Page 58 of Hurt

“I can help him.” The words surprised him. He had not anticipated speaking at all but seeing Noah’s profile looking so forlorn had pushed him to act.

“He won’t let you.” Noah’s voice was hoarse.

The teenager turned away from the door and strode toward Grant. He took a seat on one of the worn bar stools and faced out toward the seating area.

“He wasn’t always like this,” Noah finally said. “I’m not saying he was a touchy-feely sunshine kind of guy, but he smiled. And he laughed.”

Grant scrutinized Noah. He could see a myriad of emotions flittering across his face. He chewed at his lower lip. “I used to think he was so cool—like a rockstar or something. He would come into our house with his guitar and big boots. Grandma would yell at him for it, tell him to start dressing like an adult instead of some sort of thug. He would wait until her back was turned and then stick his tongue out at her.”

It was hard to connect that rebellious teen to the fractured adult he had seen today. The one who stared off into space and seemed to be so brittle that the loudest of noises would destroy him.

“It wasn’t until I was older that I realized just how hard things were for him in that house.” Noah slid off the stool and went behind the bar. He didn’t look at the place where the blood had been. Opening the fridge, he pulled out a bottle of beer and used the counter to pop the top off.

Grant didn’t lecture him about under-aged drinking. “How much do you know?” he asked instead.

Noah took a swig from the beer and made a face at the taste. “More than I did. I overheard Luther talking when I was a kid. It took a few years for me to put the pieces together.”

He settled in with the beer hanging loosely from his fingers. “You have to understand that the Becketts were obsessed with music. They thought they were some sort of musical power family. When they had my mom, they were happy, but they wanted a son. Someone who could carry on their lineage and name.” He tapped the beer bottle a few times before smiling wryly. “The problem was that grandma was barely able to conceive my mom. She was barren. They couldn’t have another child without help. You probably don’t know, but IVF is expensive. Really expensive.

“Banks turned them down for a loan because they heard how insane they were. Who thinks of themselves as some sort of musical dynasty? So, they turned to less legal sources for money.”

Grant tried to process what he was saying. “Loan sharks?”

Noah looked up at him. “More like loan monsters. They borrowed from the Vega Cabal.”

Horror dawned on Grant. He knew the Vega Cabal would lend out money—often with exorbitant interest rates and insane clauses. Their victims were no better than slaves if they couldn’t pay back what they owed.

“The money worked. Kurt was born. During her pregnancy, the Becketts got it in their head that Kurt was going to be some sort of prodigy. That he was fated or some sort of ‘chosen one.’”

“No one could live up to that,” Grant pointed out.

“Actually, someone did.”

Understanding dawned on him. “Willow.”

“Bingo. You can imagine their distress when some orphan kid without a drop of Beckett blood comes in and is everything they ever wanted. Grandma lost it a little. At one point, she wanted to do a blood transfusion between the two. That woman dragged two ten-year old’s to a hospital and demanded the hospital exchange their blood—as if musical ability could somehow be transferred that way.”

Grant had to sit down. He couldn’t fathom what it was like for a child in that home. For either of them.

“Grandpa gave up trying to control his wife. He was so focused on his composing that he just shut out his family. Because of their large age gap, my mom became a sort of surrogate for them. She tried to give them all the love they didn’t have, even after she married my dad and moved out. She begged grandma to let them come live with us. But she wouldn’t give up her prodigies.”

They fell silent. Noah was trapped in his memories. Grant imagined he was trying to reconcile the things he saw through the lens of being a child with the things he learned as an adult.

“Your mom sounds like a special person.”

Noah nodded. “I keep thinking how things would be if she were still alive. I know my dad was a good guy too, but he was always working, so I don’t remember him much. My mom, though…she would have made sure none of this happened.”

Grant didn’t know much about mothers, so he didn’t say anything.

“What happened after they died?”

“That’s where things get fuzzy,” Noah admitted. “I know Kurt dropped out of high school to make money for us. He didn’t want Willow to do it because she had a chance of making real money with her music. That’s when he started fighting.”

Fighting? Was this a missing piece in those unaccounted for four years?

“Underground fights, mostly. He would come home beat to hell and let me put Pokémon Band-Aids on his cuts. I remember he used to pull out these wads of bills just covered in blood. My teachers always wanted to call him in for meetings, but they were too afraid of him.”

Grant had been to a few of these fights. They were awful. Less a sport and more a slaughter. Like gladiators of old, people would cheer when the blood flew and boo when someone was knocked out cleanly. There were no rules, except that last one standing was the winner. Brutal and barbaric, he couldn’t imagine anyone surviving several years there. A good fighter could usually make upwards of two hundred dollars a fight, depending on the betting. Most fighters didn’t last more than a handful of fights.