Read Chapter 18: A Tour Bus Confession

The tour bus smelled of stale cigarettes, cheap aftershave, and the particular sweat that only accumulated after a hundred miles of British motorway. Mara had claimed the seat across from Robbie an hour ago, and neither of them had said a word since Birmingham.

The others dozed in the back. Dex sprawled across two seats with a newspaper over his face. The drummer, Mickey, snored with his mouth open. Only Mara and Robbie remained awake, watching the grey landscape slide past the smeared windows.

His bass rested in the overhead rack, but his fingers drummed silently on his knee, picking out a pattern she didn't recognize. She watched the movement for a long time before she spoke.

“You had a daughter.”

The words hung in the stale air. His fingers stopped.

“Who told you that?”

“No one.” She tucked her feet beneath her on the vinyl seat. “I've been watching you for months. You flinch when children run past on the street. You gave that little girl at the Leeds gig your pick, the one with the pink coat, and you watched her for ten minutes after. You didn't smile once.”

He turned to look at her fully. The bus hit a pothole, and the overhead rack rattled. His eyes were the colour of a winter sea, and right now they were unreadable.

“That's not proof.”

“You're right.” She leaned forward slightly. “But you told me about your father. About the boy's home. About teaching yourself bass in a cold dormitory with blistered fingers because it was the only thing that didn't hurt to hold. And then you stopped. You always stop right at the edge, Robbie. Right at the place where it matters.”

The bus groaned around a curve. Somewhere in the back, Mickey shifted and muttered in his sleep.

Robbie looked away, out the window. The lights of a passing lorry swept across his face, making it look carved from stone.

“Her name was Chloe.” His voice was low, barely there. “She was three years old. She had my mother's hair — dark, curly. Couldn't get a brush through it without a fight.”

Mara stayed very still.

“I was eighteen. Still in the boy's home, but they let me out for visits to my aunt's place. The girl — her mother — was someone I knew from the estate. It wasn't anything real. Just two scared kids who didn't know any better.” He swallowed. “I signed away my rights. Her mother married a decent bloke, a bricklayer. They moved to Luton. I thought that was it. I thought I'd get my life together and maybe, one day, when I was someone, I'd find my way back to her.”

His hands were fisted on his knees now.

“When Chloe was two, her mother wrote to me through the home. Said Chloe had a heart murmur. Said it might be nothing, might be something. She wanted me to know.” A pause. “Six months later, she wrote again. Chloe had died in her sleep. A defect they never caught in time. She went to bed one night and just... didn't wake up.”

The bus hummed. The tyres roared over tarmac.

Mara's chest ached. She didn't speak.

“I didn't cry.” Robbie said it flatly, like a confession. “I read the letter in the common room. I folded it into my pocket. And I didn't cry. I thought there was something wrong with me — that I was broken. Everyone else cried at funerals. I stood at a tiny coffin and felt nothing. Just emptiness, like someone had hollowed me out with a spoon.” He turned to her then, and the pain in his eyes was raw and open. “That's when I went quiet. People thought I was moody, or aloof, or just strange. But the truth is, I stopped trusting myself. Because if I could feel nothing when my own daughter died, then what was the point of feeling anything ever again?”

Mara shifted across the seat, closing the distance between them. The vinyl creaked.

“You're not broken,” she said quietly.

“You don't know that.”

“I know you.” She reached out and took one of his fisted hands in both of hers. He tensed, but didn't pull away. His skin was cold. “I know you taught yourself bass because the strings against your fingers were the only thing sharp enough to feel. I know you remember every fan's name you've ever met. I know you gave me your coat on the fire escape even though I was the one who'd been lying to you for weeks.” She squeezed. “That's not a man who feels nothing. That's a man who's terrified of what happens if he lets himself feel it all at once.”

Something cracked in his expression. A little fracture in the stone.

“I don't want to lose anything else,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Everyone I've ever loved — my mother, Chloe, even the lads in the group. Every time I let someone in, they leave. Or they die. Or they look at me differently once they know what's inside.” He met her eyes. “You're the first person I've told the whole truth. About the money. About Chloe. About any of it. And I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what happens if I let you in and then I lose you too.”

The bus hit another stretch of rough road, rattling the windows in their frames. Mara held his hand steady through it.

“You don't get to decide that,” she said. “You don't get to pre-emptively grieve something that hasn't happened yet. That's not protection, Robbie. That's just fear wearing a smarter coat.”

He let out a breath that was almost a laugh. Almost.

“Says the woman who ran from her debts and changed her name.”

“I ran because I was scared.” She met his gaze without flinching. “And I stopped running when I found something worth standing still for.” She left the sentence there, open, unclaimed. “I'm tired of running. I'm tired of hiding. We're going to develop Lenny's film when we get back, and it's either going to make us or break us. But I'd rather do it with someone who knows exactly who I am than with someone who only knows the safe parts.”

Robbie was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, he turned his hand over and laced his fingers through hers.

“You should sleep,” he said. “We've got another four hours to London.”

“I'm not tired.”

“You are. You just don't know it yet.”

Despite herself, Mara smiled. She didn't let go of his hand, and he didn't pull away. They sat in the dark together as the hours unspooled, the motorway lights flickering past like a strip of undeveloped film.

Near dawn, as the sky began to lighten over the outskirts of London, Robbie spoke again.

“When we develop that film,” he said quietly, “I need you to know something. Whatever we find on it — whatever Lenny was up to — I'm in. All the way. No going back.”

Mara turned her head against the seat rest to look at him. His profile was sharp against the grey dawn light.

“Why?”

“Because you asked me to stand still.” He looked at her. “And for the first time in eleven years, I think I might actually want to.”

The bus rolled on toward the city, but something had shifted in the space between them. The film waited for them in London, coiled in its cannisters, holding secrets they couldn't yet imagine. And for the first time, Mara thought she understood what Robbie was afraid of losing.

It wasn't his stillness. It was the possibility of finally being seen.