“You fucking liar!” I suddenly shouted. “You promised you wouldn’t take that stuff anymore. You promised!”
“I’m a liar?!” Risk screamed in anger as he ripped his sobriety coin from his neck and threw it at my feet. “Me?”
“Yes, you! You said you wouldn’t use anymore.”
“And you said you had heard my songs.”
I wiped away falling tears.
“I have a reason for that!”
Risk humourlessly laughed as he struggled against his friends but couldn’t break their hold on him.
“I thought you had changed,” I whimpered. “But you haven’t.”
Risk twitched left, right and centre.
“I thought everything had changed for the better for us. I hoped and prayed and d’you want to know why? Because you’re the only one who fills the empty space inside of me.”
He said nothing as he tried to focus on me, sweat beading on his forehead.
“Why did you do that to me out there? Why would you hurt me like that, Risk?”
Risk couldn’t stand up straight, the drugs he had taken mixed with the alcohol were working their way quickly into his system. May was on his left and Hayes on his right, all three of them were staring at me. Risk was the only one who looked furious.
“Did you bring me here just to humiliate me in front of your fans?” I demanded. “D’you hate me that much that you wanted to hurt me like this?”
“I never want to hurt you, but you always hurt me,” Risk slurred. “You don’t know your own so-songs. You d-don’t know th-them.”
I had no idea what he was saying.
“My songs?” I repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Your songs!” he snapped. “They’re all y-your songs and you don’t know any of th-them because you’ve erased me! You’re su-supposed to hear me and you don’t.”
I felt as if he’d slapped me.
“Those songs . . . they’re about me?”
Risk laughed like a mad man.
“It’s why I call you muse, Frankie,” Angel said quietly from behind me. “You’re Risk’s muse.”
“Every song I’ve ever wr-written is about you because I’m fucking stupid and c-couldn’t let you go even after nine years, but guess what, you heartless fucking bitch? Tonight you made it cl-clear. We’re over. Forever.”
His insult stung more than it should have because he had never called me a name like that before.
“You’ve got it wrong, Risk.”
“Oh, do I, te-temptress?” He tried, and failed, to break out of his friends’ hold once again. “Stupid Risk is wrong a-again, am I?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Stupid Risk, you are, because I’d have told you why I don’t know Blood Oath’s songs if you had asked me. I wasn’t keeping it from you on purpose, I just didn’t know how to tell you!”
“Then t-tell me.” He stared me down. “Tell. Me. Frankie.”
“I don’t know any of your band’s songs, because I’ve never listened to them out of choice.” I trembled. “I don’t listen to your songs because your voice breaks me. D’you understand that? It breaks me!”
Risk struggled to remain upright, but his eyes never left mine. Not once.
“What?”
“You heard me,” I shouted. “I couldn’t hear you sing because I couldn’t cope with how much I missed and hurt for you. Not because I hated you. I never hated you. I’ve loved you since I was fifteen, you callous bastard! You’re my night and day!”
Tears poured from my eyes and I tried my best to quickly wipe them away. I hated that I was crying in front of May, Hayes, Summer and Angel. Mine and Risk’s drama shouldn’t have to be put on their shoulders but everywhere he was, they weren’t far away from him.
“I wear my earphones everywhere I go because, like a fool, I’m weak for you.” I hiccupped. “It’s pointless to try and block you because I hear you every night in my dreams. You’re haunting me and you have the nerve to tell me I don’t know your songs because I’ve erased you? Risk, erasing you would mean erasing myself.”
He looked like he was struggling to breathe and I knew all too well how that felt.
“I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have left my mum. I shouldn’t have agreed to being friends with you. I shouldn’t have had sex with you. I shouldn’t have let you walk back into my life.” I exhaled a painful breath. “Nothing has changed, we’re still worlds apart from each other and I think we always will be. You’re not good for me and I’m definitely not good for you. We can’t do this. We were stupid to think that we could try to be something. We can’t be anything.”
“Frankie, just . . . just wait. I can’t think.”
“Goodbye, Risk.” I backed towards the door of the dressing room. “Keep chasin’, rock star.”
When I turned and fled the room, Risk screamed my name and the raw pain I heard in his voice hit me like a tonne of bricks but I didn’t stop running. I needed to get away, I needed space, I needed to think . . . I needed to go home to Southwold and put Risk and this too-big-for-me world out of my mind. It was time I closed Risk’s chapter in my life.