A chill wracks my body, putting goose bumps down my arms. The temperature in the room just dropped ten degrees. Adam’s behavior has an ominous feeling hanging over me, as if the floor is about to fall out and I’ll find myself hanging by an invisible noose that has somehow slipped around my neck.
If Adam doesn’t tell me what’s going on in the next ten seconds, I’m going to flatten him into a smudge on the floor. As strong as I think I am, as much control as I think I have over my actions, it’s seems to be that when it comes to Kate, I have very little choice in the matter as to what I do next.
Then, he speaks and my world fucking shatters.
* * *
“Dax! Let go! You’re choking him!”
Hawke and Gary are trying to pull my hands off of Adam, who I have shoved against the wall by his throat.
“He fucking knew and didn’t tell me!”
“What are you talking about?” Hawke yells, tugging uselessly on my left arm.
The rage I feel is so overwhelming, so all encompassing, that I have no way to stop it. It’s as if time lapsed, skipping over parts like a bad stop motion film. One second Adam was telling me that Kate was sexually assaulted at uni, the next, I have him up on his toes with my hand wrapped around my neck and my mates trying to pull me off.
“Dax…” Adam gasps, his face turning red.
I’m about to let Adam go when electrified pain shoots down my body. I drop to the ground, my hands flying up to my neck to stop the source of the agony.
“Don’t move,” someone says from behind where I’m writhing on my knees.
“Gavin?” I should have known it was him. After the way he fucking dropped me when I broke up with Kate, I’ve been more cautious around him since that day. But not today. All I saw was red.
I claw at Gavin’s hand, his long fingers deep in the hollow on one side of my collarbone.
“Stay still,” he commands in a firm, very un-Gavin like tone.
Still on fire from the crippling pain, I lower my hands in defeat.
“I’m going to let you go but you have to promise you’ll calm down.” Gavin sounds like an entirely different person. Gone is the sweet, playful man I’m familiar with. Replaced by a cold, ruthless soldier.
“I won’t.” My chest is heaving. Not from exertion, not from pain, but from the pure physical anguish of my heart breaking.
Gavin releases his grip, slowly removing his hand. Without it, the pain stops instantly and I fold over onto my hands and knees. I can hear Adam in the background, apologizing over and over, “I’m sorry mate. So sorry. “
I can’t listen. All of my attention is on the voices in my head screaming at how I’ve failed. Failed Kate. Failed the band. Failed myself.
The control I so desperately seek is always just out of reach. Everything is falling apart around me and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.
I fist my hands in my hair and for the first time in my life, I willingly set my emotions free. I welcome them. I deserve every single painful lash of the mental whipping I torture myself with. I’d take more if I could. As it is, my suffering pales in comparison to what Kate’s been through.
After I’ve let it all out and am crumpled, spent, on the floor, someone’s arms come around me, helping me stagger to my feet.
“Let’s go home, yeah?”
“Adam? I-I’m sorry mate.” I lean heavily on my best friend, letting him share the burden. Fuck, he already does share the burden. Add him to the long list of people whose life has been fucked up by Dax Davies.
Kate
“Oh my god, no you didn’t!” Myriah squeals from her perch on the sofa in the house she rents with three other girls from the footy team.
“She totally did,” Bridget giggles. “Brittany made out with Bud after last week’s frat party!”
I cringe at the mention of the frat, unwelcome memories assaulting me. None of them know what happened after that party, and none of them ever will.
“Kate, you should have been there. It was a really good time.” Myriah throws her arm over my shoulder, hugging me to her side.