Chapter 39

“Fabian?” Jon echoed incredulously, almost fumbling his coffee to the floor as he tried to lay it down. “From the team?!”

“Uh-huh.” Jay said quietly, not entirely sure if Jon’s angry tone was because he was practically accusing the guy of sexual assault, or if he was enraged at the thought of someone he knew - someone he employed - being a rapist.

His concern was swiftly allayed, though, by “The Boss’s” next words.

“Nick the prick.” Jon muttered darkly, then raised his eyes to meet Richie’s gaze, seeing the incomprehension there. “That’s what the players call him. He fucks around on his wife at the drop of a hat. Guy’s an asshole.”

“But, even so…..” Richie said slowly. “It’s quite a leap from fucking around to…..to….this!”

“I dunno.” Jon kept his eyes locked on Richie’s, knowing his friend would understand how - why - he was suddenly convinced Jay was right. Why he knew Nick would be only too happy to try to ruin his life. “I had to warn him off, couple months back. Told him he either packed it in or he was fired.”

“Packed what in?”

“He was…….coming on……to Stephanie. Never anything too blatant, but very definitely inappropriate. I mean - for fuck’s sake - she’s only fourteen!”

Richie sat silent as he thought about it. If Jon had done one of his usual bull-in-a-china-shop, heavy handed protection of his only daughter things, there was a better than even chance he’d seriously pissed Nick off. Seriously enough that, with the kind of potentially damaging knowledge he’d lucked into, Nick was more than likely capable of blackmail. And if he was perverted enough to be making moves on a kid of Steph’s age, he was probably a sick enough fuck to have done this to Billie. His fists clenched reflexively, his expression bleak enough that Jon had to ask.

“What?”

“Nothin’.” Richie lied shortly, but he couldn’t hold it back, looking from Jon to Jay - from father to son - with pain in his eyes. “I let her go, goddammit! I let her go upstairs to him. It’s my fucking fault!”

“No, it’s not!” Jon said firmly. “It’s not, Rich. Hell, if anybody’s to blame, it’s…….” He was saved from an injudicious remark, though, as Jay interrupted.

“The only person to blame for this is….” He backed off from outright accusing Nick. “…..is the guy who did it. I could blame you, Richie, for letting mom go; I could blame myself, because if I’d not got hurt mom wouldn’t have been up here at all. I could blame you, boss, for hiring Nick.” He qualified that statement quickly. “If he did it. But the truth is, only the bastard who hurt her is to blame, and we won’t know who it was for certain until mom wakes up and tells us. So, right now, all we can do is wait.”

The two older men stared at him in silence. Not only was it the longest speech either of them had heard Jay make, but his intonation was so similar to Jon’s that it was uncanny. The same talent for cutting through the bullshit of blame, for getting to the heart of the matter. And for brooking no disagreement with his words. If Jon had ever harbored a doubt about Jay being his son, that brief speech confirmed the boy - the man - as his flesh and blood.

Jay’s words were still hanging in the air as the door swung open, Kadie walking in carrying boxes of gauze, tape and antiseptic. Feeling the tension in the room, she looked immediately at Jay.

“Has something happened?” She asked, but when he looked at her and she saw his eyes clear and bright, her fears receded slightly.

“Naw, baby. We were just talkin’.”

She studied him for another second, then nodded.

“Okay. Uh…..” Kadie glanced at Richie. “Sorry, can I sit there, Richie? I need to fix up his hands.”

“Sure, Kadie.” He got to his feet instantly. “Quite a temper your boy has there.”

“Hey!” She defended jokingly, trying to defuse the anger still lingering in the room. “I saw the whole thing. The wall started it!”

The stress, the tension and the worry broke in an instant as all four of them began to laugh. It wasn’t in any way that they’d forgotten Billie, or why they were sitting in this pale-green painted room, but the normal human psyche can only take so much gut-knotting tension before something snaps. Often, that break is into floods of tears, or a full-on panic attack, but sometimes just the right thing said or done at the right time spins the tension into hilarity, and the stress drains away under the soothing balm of laughter.

As the laughter faded away, the release of tension was palpable, and as Kadie began to treat Jay’s hands he gently closed his fingers on hers, the pressure making her look at him.

“Thank you.” He barely breathed the words, his eyes saying as much as his voice.

She didn’t even answer, just wrinkled her nose at him then got back to her nursely work. Ten minutes later, both his hands were thoroughly sanitised, antisepticed and wrapped in carefully applied gauze.

“You’ll just have to be careful they don’t stiffen up too badly.” She warned him. “Keep using them as much as you can.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He purred, his expression making his meaning clear, and Richie turned away to hide a smirk. Shit, but he was a chip off the old block.

Kadie returned the remaining gauze and things to the nurse’s station, then returned to the waiting room, and they sat in relative silence for somewhere over an hour. Jay had his arm around Kadie, her head on his chest, and Jon and Richie sat on armchairs, each lost in their thoughts. As usual, with the years they’d been together, their thoughts were running pretty much in parallel, centering on what could - should - be done about Nick, if he was indeed the attacker. Even though he tried to keep his thoughts on Billie’s condition, Jon’s mind was wandering to how he should deal with the blackmail, which led him to thinking again about the things Billie had gone through to protect him - and their son - from the jackals of the media. That thought spiralled around in his brain until the only thought hammering at him, as loud and penetrating as the screams of sixty thousand people crammed into Giants Stadium, was that it was his fault. No matter what Jay said, what Richie said, hell, even what Billie might say when - if - she woke up, when you came right down to it, none of this would’ve happened if Billie hadn’t been so dead-set on protecting him. As the word ‘dead’ flicked through his brain, though, he felt a surge of nausea.

‘Jesus, what if she dies? What if she dies because she was protecting me? What if, after all this time of raising my son, loving my son, all I’ve truly brought to her is pain and death? How can I live with that on my conscience?’

Jon bolted to his feet, heading for the door.

“Jonny?” Richie watched as he yanked the door open and left the room without a word.

He knew, of course. He knew what was going through Jon’s head. Hell, they’d said it in interviews before - at times they could almost read each other’s thoughts, like some long married couple, they could finish each other’s sentences. Getting to his feet, he looked down apologetically at the shocked faces of the young couple on the couch.

“I’ll go see what’s wrong with him.” He said, offering a lame explanation. “He doesn’t like hospitals much.”

The hallway was deserted, but at the sight of a fire exit sign, Richie knew where to look, pushing the crash bar on the door to find Jon hunched on the stairs, his head buried in his hands.

“Jon?”

The singer just shook his head, refusing to look at his oldest friend.

‘My fault, my fault, my fucking fault she’s here.’

“No, it’s not.”

This time Jon did raise his head, turning to look at Richie as the older man sat next to him on the cold stairs.

“Did I say…….?”

“No, but I know what you’re thinkin’, Kidd.” Richie said kindly, one hand gripping Jon’s shoulder tightly. “You’re thinking it’s your fault. If you hadn’t gone off on the bike, if you hadn’t met Billie, if you’d been able to keep your dick in your jeans, she’d be okay. And you’re wrong. Fate is a sneaky bitch, Jon, and if things hadn’t happened this way, they’d have happened some other way. Jay was right, y’know. The only one - the only one - to blame for this is the guy who did it.”

“Fabian.” Jon spat.

“Maybe.” Richie said carefully. “But you don’t know that, and you - we - need to wait until Billie wakes up and can tell us what happened.”

“If she wakes up.”

“She will fucking wake up! Don’t you even dare think anything else!” Came a voice from above them, and they looked up in shock to find Jay standing over them.