“What’s over?”
“Everything! I fucked it…I fucked up.”
“Stephan, I have to go. I don’t have?—”
“Wait, Cassie, wait!” he barks.
“What, Stephan?” I ask with gritted teeth, wishing I’d already put the phone down.
“It’s…it’s…Melissa.”
An icy shiver snakes up my back. “What about Melissa?”
“She…” He openly sobs now before gaining control of his voice. “She lost the baby.”
The second I start knocking on his door, I am flooded with regret.
I shouldn’t be here. I should have called Kevin. Or George. Or someone else. It’s not up to me to save Stephan Greene. Not anymore.
But as the door swings open, I realise it’s too late to run away now.
He looks … a mess. His face is puffy and red. Tears and snot everywhere. He’s barely dressed – an open dress shirt and a pair of Y-fronts – and I can smell both today's and yesterday’s alcohol on him before I even step into the room.
“Thank God you’re here, Cass,” he says, and then pulls me inside.
I take hesitant steps into the lounge area of his suite. It’s half-trashed – chairs on their sides, a crack in the glass coffee table and bottles, liquid, stains, cigarette ash and stubs everywhere – and I can barely breathe from the smoke.
“We should call Kevin,” I say.
“No, no!” He shakes his head and waves his hands around. “He’ll ship me off to rehab again.”
“Rehab?Again?” I ask. This is the first I’ve heard of this.
“Just listen, Cass.” He grabs hold of my hand and pulls me through the open sliding doors to the bedroom, which is in a similar dishevelled state. There’s something about being close to his unmade bed and another array of bottles scattered around various surfaces that has a cold sweat breaking out up my neck. I’ve never felt like this with Stephan before. I’ve never felt unsafe with him. Until now.
“Stephan, I’m going to go and get Kevin. And housekeeping and a big pot of coffee.” I try to insert lightness into my voice, but when I turn to leave, he grabs my arm again, and this time hurls me back into the room, my shins knocking against the bed.
“Stephan!” I exclaim. I take a steadying breath before turning around to face him.
He looks completely horrified and destroyed, like he’s the one who just got flung across a room. “Oh, fuck, I’m sorry, Cass, I’m sosorry. I keep fucking up. Everything is so … wrong. So fucked up.” He slides down the wall and curls into a ball, sobs heaving out of his body. For all the ways he repulses me in this state, I can’t say I wouldn’t be doing the same if I’d lost a child.
“What … what happened?” I ask as I inch slightly closer to him and sit on the end of the bed. “With Melissa? And the baby?”
He stops crying and looks up at me, blinking and confused. “What do you mean?”
“You said on the phone that Melissa lost the baby?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. That’s all a mess too. That bitch.”
“Wait,” I snap. “DidMelissa lose the baby?”
“Well, she may as well have,” he says before starting to crawl across the room towards a half-empty bottle of vodka. “My mum said she’s already had the baby. But she hasn’t told me, the bitch. And now she’s got some poxy restraining order against me. I’ll never see my own child.”
My back straightens, and I have the bitterest taste in my mouth. “You told me she lost the baby,” I spit. “Why would you say that?”
After a swift swig of vodka, he crawls back towards me and wraps his arms around my knees. Looking up at me, his eyes are wide and restless. His pupils are so dilated they’re almost completely black. “To get you here. I needed you to just talk to me. Properly. All these shows. All this time on the road, and we barely speak. And the way you look at me … It’s like youhateme. What have I done to deserve that?”
I try to push his arms off me. “Let me go, Stephan.”
