Page 20 of All the Forbidden Things

His blue eyes dart to mine. “She’s yours.”

I finally let out the breath I was holding and laugh while taking in another.

When I look up, Mel moves the hand that’s still holding the vegetable peeler to cover her mouth as she cries.

Cal is leaning against the worktop with his hands laced behind the back of his head while Mum and Jake look between us all, both of them frowning.

“Come and sit down for a sec please, Mum,” I say.

“Max, if you want to eat this dinner before you go back to the hospital, I need to get these potatoes in the oven,” she complains.

“I’m not going back to the hospital. Come and sit down.” I’m not sure when I made the decision not to go back to the hospital, but I suddenly have no desire to be anywhere near Whitney or her family.

With a huff, Mum dries her hands and sits at the table next to me. “What’s this?” she asks, eyeing the paternity results in my hand.

“Before Whitney left, she told me that the affair with Gardener had been going on since before we were married, before Layla was conceived.”

Mum looks from the piece of paper to me and frowns before her hand comes up to her mouth. “Oh, Max, no.” She shakes her head.

“Fuck me! That woman’s a piece of work.” Jake steps forward and reads the results from over Mum's shoulder.

“She’s mine, Mum. It’s okay. She’s mine.” I lean forward and brush away the tears streaming down her cheeks with my thumb.

She throws her arms around my neck and pulls Layla and me in for a cuddle. “If that bitch lives through this, I’m gonna fucking kill her,” she whispers against my ear. And for the first time in days, I allow myself to smile.

Max

Sitting in what is quitepossibly the world’s most uncomfortable chair, I watch my wife sleep. It’s been five days since her surgery, three days since she was brought out of the medically induced coma, and one week since she told me she was leaving me.

I’d spoken to her dad on the phone briefly last night, and he’d told me Whit had asked him to call and ask me to visit her. The call had been awkward. Whit isn’t close to her parents, and I’ve barely ever spoken to them. Her dad apologised for his daughter's behaviour, and I agreed to come to the hospital but only on the condition that he, his wife, and Deana, Whitney’s sister, who’d travelled with them from the States, stay away and give us privacy.

I have no clue what I’m gonna say to Whit, no clue what I even want to say or what I want her to say to me. I care about her because she’s my wife and the mother of my child. I still love her. But the way I love her now isn’t the same way I loved her last week. I love her now because of our shared history, but I’m no longerin lovewith her.

I don’t think this is a knee-jerk reaction. I don’t think I’ve come to this conclusion out of spite, hurt, or anger. It’s just the way I feel.

I’ve spent the past five days locked away from the world. I’ve kept the television and radio off, and stayed away from social media. And aside from a quick call from Jay, I’ve only spoken to Aaron, my mum, Mel, and my other bandmates. I relayed a message to Jerry via Aaron that I wouldn’t be putting out any kind of statement. Why should I? This was their mess to deal with, not mine.

I’ve no idea what had been put out there, but the press had remained camped outside my house and had been calling my team and anyone else they could think of, asking for a statement from me.

I’d refused.

Fuck. Them.

The press and I have never had the greatest of relationships. It was the one part of my career I loathed. I smashed up a few hotel rooms and was portrayed as one of the music industry’s bad boys. I grew up, stopped smashing up hotel rooms, and was still portrayed as a bad boy. It didn’t matter what the facts were, they reported whatever the fuck they wanted anyway.

We were kids when we made it big. After years of playing for no one but our schoolmates at parties, we began to pack out pubs and bars. Before I’d turned twenty-one, we’d been picked up by Carnage Creations, signed a recording contract worth more zeros than I could comprehend, and we were heading for our first world tour.

Like the name of our band, we were Young.

We were Wild.

And even before Jake came along, a lot of what we did was very, very, wrong. But we did it anyway.

Cal met Mel on our first trip to the States. She was barely eighteen but joined us for the rest of our tour and was pregnant just six months later, but it didn’t slow us down. It took Cal’s dad, Pete, and stepmum, Lainy, being killed, leaving Cal to raise his seven-year-old half-sister, to do that. Cal had no choice but to grow up. He was just twenty-three and suddenly Dad to a two and a seven-year-old.

So, I just got fucked up and into even more trouble on my own. I did all of the usual shit. I lived the sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle, but I was bored and lonely, which only led me to get into more trouble. Then Jake joined the band, and I had a new playmate. For a couple of years, things were crazy, out of control. Everything was done to excess until I was woken one morning in the bed of the wife of some lord, or laird, or whatever the fuck his title was, in the Scottish Highlands, by Lennon Layton pouring a bucket of freezing cold water over me.

I was dragged back to London, admitted to Winslow House, and told to sort my shit out.