Downfall by S.D. Wasley

  Chapter 2: Fortitude

  Jude and I hardly spoke on the way back to the party. It was like he knew he’d done something wrong. I badly wanted to know more about Cain but forced myself not to ask. I couldn’t let Jude see how shaken up I was. My thoughts flew to Cain’s request that I return the next night. Was it for his own sake? Or some other reason?

  Albion was drunk when we arrived at the dwindling party, so drunk he was getting sleepy. At least it was easy to convince him to leave. Jude helped me load him into the car and bade me an uneasy goodbye, looking like he had something else he wanted to say. I pretended not to notice and drove Alby home, thankful for the driving lessons Dad’s bodyguard gave me during the last tour. Now I just needed to get my license and make it official.

  “You’ll love having me around for the chauffeuring, if nothing else,” I told my cousin.

  “Noooo,” he said, his tone petulant. “I don’t want you driving! I want you to get drunk with me, Frankie.”

  “I don’t drink. Not to excess.”

  Albion groaned. “Wrong! What kinda eighteen-year-old doesn’t drink to excess?”

  I had to laugh. “One of the virtues of touring for the last three years: no time to learn the vices of normal teens.”

  “Boring.”

  I helped Albion get from the car to the cottage but had to wait while he took a pee. It was the longest pee I’d ever had the dubious honor of hearing; into the fishpond, no less. I hoped it wouldn’t harm the koi and told him he was a disgusting pig, but he just giggled.

  “Francesca Theresa Caravaggio,” he announced. I glanced anxiously at the Main House, praying he wouldn’t wake Uncle Max. “You have got to get that carrot out of your ass. While you’re my captive this year I’m going to make sure you’re naughty as often as possible. I’m gonna get you drunk so you lose your inhib...hibitions. I’m gonna watch you do something spectac―” he hiccupped mid-word “―spectac’ly stupid. And I’m gonna see you fall madly in love so you can divest yourself of that vexatious virginity you’re still burdened with.”

  “You have no idea whether I’m a virgin or not,” I retorted. “And either way, it’s none of your damn business.”

  Albion glanced over his shoulder, causing him to wobble dangerously over the fishpond. “You’ve ’smuch as confessed with that defensive ’tude.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to shag everything with a pulse. I’m not like you.”

  “I don’t shag everything with a pulse!” he exclaimed. “I only shag gorgeous things with a pulse.”

  “Oh, my apologies. I forgot about your high standards.”

  “Just because they all want me doesn’t mean they all get me, Frankie.”

  I couldn’t help laughing at that. “All of them, Alby? Impressive.”

  “Okay, maybe not quite all of them,” he conceded. “There’s probably a handful that, you know, are in a coma ... or bat for the other team or something.”

  He finally finished his marathon pee and rearranged himself before staggering toward the door.

  “Lemme in. So thirsty.” He collapsed on the sofa and I got him a water. “Thanks, Frankie-boo,” he sighed after a glug. “You’re the best. It’s gonna be fun living together. ’Member we used to talk about this? Plan it?”

  “That was different. We used to plan getting an apartment in the city and going to uni together.”

  “This is almost the same,” he said.

  Uhh, not so much. Bunking together in the Old House―the rundown cottage at the back of my uncle’s large, modern home―did not resemble our childhood fantasy in the least. Especially since it was happening while Albion took a second lazy gap year after wasting the first one partying in Europe. And I wasn’t at university, either. I was ingloriously repeating my senior year at the local college.

  “Part of that plan was getting independent of our parents. You know? Not relying on their money?” I gazed at him significantly.

  “Pah,” was all he said. “Hey, you hear from y’mum lately?”

  “I get the occasional email or birthday card.”

  “How long zat been goin’ on?” Albion was fading fast. “Ever since y’started touring with Unc’Don, huh?”

  I didn’t want to discuss my parents, especially while Albion was drunk and feeling honest. But I needn’t have worried. He showed signs of falling asleep on the sofa so I rescued his glass of water and convinced him to go to bed. He used me for support, singing snatches of Les Miserables songs all the way down the hall. I helped him take off his low-heeled boots and tight jeans, and he curled himself into bed, still wearing a recycled calico shirt he was utterly enamored with.

  “Frankie?” He beckoned me close and breathed boozy breath into my face. “Would you wipe off my makeup?”

  I guffawed. “I draw the line at that, Alby.” But I fetched his branded makeup wipes and tossed them onto his bed so he could tend his beautiful skin himself.

  “I luz you, girl!” he called after me.

  “Love you, too.”

  I paused to check out my new bedroom from the doorway. The wallpaper was outdated but Uncle Max had ordered a load of flat-pack furniture so it had a new bed, desk, and wardrobe, together with fresh aquamarine bedclothes. I wondered who’d chosen the color scheme. Albion, maybe? I would have expected more new season colors from him, though. A box of my stuff was still sitting in the middle of the floor. Things from my room at home. Home―Dad’s house―a mile down the road, although it was only home to my sister and the housekeeper right now. My clothes were still folded in the big roller suitcase I always used on tour. Part of me was reluctant to unpack. That would be accepting I’d been left behind for the year. The year. Who was I kidding? If things went well with Starr playing Dad’s personal assistant I was probably off the tour circuit for good. Dad would push me to go to university.

  A wave of nervous nausea came over me. I couldn’t bear the loss of travelling ... the thrill of every fresh city; lazy afternoons once the day’s work was complete, wandering riversides, markets, or historic sites. Dad was always so tired after a gig he neither knew nor cared where I was. That experience of freedom was like soothing a stinging sore on my soul. And assisting Dad was my identity, dammit. How could I go back to the pace of life in this bland country town after being on the road, almost continually busy, for three years? How was I supposed to fill my hours?

  Unfamiliar bed. Albion’s snoring from the room next door. The first night of my exile.

  Cain’s face.

  I didn’t sleep well that night.