Unplugged (Blue Phoenix, #3)(29)

I drop the rucksack on the floor and my heart drops with the bag. Looks like I should’ve tried harder to get Cerys’s number because I don’t think I’m going to see her again anytime soon.

****

With a well-earned Christmas beer or two, I lounge in front of the TV waiting to see who comes home. My hassled Dad arrives with his hands full of shopping bags.

“Back are you? Beer. I need one,” he says. “Help your Mum with the bags.”

Getting Dad a beer and shaking my head at his gruff greeting, I do as he asks and go outside to Mum.

“Liam! Why do you always sneak back?” she asks.

I kiss her head. “I didn’t decide until this morning.”

“How’s Jeremy?” I can’t believe she still calls him this. Jem hasn’t been Jeremy since he was in primary school, apart from if we want to annoy him. If Bryn really wants to piss Jem off, he sings him the Pearl Jam track of the same name. “Terrible business about him and that poor girl.”

“Mmm.”

She catches my look. Mum’s used to my refusal to discuss Blue Phoenix business with her. A few years ago, the press began to understand my family is told nothing, if I keep things that way; my parents and sister are left alone.

How soon can I ask Mum the question about Cerys’s whereabouts without arousing her suspicion? Inside the house, we unpack the bags together and I remember Cerys’s words about my non-rock star behaviour. As if I’d behave like Liam the rock star at home, Mum won’t stand for bad language and manners so, like all kids returning to the home of their childhood, I’m back to my childhood self again.

“I see I’ve got my bedroom back,” I say, shoving vegetables in the fridge.

“Oh, yes. Cerys and Ella went home.”

“Home?” I suspected but didn’t want to believe she’d go back to the guy who treated her like shit. “To her parents or Cardiff?”

“Craig came for her yesterday,” says Mum matter-of-factly, as if she’s gone home after a holiday.

“Oh.” I pick up the mince pies from the table and open the box, taking one out to eat. “They sorted things out then?”

“Well, I think they’re going to. I hope so, for the sake of that little girl.” She slaps my hand as I pick up a second mince pie. “Liam! Don’t eat them all.”

I chew on the sweet pastry that really doesn’t go with the beer I was drinking. Is that right? Should Cerys go back to someone who hurts her, for the sake of Ella? Cerys said Ella doesn’t get attention from her Dad. Maybe Louise has the full story.

****

Louise and company sit in the same spot as the other night: the night I kissed Cerys. I pass the Christmas tree and wonder if Ella is having her Christmas Eve in front of a different one. Shaking the thought away, I head for the pub.

Cerys is right; I’m the sweet guy who fails at the badass rock star act. I don’t do much better at the dark and brooding like Dylan either, and I knocked drugs on the head the first time Jem ended up in rehab. I’d say I don’t fit the clichés until I think of Honey. Yeah, well, our relationship isn’t what the world wants to think it is. Honey hasn’t told the press and neither have I. Are we both unsure?

Louise doesn’t spot me until I appear next to her with a vodka, which I slide toward her.

“Liam!” She hurls herself at me and I steady the stool she’s about to fall off. Her swimming eyes meet mine. “Glad you came back for Christmas. Thought you were going to disappear back to Barbie in La-La Land again.”

“I’m going back after the New Year,” I say. “Blue Phoenix isn’t exactly flavour of the month currently.”

“Yeah. How’s Jem?”

“Same. How are you?”

She raises and eyebrow at my subject switch. “Cerys left.”

“Yeah.” I fight the need to go twenty questions on her, if she’s drunk, she’ll tell me anyway.

“Can’t believe she went back to him,” she continues. “I wouldn’t.”

“Why did she?”

“Ella wanted to go home. Me and Cerys had…words, I told her she was a f-ucking idiot; but Cerys insisted Ella should have Christmas with her Dad, and then she’d decide what to do after Christmas.” Louise takes a long drink from her vodka and tonic. “I said I’d help out if she changes her mind.”

So not a definite reconciliation? As if, it matters to me.

But it does. I don’t know why, but I got sucked into Ella and Cerys’s life. This is me, soft-hearted Liam who doesn’t like people hurting, that’s why. Okay, I know that’s a lie too. What happened in the time we spent together? We knew each other before and we were drawn together again by a shared past and a shared hurt but this is more. Connecting with Cerys was like plugging into a new energy, a resonance that opened my heart and called it home.

“I can help her too.”

“You can help by staying away, Liam. She’s confused enough without you hassling her.”

“I meant financially!” I snap.

“Sure you do!” She drains her glass. “I know you kissed her. Nice one, messing with her head like that.”

“I didn’t exactly force myself on her!”

“Yeah, if you’d screwed her I’d punch your face!”