Seattle Sound Series, The Collection: Books One to Five

by Alexa Padgett

  “The bloke came after you. To Perth. That’s where you went after you broke up with me.”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to do this. While I thought I wanted to have this conversation, wanted to share the loss with Murphy, I didn’t. I wanted to crawl into my bed and never climb out.

  “You said ‘him.’ A boy,” Murphy whispered. “Was he . . . He was mine?”

  “Yes,” I said, still refusing to look at him, angry he’d had to confirm that. The ache in my throat built, as did the one in my chest.

  The silence between us stretched and built, becoming untenable. My neck tensed with the need to turn my head. But I couldn’t. Though I desperately wanted to know what he was thinking, the expression on his face might just devastate me.

  “I had a son,” he said, his voice thick.

  I dug my fingernails into my thighs and opened my eyes wider, unaware of my surroundings. I focused on the small pain, the little grooves in my thighs so I wouldn’t cry. Tears wouldn’t change anything. A horn honked and we both jumped.

  Murphy started the car. “Right. Officer Reims is waiting for us to move. What’s your address?”

  I gave it to him and Murphy put the car in gear once the route popped up on the screen, reflected in my window.

  Such a short time for so many changes in something as basic as a car. Five years ago, few boasted GPS-enabled maps. Now the large LED screen, like cell phones, seemed status quo. The minimum necessity to have a reasonable life in this country.

  Moments like this, I missed the more laidback Australian culture. Not because gadgets weren’t important. They were. Just not American keeping-up-with-the-Smiths important.

  Being nearly dead, losing the only people who mattered in my life, changed me, made me less dependent on other people’s opinions. Perhaps because I simply didn’t care about their pity or scorn because I generated enough of both for myself.

  I refused to bring up the topic of our baby though I did glance at Murphy from the corner of my eye. He fiddled with his lip ring, tonguing the small silver circle. He wasn’t just thinking, he was processing the information, and I’d once known him well enough to know now he struggled with the loss of a child he hadn’t known existed.

  “Did you,” he cleared his throat when his voice cracked. “Did you name him? Did our baby have a name? Does he have a grave marker?”

  “Yes to both,” I said.

  “Give me more than that, Mila,” he said, voice so full of pleading. I sighed hard enough to fog my window.

  “I named him Kyle Murphy Etsam. Your mum had once mentioned Kyle was your grandfather’s name. I wanted him to be named after people who would’ve loved him.”

  Murphy made a choked sound. I still refused to turn his way. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to get through the rest of this conversation without bursting into tears. The pressure built, hard and fast, in my chest and behind my eyes. I hated feeling this way.

  I couldn’t change the past. I’d tried every night in my dreams for months afterward, waking to a soaked pillow. Nothing would give me the opportunity to hold Kyle, to watch him grow.

  “I planned to call you, tell you about the bub, but I ended up in ICU. My leg wasn’t a clean break.”

  “If you’d called me, I would have come,” he sighed out. “I still loved you. So much.”

  I bowed my head, trying to get a handle on my emotions. Loved. Past tense. Part of my heart, the little bit still intact, I guessed, broke apart. “I tried. I—I needed someone then. When they told me Kyle died. I called your phone, and some woman answered.” The acid still burned the back of my throat when I thought of that. He’d held a woman, rooted her in his bed, while I was in the hospital, mourning our baby. Alone.

  “Why didn’t you call me back? Or leave a message?”

  “With your fuck buddy?” I made a noise filled with disgust.

  “Mila.” His voice broke.

  “I called your mum. Let her know what had happened. I needed someone to grieve with me.” I was quiet for a long moment. “That day was horrible. I’ve never been so alone.”

  “She never said. She never told me you called.”

  I turned toward him. He’d wanted honesty. Well, he could have it. In the form of my anger. “I told her not to.”

  “I would have come,” he insisted again.

  “How would I know that? You were wrapped around all those sexy blondes. You were singing the hell out of that song, put our relationship out there for the world to rip apart. You used my words in that song.” Oh, that still stung. No, the fact he’d used me to further his career hurt.

  “I was angry. You didn’t give me any warning. Any reason. You just left.”

  “So that made what you did okay?” I asked. He winced. Good. He should feel guilty.

  Not that his guilt now would change the past. We were over. Our baby was dead. “Within a few days of the song hitting YouTube, you had over two million watches. I couldn’t compete with that. All my news would do was land you, hard on your bum, in Perth with a broken and depressed ex. If you even bothered to come at all.”

  The heat from his skin enveloped my hand. It shook even though my fingers were clenched in my lap. But no tears fell. I wouldn’t let them. I wasn’t that weak.

  Not anymore. More than the attack, I’d struggled with the loss of my child, my last connection to Murphy. One nurse, Sammi, talked me into meeting with her friend, a psychiatrist at the hospital, to help me work through the worst of my depression and help me find a discreet psychiatrist here in Seattle. Now, I could see the aftermath of the miscarriage, of losing Murphy, was debilitating, probably life-threatening. That’s when I started taking Xanax, my life saver.

  With the little pills working magic through my system, I quit thinking such negative thoughts over the ensuing days, but I learned talking through my feelings didn’t make the loss of my baby any less painful.

  I fought the growing urge to shake out another pill into my hand, knowing it would take the edge off my reality. Instead, I took a steadying breath and told Murphy the rest of the story, keeping it as unemotional as possible.

  I’d see Alpie soon. She’d nuzzle my neck, cuddle me as I needed.

  “That’s when you decided to leave Australia,” Murphy said.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t have anything there to stay for.”

  He winced again like I’d hit him. Please. Like he felt that bad about it. I’d seen the pictures. Still, leaving had been hard. But only because I left my baby there, deep in an earthly embrace.

  Susan Etsam was the one to suggest I call Noelle. Within hours of hearing my mostly incoherent story, she flew out, got me discharged from the hospital, helped with the funeral arrangements I insisted on for my baby, and booked me on a flight back here. Susan flew out to visit me and try to talk me out of leaving, but by then “She’s So Bad” was the number one song in Australia and New Zealand and had begun to climb up the charts in Europe and the United States. Murphy rocketed to stardom as I buried my dreams. Wrong though it was, I couldn’t, just could not see the man I’d loved so deeply sing about what a bitch I was to the rest of the world.

  While Susan resisted my need to break away from Murphy and the failures of our relationship, she’d respected my decision and helped me get out of the country once she realized how poorly I was handling Kyle’s death.

  Funny. All I ever wanted was a stable home, a loving relationship—the exact opposite of what my childhood was. Instead, the need to run once again built, consuming me. I couldn’t breathe in this space. I pulled my hand away.

  For someone who craved stability, I was damn good at going walkabout.

  8

  Murphy

  Mila pulled back. Way back and slammed multiple steel doors between us. Deserved, of course.

  As we sat at a stoplight, I made a decision. Hayden had asked how long I planned to stay here, in Seattle. My meeting with a producer in LA about a new project was in a few weeks.

  The secondary rea
son for the trip just became much more vital. Once Harry realized I wasn’t excited about flying home to Sydney, he’d talked me into sticking around for a few days to sing at a charity event for a Seattle-area battered women and children, something he knew I cared about—more so now that I’d heard Mila’s story. Always trying to improve my image, Harry was, but I didn’t care about my image. I cared about the women and children in situations like Mila’s—situations not of their making who needed a safe place to go so they didn’t end up near-dead, as Mila had.

  Seeing Hayden holding Briar earlier brought forth two issues: I needed to work through my shit with him by explaining my reasons for trying to keep them apart, bloody terrible though they were, and by begging their forgiveness. Something to work on while I played Mila’s knight, the second but just as important issue to resolve. I sucked on my lip ring, considering my options.

  The light turned green and I pressed on the gas. Driving on this side of the road took a lot of concentration. Why would Yanks want to be to the right? We hit another light, and I was glad for surrounding cars, keeping me in line.

  Mila deserved better than she’d gotten. Better than I’d given her. I considered what “She’s So Bad” must have been like to hear from her perspective, especially knowing she ended up in the hospital trying to protect me. My stomach heaved. Why didn’t I stop to think?

  But—and this was bloody important—she’d broken up with me. Left me. So why did I feel guilty for the song? Why should I? I gripped the steering wheel and tried to ease the ache in my neck and chest.

  The officer pulled up behind us as I slid the car into park in Mila’s driveway. “Can I give him your keys, Mila? He’s going to do a walk-through. Make sure your house is safe.”

  She handed me her key ring. Three keys: one to her place, one to her friend’s, I’d bet since Noelle said Mila stayed there often, and a car key. The black plastic on the last told me she drove an Audi. Nice car. Her place was small—probably a two-bedroom—the exterior neat. Different from her mum’s house, which stayed one step above ramshackle.

  Lush roses bobbed in the late morning sun, a rainbow of pinks, reds, and yellows. The shaker-wood siding was painted a dark gray with lighter trim around the windows. A deep porch ran the length of the front, featuring a white swing in the far corner. Mila’d always wanted a white porch swing, a perfect location to sit out with her coffee in the morning and her occasional glass of wine in the evening. I’d stake my fortune she sat out here at least once a day.

  I rolled down the window of the car and dropped the keys into the patrolman’s waiting palm. He’d undone the holster of his gun and his lips tensed. His eyes darted quickly around the space, taking in all the details in one thorough sweep.

  “My backup should pull up any second. I’ll go in when she shows. She’s going to monitor my progress, but I want you to sit tight. Hear anything and drive to the closest police station.”

  “And that would be where?” I asked, overstating my accent.

  His lip curled up slightly, but he didn’t look away from the house as he rattled off the address. “Plug it into your GPS now so you know where you’re going.”

  I did, grumbling. Mila pressed her lips together, flattening the plump fullness under the hard line of her will. I reached out, wanting to bring her head to my shoulder. Instead, I brushed my hand over the crown over her head, willing her to understand the comfort I needed to offer even as another part of me shook with the need to rail at her for dumping me.

  Officer Reims tapped on the glass. A tall woman stood slightly behind him, dressed in her blue uniform, hand resting on her holster. “We’re heading on in. Keep the car running.”

  I nodded, eyes trained on the front door. Tension built as we waited for the officers to exit or for shots to be fired. Officer Reims stepped back out onto the white-washed porch and my neck muscles eased. I didn’t want anything to happen to these police personnel.

  Kevin would be back from Sea-Tac in a couple of hours with a few extra security guards he and Harry were in process of vetting. Couldn’t be soon enough. Just as us moving on from Mila’s cute bungalow couldn’t come soon enough.

  “Ready?” I asked Mila. She’d turned to me in profile, and my gaze followed the soft line of her cheek up to her brow. The skin under her eyes shaded purple, a sure sign she wasn’t sleeping well.

  She opened her car door and stood, wobbly as a newborn colt. She dropped her eyes almost as soon as she glanced at my face, and leaning down, she grabbed her purse. Her phone slid out just as it beeped again. I scooped it up, planning to hand it back until I caught a glance at the words on the screen.

  You disobeyed me. I’ll start with Susan. Just like I did before.

  “That fucking piece of shit,” I snarled. “I’d kill him myself if I could get away with it.”

  Mila’s eyes finally met mine; her lids rimmed with red, but her eyes surprisingly dry. If I was her, I’d be crying buckets. But no, Mila remained quiet, almost solemn as she held my gaze.

  “You can leave,” she said. Her voice stayed soft but firm. “This is my fight with my demon.”

  I handed the phone over to Officer Reims, my eyes never leaving hers.

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “This was always our fight. I just didn’t know it.”

  9

  Mila

  My breathing escalated. Murphy’s voice dripped sincerity, just as it had when he’d told me he wanted a life with me. No. I couldn’t lean on him. Could not. Because he would leave—his glamorous rock-star lifestyle would dictate he fly off to do some concert or charity event or something. And then I’d be alone. Again.

  No, that’s why I had Alpie. So I wouldn’t be alone.

  I bolted up the steps and practically fell into my living room. Not good enough. He was still too close, tempting me. I scrambled toward my bedroom, self-preservation my only focus. A locked door. That’s what I needed. Distance. Space. Time to consider how best to deal with him. How best to get over him.

  I made it to the hall when his fingers wrapped around my wrist. My momentum stopped and my breathing slowed. I hated that he still exuded power over my will. He didn’t pull me closer, and I yearned to pull away and close the door. I eyed it even as my body relaxed back into Murphy’s warmth.

  “Hello!” Alpie called from the corner of the room, fluttering her wings and lifting her crown of feathers.

  “Hiya, Alpie. How are you?”

  “What the fuck is that?” Murphy asked, clearly appalled.

  “That’s my pet,” I walked toward her and she screeched, high-pitched with happiness. Her beak wrapped around the bars of the cage and she fluffed her pink feathers. Her black eyes locked on me. I opened her cage and let her hop onto my wrist. She side-stepped her way up my arm to my shoulder where she stroked her beak against my cheek.

  “You broke up with me and bought a fucking cockatoo?”

  “Fu-‘atoo,” Alpie shouted in her screechy bird voice.

  Murphy stumbled back. “Make her stop talking.”

  “Fu-‘atoo!”

  “What the hell is it saying anyway?”

  “She’s repeating you.”

  “Fu-‘atoo!”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “She’s a cockatoo, not a parrot. She does better with intonation than words.”

  “Put it back in its cage.” Murphy stepped forward until Alpie spread her wings, her head swiveling to glare at him with her black eyes. “Now.”

  “Why should I? Alpie likes to be out. Don’t you, sweetie?”

  “Mila. I need to talk to you. We have important details to discuss.”

  Alpie brushed her beak down my cheek, making that shushing sound she repeated whenever she sensed my roiling emotions. She hadn’t made that noise in a few weeks—more than a month. Clearly, Murphy was bad for my emotional health. “You need to go, Murphy.”

  “Not till we finish talking,” he said.

  I stayed stiff and still. I’d called him,
needed him, but some other woman was already in my place. Anger burned away the threat of tears.

  “You made it very clear over the past year you no longer want me.”

  He stepped forward ignoring Alpie’s spread wings and her dipping head—clear signs of her own agitation. “Don’t you dare put words in my mouth. You have no idea how much I missed you, how often I’ve thought of you. You hurt me when you left.”

  Thoughts swirled through my head. But only one mattered.

  “I used to sing to him. I wanted him to be ready to play music with you one day.”

  Murphy dipped his head and rested his cheek against my forehead. Was he comforting me or drawing strength from our contact?

  “I would have loved that. If I could go back, I would. You have to know that, Mila. I would have been thrilled to be his dad.”

  Kyle. Yes, of course, he wanted his son. He rubbed his palm up and down my back, soothing me with his warmth and touch. My arms crept around his waist and my shivers stopped. I rested my cheek against his chest and sighed. Murphy pulled me a little closer and our breaths synchronized. We could comfort each other now, but this moment wouldn’t mean anything later. He’d go back to his touring and I’d continue to survive.

  “Bloody hell!” he yelped.

  Alpie flew off my shoulder and landed on the bookshelf across the room. A thin line of red oozed from the cut on Murphy’s neck. He touched it, cursing when his fingers came away smeared with blood, but he didn’t say anything further. Neither did I.

  “When you chucked me over,” he said in a voice as raw as I felt, “I figured I didn’t meet your expectation somehow. That’s what hurt the most—the idea that I wasn’t enough for you. It never occurred to me you’d lie to protect me.”