As Jenny turned off the shower and grabbed a towel, Nik tried to ignore the way the water ran in rivulets down the body he’d taken so viciously minutes earlier.
“You’ve known this all along,” she said. “You’re going off on tour, Nik. And I don’t—”
“Trust me? Right? You don’t think I get how fucking lucky I am to have you back. You don’t realize I’d move heaven and fucking earth for you.”
Jenny placed her hands on her hips. “Trust isn’t a fucking switch, Nik. You can’t just flip it. If that’s how it works, I would have done it that day we spent at the lake.”
“What does it mean to be sorry, Jenny? Tell me your definition, and I’ll spend my life living up to it. How will I know when I have been sorry enough for you?”
“Nik,” she cried out. “It’s not that simple, and you know it. I don’t have magical answers. I don’t know when the feelings of doubt will go away. If I could have wished them away, I would have stayed in that apartment and waited for you to come home and told you not to do it again. Because I loved you that much. I would have tried to forgive you. But I know the next time you’d gone out on a gig, I would have wondered who you were with and what you were doing with them. Instead, I left with nothing.”
“I wish you’d picked up when I called. We could have worked it through. Or you should have called me. We could have talked about it.”
“I DID! And when Lennon answered and told me, I knew it was true. Without his help, I—” Jenny gasped and cut herself off.
Lennon.
A roar of fury filled him. “What the fuck did Lennon tell you?” he growled.
“Nik. It doesn’t matter. It was all the truth. Don’t be mad at Lennon, he’s been a good friend. He—”
But Nik didn’t stay to listen to the answer.
* * *
Lennon fucking knew.
It buzzed through his brain as he pulled on clothes and jogged up the street to Elliott’s house. He knew his brother would still be pissed, but he needed his help to find Lennon. When he walked into the driveway, he saw Dred and Jordan’s cars, which meant they’d never left, but Lennon’s car was back in the driveway. Everybody was back here. Except him.
He let himself into the house, the home he’d lived in all those years with the band. It no longer felt like his. When he walked into the living room, they were all there, staring at him as if he were a nuclear bomb that was about to go off. Which he was. Because Lennon sat by the fireplace, not even having the decency to look up at him. For years, Nik had been the one who had protected Lennon, and now . . .
“Nik,” Dred said. “Look. Can we talk about this some more? We were just thinking through what you said about next year and—”
Nik ignored Dred and walked straight past him and stood in front of Lennon.
Lennon didn’t so much as look up.
“You fucking knew,” he snarled.
Lennon didn’t move. Didn’t say a word.
“All this fucking time.”
Jordan stood and placed a hand on Nik’s shoulder. “Calm down, Nik.”
Nik shrugged his hand away. “Fuck off, Jordan. This is between me and Lennon.”
Elliott stood, too.
What did they think they were going to do?
“At least have the fucking balls to stand up and look at me. Did you or did you not know where Jenny went? And have you or have you not kept in touch with her?”
Lennon shook his head, then stood. “Yeah. I knew. And yeah, I kept in touch with her.”
Ignoring the shocked responses of the others, Nik drew his fist back and hit Lennon square in the jaw. The move sent Lennon crashing into the side table, which collapsed beneath his weight. A small crystal vase fell into the fireplace, where it promptly shattered. Before Lennon could right himself, Nik fell on his knees on top of him. “Why the fuck would you keep that from me?”
Lennon tried to buck him off, a feeble effort, and Nik punched him again, harder this time. Blood appeared on the side of Lennon’s lip.
“Enough!” Jordan shouted as he and Elliott dragged Nik off Lennon. But Nik was nowhere near done. The feeling of having been betrayed by Lennon was almost more than he could handle. “I fucking looked out for you since you showed up at the home. When these guys wanted to get a different drummer, one who could tour with us before you were old enough, I was the one who argued to give you a shot, to keep you as one of us. Fuck . . .” he gasped, running out of breath as the sense of betrayal washed over him.
“Is it true?” Dred asked Lennon who sat on the floor with his arms flopped over his knees.
Lennon took a deep breath. “Yeah. It’s true. Jenny . . . she . . . fuck. It’s hard to explain . . . what Nik did was wrong, and she wanted to get away from him. She called once she’d seen the article, and you’d left your phone on the bus. She wanted to get away to think, so I gave her everything I had in my bank account to buy a car to get away to Ottawa. And then I’d periodically send her cash, which she always spent on the kids she was looking after.” Lennon shook his head. “She deserved better than you gave her, dude.”
“Why did you help her?” Jordan asked.
Lennon shook his head. “The why doesn’t matter, but she begged me not to tell Nik, to give her a chance to sort her head out.”
Nik shrugged out of Jordan’s hold.
“Nik,” Dred said. “This isn’t you. You don’t do crazy. You do thoughtful. You are the steady anchor.”
“Well, I’m fucking fed up of being everyone’s support system.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket and took the key to this house—his former home—off it and threw it on the ground by Elliott’s feet. “I don’t need this bullshit.” He walked to the door and yanked it open. “Especially when he can’t even be honest with me.”
“My sister’s name was Jennifer too,” Lennon shouted, the anguish in his voice palpable.
Nik looked over at the group who were all looking at Lennon as if he was a stranger. In all those years, he’d never mentioned a sibling.
Ever.
And he’d used the word “was.”
“Lennon,” Nik said, the anger he had felt only moment before beginning to dissipate. Yes, he wanted to try to get away from putting everybody’s needs above his, but this was too important. Whatever had happened to Lennon had left him with pain even greater than Nik’s own. “What happened to—”
“No, fuck you,” Lennon said angrily. “I’m not talking about her, so keep on going to wherever the fuck you were going.”
Nik studied Lennon’s face as he pushed the door shut. “You helped Jenny because she shared a name with your sister.”
Lennon ran his hands through his hair and nodded.
“And you said her name was Jennifer,” Nik asked quietly, walking back around to the sofa to stand at Lennon’s side. Lennon didn’t look up.
Dred moved to Lennon’s other side.
Then Lennon spoke so quietly that Nik could barely hear his voice. “You can’t leave me too, Nik.”
It felt as though Nik’s stage amps had fallen onto his chest, rendering it impossible to breathe, a simple inhalation out of the question.
Could he leave them? Really?
He looked around at them all, each one looking back expectantly—except for Lennon, who still stared at the floor.
Even though he knew how much Lennon struggled with physical touch, he placed his hands on his shoulders, ignoring the way Lennon gasped. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “But I need to rethink how I do all of this. How I balance it and manage it without letting you guys down. And there’s somewhere I have to go this afternoon to figure it all out. But I’ll be at rehearsal tomorrow, okay?”
Lennon nodded and then hugged him. It happened so freaking quickly that Nik only had time to register Lennon’s arms around him before they were gone. “I’m sorry,” Lennon whispered and then disappeared down into Elliott’s recording studio.
Elliott stepped up next and hugged him tight
ly. “Nothing you could ever do could let us down, brother.”
Nik swallowed deeply as Jordan stepped up toward him. “You fucking go off and do something stupid, I’ll have to hunt you down. You know I can’t deal with disappearing acts, right?” he said.
Nik nodded, choked by the pure acceptance from his brothers.
Then Dred stepped forward and threw his arms around him. “Thank you,” he said gruffly. “For saving all of us, Nik. It was never your job, but you did it anyway. I know you are doubting who you are right now, but you are the man who saved each and every one of us, and we love you.”
With pursed lips, Nik tried to get his emotions under control.
“Go,” Dred said, placing his house key back in his hand. “Go do what you need to. We’ll be waiting for you to get back, and then maybe we should sit down and have that conversation we started this morning.”
Nik watched them all disappear into the recording studio, and he was torn. Torn that he would miss the opportunity to have some direction, torn that they might need him to step in when it all got out of control. Torn that Lennon had just shared something so massive, something that had to have been eating away at him all those years and about which he’d never been able to talk to them.
He left the house and closed the door behind him. As he walked down the street to his own home, the reality of the conversation he’d had with Jenny in the bathroom hit him. He was asking the band for time to sort his own feelings out, to figure out who he was without the pressures of recording and touring. All Jenny was asking for was the same. Time to sort out her concerns over trusting him, time for the two of them to reconnect. Suddenly the race to the end, the two of them living together, married with kids, didn’t seem so important, as long as they were on the path to it, as long as there was just the two of them. As long they were taking steps toward the end goal, did it really matter how long it took to get there?
Nik jogged up the steps to the front door just as Jenny pulled it open. She was dressed, her wet hair in a bun, but none of that mattered. She was his, and he needed to stop worrying about whether she was going to leave him and just enjoy their time together. The thought shocked him. Subconsciously he’d been waiting for her to give up on him and leave, and in the process, he’d given her reason to.
“Are you okay?” she asked, placing her hands on his face as if inspecting him for injury.
He pulled her to him, savoring the feel of her against him, not in a sexual way, but in the way that brought him true comfort. “I’m okay. And before you ask, so is Lennon.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “I’m sorry, Nik. I’m sorry about my fears and doubts. I mean, every day they shrink a little more, but—”
“Don’t say ‘sorry’ to me,” Nik said, running his fingers through her hair. “I have somewhere I need to go, babe. There’s something I need to see to help me unravel all of this. But I’ll be home tonight, maybe tomorrow morning. I want you to stay here tonight, so we can talk when I get back. Will you do that for me, please?”
A light flurry began to fall, and Jenny shivered. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll be right here waiting for you. But drive safely,” she said, looking at the ominous sky.
Ninety minutes later, he found himself pulling off the 403 at the Brant exit. Ninety minutes where he’d ignored the ring of his phone and had focused only on the slick road ahead. Barely the first of December and wet slushy snow was falling to the ground, making it tough to see where he was going. It had been impossible to see Lake Ontario as he’d made his way along the highway.
Nik felt a tightening in his chest as he turned onto Mohawk Road. Family homes with cream siding stood on one side of the street, a tree-lined field on the other. His GPS told him he was at his location, and then he saw the large white sign:—WOODLAND CULTURAL CENTRE—and underneath it, its former name, MOHAWK INSTITUTE RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL. Nik parked his car and walked up to the large brick building, the one his grandmother referred to as “The Mush Hole.” The place his grandfather had held accountable for his hearing loss, having been repeatedly slapped over his ear when he’d tried to speak his own language.
He tried to imagine what the imposing building with a pointed gray roof and large balconies on the first and second floors must have looked like to small children taken from their families and communities. He imagined the feeling of fear his grandmother must have felt at age seven walking up the steps, being forced into a uniform, and having her hair cut so she matched the other kids.
A large blue sign with the title THE MOHAWK INSTITUTE told him what he already knew—that this school for children of the Six Nations Iroquois living on the Grand River was designed to assimilate students to the colonial way. What it didn’t mention was how they were brutally forced to learn English and move away from their own languages and cultures and traditions.
The pit sat heavy in his stomach as he thought through what his grandparents had been forced to endure. What his dad had endured living with the survivors of the residential school system. And he allowed himself to embrace the impact that it had had on his own family.
On him.
He allowed the energy of the place to flow through him. If his ancestors could survive this, then he would do everything in his power to survive his own demons. With his own music. With a house that was almost stripped to the bones, like him. With music that reflected everything going on inside.
With Jenny.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jenny woke to find a hot chest pressed to her naked back and arms wrapped around her. Nik had come home at some point in the night. She sighed in relief.
“You okay there, babe?” he said gruffly, his breath tickling her neck as he pulled her closer.
She turned in his arms and wiggled closer to him. “I’m fine, was just worried about you. Sometimes it seems as if you are carrying the weight of the world on these shoulders,” she said, running her hands up his arms to his neck.
Nik pressed his lips to hers, and she accepted them. His hand crept up her hip. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what I said to you in the bathroom yesterday. ‘What does it mean to be sorry?’”
“In what way?” she asked, wanting to know what troubled him.
“I looked up the word in the dictionary. Feeling sorrow, regret, or penitence. I guess I’ve been stuck in all of those for years. There is a bunch of shit going on in my head. My mom, my dad, my grandparents . . . all of which I need to sort out. But it dawned on me while I was coming back from Elliott’s yesterday that I’m asking for time from the band to sort things out in my head. And all the while, I’m being a selfish prick, trying to hurry you on past your valid concerns because I’m scared shitless that I’m going to lose you. That you are going to wake up one morning and decide you can’t take it, the not knowing, and leave. And that would kill me.”
Jenny shook her head. “I don’t see that happening, Nik. It’s been eight years, but you were still on my mind, even before all of this.”
Nik smiled softly, and a sense of calm filled the bedroom. “Unless you need me to keep going, I’m going to stop apologizing for being a dick. Instead, I’m just going to be the man you can rely on a thousand times over. Every day I’m here, and when I am out on tour. I’m going to work hard to never give you a reason to doubt me.”
She thought about his words, about how she was letting what had happened hang between them. “Then I’m going to try and let it go, Nik. I have to believe this is going to work between us or it never will. I don’t quite know how, but maybe we should, I don’t know. . . . Maybe we should talk to someone together about it. Resolve any lingering differences, make sure we get it all out and deal with it.”
“Are we really doing couples therapy after a month back together?” He grimaced, then grinned. “I’m joking. Yes. I will do that so we can lay out some new ground rules.”
Jenny smiled and kissed the side of his mouth softly. “Thank you.”
“I’ve got some shit to sort out with my
brothers too. And with myself. I don’t know how all that’s going to turn out.”
“We’re all constantly changing, Nik. Evolving who we are. There isn’t a bad outcome when it comes to being your own authentic self.”
Nik pulled her closer. “You want to feel my big authentic self?” he asked, lifting her thigh so he could press up against her.
“I definitely want to feel your big authentic self.” She gasped and then looked straight into his eyes. “As long as it isn’t an attempt at a big authentic distraction from a big authentic conversation.”
Nik placed his forehead to hers. “It’s probably a bit of both,” he admitted. “But I think I can only handle this in pieces, babe.”
“Then in pieces is how we’ll handle it. Kind of like the house. It’s going to be a demovation for another six months, right?”
Nik laughed. “A demovation?”
“Fifty percent demolition, fifty percent renovation, a hundred percent chaos. Anyway, you’re missing the analogy. We can’t rip it all down because you’ve chosen to live in it while the reno takes place. But we can tear bits apart in pieces and rebuild something stronger and more beautiful that what was there before.”
Nik’s eyes bore a dark intensity. “I like that,” he said quietly. “I like that a lot. In the analogy, do you move in with me as we continue to demovate?”
She thought back to his earlier comments about time. “I’m going to stay in my own place until after the Canada tour is over and you come home.” She said it confidently, not with drama or negativity. “I need to know I can go through this, Nik. And I want to be in my apartment close to work. Just give me that space.”
Nik pressed his lips to hers, and she savored the sweetness and sincerity. “Fine, but I’m giving you a key so you can come and go. And I want to walk through the plans for the house with the architect so you can have some input. I never want this to feel like the house I built. I want it to feel like our home.”
Nikan Rebuilt Page 21
