat and stay away from the mouth.”

“You’re telling me you’re done.”

“Why would she trust me again?”

Angus fussed around with glasses. “Good point. I see where you’re coming from. So the idea is to give up, because that’s the new take no chances you.”

“Can we change the subject?”

“So this studio, Jamie says it’ll be viable, maybe even profitable.”

“With investment, cheaper premises, updated equipment. If I can get it staffed right.”

“You’ve offered Georgia a job?”

“No, I haven’t offered her a job. I offered her me and she didn’t bite. Not thinking she’d want any job that’s anywhere near me now.” Which meant the vague hope she might engineer Sam and Taylor’s album wasn’t even the threat of a flea in Mel’s coat.

“Can’t fault your logic there either, but she wouldn’t be working for you, would she?”

“No, for Trent in partnership with the original owners. They hired everyone else back. They’re good guys, just caught without enough operating capital. That’s Jamie speak. Sharing the premises and administration with Dalia’s theatre company was a great idea. Having Lauren around to help Dalia out with administration is a bonus. Without the big city rent overhead, they’ll do fine.”

“Or Jamie will find you a bigger tax write-off.”

Damon chewed a nut. “Or that.”

“Which brings us back to singing.”

“In no way does it do that.”

“One night, one song. Hair of the dog.”

“What’s with the dog references today? It wasn’t singing that gave me cancer.”

“I know. I run a bar, it’s all about hair of the dog, particularly now we have Mel.”

Mel gave a soft bark, she can’t have been that asleep. She buffed against Damon’s leg and he put a hand to her big flat chocolate head. They were still getting used to each other. But since Taylor moved in with Jamie it was good to have Mel in his life.

“No.”

“One night. Full orchestra.”

“What do you mean full orchestra? Who are you, Simone Young?

“Who?”

“Famous conductor.”

“Don’t care. I’m thinking chicks with strings, ivories, and a brass section.”

“Brass section. Do you even know what’s in a brass section?”

“Whatever I can scrounge up for free. I’ve always wanted to do it—the whole catastrophe. The bar is five years old. You survived cancer. Jamie and Taylor are the real deal. Sam has material to try out. Come sing, one song for one night. What does it matter if you’re terrible?”

He might be terrible. Singing in a steamy bathroom was about as far as he’d taken things so far. “Orchestra?”

“What we can fit up there.”

The stage wasn’t that big, but the idea of singing with an orchestra, no matter how borrowed or ragtag was interesting; it made its way to the pleasure centre of his brain through the fog of jet lag, the dragging disappointment and the hollowness of failure. “One song.”

“One song.”

He shouldn’t push it. He was still healing, still needed to do his vocal exercises. Would always need to take extra care of his throat. He didn’t need the risk. He didn’t need to sing.

“Tell me when you’ve got the brass.”

36: Jupiter

There was a banner stretched across the front of Moon Blink.
Celebrate our 5th birthday with a full orchestra, and for one night only—The Voice—Damon Donovan returns. Dinner and drinks deal.

So he was back. He didn’t stay in London. He didn’t fly anywhere else after she sent him away.

She wasn’t ready to see him.

She only wanted to see the others, apologise for not being in contact, find out if Jamie and Taylor got it together, how Heather was doing at uni. Maybe ask a few questions about Damon to see how he was.

She didn’t think he’d be here.

She turned back the way she’d come, she’d go home to the flat where she’d start paying her own rent now, curse the dress, curse the heels. She could’ve worn jeans. What was she thinking? She’d glammed up for God’s sake. She’d put her hair up and worn dangly earrings.

Of course she’d hoped he was going to be there.

But now she wasn’t ready to see him and certainly not to hear him sing. She’d stood in the house of her ex-husband and told Hamish she and Damon were finished, that she didn’t want him in her life. She’d rejected him as surely as he’d done her.

She’d pick up takeaway and eat at the flat. She’d try this another weekend when she felt stronger. When she’d caught up with Trent, found a new job and…

One night only?

She’d gotten as far as the end of the street. What if he wasn’t going to be there again? What if he was about to go to LA? She looked back towards the bar, there was a crowd at the door. It’d be packed out. Good for Angus. She could slip in; find a corner to hide in. She needn’t see any of them. She’d done that once before, sat there anonymously, watched Damon, listened to him. It would be good to know how he sounded, if he could sing with his new voice.

She could treat this like a professional assessment. It was engineering: mechanical, technical, measurable. No reason to feel threatened by it. Certainly no reason for the horrid rock and roll in her stomach.

Oh God, she wanted to see him. Needed to. Just once more. Just to know, really know, he was all right. Cancer of the throat. It was a warm night but she still shivered. He had to have been terrified.

She heard the music before she recrossed the street as Moon Blink’s door opened to let more people in. If the guys were on stage, she might get away with being in the crowd and not get caught out. If Heather was there, she could say hello, leave her best wishes and come back later when she wasn’t so ridiculously uptight. She could make a lunch date with Taylor.

She could phone Damon and set a time to see him, when she wasn’t so strung out.

She was never going to phone Damon.

Because if she had his voice in her ear, no matter what he sounded like, she’d give up her sanity to keep it there.

She crossed the road and entered the bar, trying to act like smoke, ease her way in, be transparent and insubstantial. It was even louder inside. Standing room only. Perfect. She found a corner where she could see a good portion of the stage. No sign of Damon. Maybe she’d missed him. He might’ve opened, which would mean he was at the bar, or in the green room. She couldn’t see the bar for people. She could see the band and a cast of extras, a piano, violins and a saxophone, trumpets. Jamie out front, which was unusual. He was singing John Legend’s
All of Me
.

She craned her neck and looked for Taylor. Found her at the side of the stage, eyes locked on Jamie, the expression on her face characteristically fierce, except she was smiling. Jamie was singing for her. It looked like they’d worked it out. Taken a risk on each other. She knew she wasn’t leaving till she found out.

As the song ended, Taylor moved back to centre stage. Jamie leaned in to her, but she pushed him away, laughing; turning her head, she smiled off to the side. Georgia followed her line of sight. Damon, sitting on a tall stool in the shadows. Her knees locked.

Taylor sang the first lines of Miley Cyrus’
Wrecking Ball
and Georgia flattened herself against the wall, because seeing Damon made her feel like she might shatter.

He wore black suit pants, a white dress shirt, unbuttoned at the neck and chest, the sleeves rolled up his forearms. He had his sunglasses on, all effect, all cool and suave, untouchable, at least for her, because she couldn’t trust him, couldn’t trust herself not to want to start up all over again, and then where would she be if his cancer came back, if he was bitter about his career, or something else went wrong, and he pushed her away again.

She hadn’t known how to leave Hamish and she was never truly in love with him. She wouldn’t survive having and losing Damon again.

No, they weren’t meant to be. And she’d known it from the start. He’d soft-soaped her with talk of colours and a fish in a plastic bag, with a princess dress and a gala ball. He’d romanced her with tea-lights and his way of seeing the world, and his hands and his voice, always his voice, no matter its texture, with the words he could say that went straight to her soul and lifted her up, made her world shimmer—until they’d crashed her into darkness.

It wasn’t London’s weather that was depressing. The lack of colour, the chill, the bleak was in her. That’s how being without Damon had made her feel. Like a vital part of her was missing. And that was no way to live, with that threat stalking beside you, making you doubt what you saw, what you heard. Sound was only pure until it told a lie.

Taylor was singing a response to Jamie, had to be, they had to be together. She put her whole self into each phrase, each note, and extended them to Jamie in acknowledgement, in love. They’d waited a long time to find each other and yet they’d been side by side the whole time, never seeing the other clearly, never hearing them.

How did that happen? How did your senses let you get so twisted up and wrong-headed; lead you to be stupid when you should be cautious, still when you should move, passive when you should fight?

Avoid when you should risk.

Taylor and Jamie were taking a risk. Damon had come to fight for her and she’d sent him away.

She needed to get out of here. The song was over, Angus was on the mic, telling a joke, making people laugh, thanking them for coming. Georgia eased out of her corner and threaded her way towards the door. Angus introduced the band. He started with the ring-ins, old friends from uni. Then he threw his arm around Jamie and the room cheered. Sam belted out an unaccompanied solo on his kit and Taylor took a bow.

She’d made it halfway to the door.

“Most of you are regulars so you’ll know Damon, AKA The Voice,
Dystopian Conflict’s
Captain Vox.” She stopped dead and a man behind her grunted, and physically moved her to the left so he could pass by. She turned to scowl at him and had a clear view of the stage.

Angus said, “You won’t know he’s recovering from throat cancer.” A wave of murmurs rippled through the room, welding Georgia to the spot. “Tonight is his first time back on stage, first time singing again after two lots of surgery and extensive therapy. He’s promised me one song only. Please be generous in welcoming our very dear and dangerous friend, Damon Donovan.”

Applause, whistles, shouts. She watched as Taylor led Damon into the light and he took the mic. Angus crushed him in a hug. Sam kicked up the drumbeat. The piano followed. Train’s
Drops of Jupiter
. Damon lifted the mic.

She started pushing. She needed out, out. This was a song about discovery and letting go, about hope and loneliness. There were too many people between her and the door.

He said, “This one is for Georgia.” And there was no way out. She was trapped between her heartbeat and her horror. She spun back towards the stage. She couldn’t see him. But she heard him, oh, she heard him. That first stanza of song, his voice achy, reedy. His uncertainty broadcast to the whole room. Then the second, firming up, registering louder, more secure, but still cloudy. She moved against shoulders and backs, around tables. The other instruments filled in, the atmosphere swelling with the sound of strings.

He sang the chorus and his hesitancy disappeared, his voice low but steadying. Her breath seized. Her indecision died. He’d said words like these lyrics in her ear and he’d said them with love, when he knew he was going to send her away, to save her from the worst of him.

It was wrong, dumb, hurtful, selfish.

It was love.

She had to see him, touch him, know him again. She’d find a way to fix it so he learned to trust her always, ask her always to stand with him. And she’d learn to risk, to speak up, to trust him back.

Now she moved towards the stage, but people who’d had tables were standing. She had to weave in and out to keep her eyes on Damon, to see him light up the room. He had his arm flung wide. His head tossed back. There was a line in the song where the music dropped out to let the voice dominate. She held still and the scratchy rawness of his vocals might have turned her into crystal, they shivered up her spine and through her brain.