Page 73 of Second Song

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.

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