Finding Harmony Page 3

  But that would only cause another argument. I didn’t want to argue with him anymore, it was exhausting.

  He gives me a firm shake, trying to force an answer out of me. I had to tell him the truth. The truth was dangerous but he had to know.

  “Because…”

  His eyes burn in to me, a tiny flicker of the old Trey reappearing in them.

  “…because I love you. I’ve always loved you, I never stopped…”

  He releases his grip on me and his hands fall to his sides. He backs off a little but still keeps his closeness with me.

  I didn’t know if it was the answer he wanted to hear or not, whether it shocked him or pleased him but it was the truth. I cared about why he was messing his life up so much because I still loved him, I still felt drawn to him, and I still felt like he belonged to me and me to him.

  The tears pinch at my eyes and it takes everything in me to try and hold them back. It’s silent for only a minute or two but it feels like forever as I wait nervously for his response.

  “But… what about Leo?”

  “You don’t just stop feeling something for someone because you start feeling something for someone else…”

  I look up at him and the sight alone forces the salty tear water to start streaming down my face.

  He was looking at me the way he always use to look at me, the way every young girl wants to be looked at.

  He lifts his hand up to my face and carefully wipes the tears away under my eyes. I place my hand on his and as if he’d just read my mind he moves his arms and wraps them around my waist, pulling me up in to a tight embrace. I’d been waiting for this hug for years, yearning for his touch, to feel him close to me once again, to breathe in his sweet scent.

  “I’m sorry”, he whispers in my ear so softly, so heartfelt.

  With that said, it was as if the argument had never happened, it was as if the past four years had never happened. I’d seen his flaws and imperfections yet I’d never loved him as much as I did right now. We were both broken beyond repair and yet together, it felt as though we were invincible.

  His lips crash against mine beautifully. It was like our mouths were molded to fit each other. His tongue delves in to my mouth and the sensation of his tongue bar rolling smoothly over my own tongue is enough to drive me wild.

  I wasn’t even thinking straight, I was just focusing on the bundles of pleasure Trey was delivering to me and how I could match him, his soft swollen lips massaging mine with each kiss, the electricity and excitement surging through my veins, his hands roaming all over my body.

  His hands move down to my thighs and he squeezes them gently whilst playfully biting on my lower lip.

  Moans of pleasure escape from my mouth and he takes it as a sign of encouragement to carry on, ducking his hands underneath my dress and tenderly stroking my inner thighs, forcing me to part my legs.

  He pulls away from my mouth, kissing my jaw line then descending to my neck. He knew how I liked it, he knew exactly how to touch me, how to make me moan, how to make me his.

  His hands carry on upwards under my dress. One hand tugs on the small ribbons on my underwear while the other moves further up to the small of my back and pushes me into him.

  “Oh God… Trey…”

  He lifts his face from my neck and looks in to my eyes. He wasn’t ‘angry Trey’ or ‘tortured Trey’, he was simply my Trey. But this… like this… it wasn’t right. I don’t know why I felt that way. Since leaving the church I had had extramarital sex often. I loved it! But now I felt a steady voice in my head.

  Trey is important, Harmony. Think about this.

  His kisses trailed down my neck and I moaned. Forget about the voice. Forget about what feels right. This is Trey! We were so close to getting what we both so badly desired when someone starts banging ridiculously on the door.

  We look at each other, slightly perplexed.

  “Were you expecting anyone?”

  He shrugs his shoulders and then we’re both hit with dread and realization at the sound of her screeching voice from outside.

  “Trey, I know you’re home, open up!”

  Miranda.

  I’d completely forgotten about her for that past 15 minutes or so. If she found out what had just happened between me and Trey, she was bound to skin me alive or something else of that nature.

  Trey moves towards the door. He wasn’t seriously going to let her in, was he?

  “Fix your dress, I’ll handle this”.

  He opens the door and immediately, Miranda launches herself at him, hungrily chewing his face off. To my horror, he plays along with it.

  Did everything that just happened not mean anything to him?

  Eventually, Miranda spots me over Trey’s shoulder. Her eyes are fierce; she looks like she could pounce on me at any minute.

  “You didn’t tell me you had company, Trey”, she says sneeringly through a false smile.

  “Harmony came to invite me to the party down the hall… She’s just leaving”, he says coldly and with no emotion, like he was shrugging me off as no one important.

  “Oh great, I’m in the mood for a good piss up”, she cackles whilst approaching me and throwing her arm around my shoulders, desperately ushering me past Trey and to the door.

  “You give me and Trey a few minutes and we’ll be straight over”.

  She practically shoves me out the door and slams it back in my face. I couldn’t even comprehend what had just happened.

  If it were even possible, there seems to be even more people there when I get back to my apartment. I brush past everyone and try to find Leo, whatever that cocktail was he knocked up earlier, I wanted another one.

  The blaring music is suddenly turned off and the main lights switched on. Everyone is mumbling and complaining until Leo emerges from the crowd, calling for everyone’s attention.

  Oh God, he’s not going to make a speech is he?

  He approaches me and hands me a glass of champagne which I down immediately.

  “Thanks to everyone for coming tonight, I’d like it if you would all raise your glasses in a toast: To Harmony, a very happy birthday and to many more to come!”

  Everyone in the room repeats after him and then breaks out into cheers.

  I can feel my face turn red; surely it’s over now right?

  Wrong.

  Leo carries on with his speech or whatever it is he’s doing but my attention is diverted to Trey and Miranda emerging from the hallway. He has his arm wrapped tightly around her waist. What a jerk, did he honestly think he was welcome in my home with her?!

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  My attention his drawn back to Leo who now grabs hold of my hand.

  “So, what I’m trying to say is…”

  He kneels down before me and rummages around in the pocket of his jeans. Oh no. He’s not going to… is he?

  “Harmony, will you marry me?”

  He opens a small black box in his hands to reveal a beauty of an engagement ring. The whole room falls silent, anxiously waiting for my answer.

  I’m ashamed to admit it, but in that moment I wasn’t focused on Leo or the ring, I turned my attention to Trey, whose face was pale with shock, and the only thing I could think about was how jealous he would be if I said yes, how much it would hurt him… as much as he’d hurt me by flaunting that girl right in front of me… Besides I could hardly say no in front of everyone, could I?

  “Yes, Leo, I’ll marry you”.

  Everyone bursts in to fits of cheers as Leo slides the rock on to my finger.

  He leaps up and kisses me passionately before pulling me in to a hug.

  “You’ve just made me the happiest man alive”, he whispers in to my ear.

  I keep my gaze on Trey, his facial expression hardening, the remnants of any heart he had left shattering in front of me.

  Two could play at this game.

  Trey could tell himself as much as he wanted that he felt nothing, b
ut he’d be lying. There’s no way he couldn’t feel anything as he watched me get engaged to another man. Something hit him, he felt pain, I watched him hurt and for the first time… I was glad.

  The lukewarm water washes over my skin as I sit on the floor in the shower, my back resting against the wall.

  Leo left around 20 minutes ago, said he had lots of material to get through at the studio.

  I should be happy today; I just got engaged for crying out loud. But I wasn’t happy, I was completely miserable.

  The tears I was crying simply got lost in the shower of water pouring down on top of me.

  What was I playing at, getting engaged to Leo? I didn’t want to get married at all let alone to someone I was starting to have doubts about.

  Moreover, what was I thinking, kissing Trey last night? I only set myself up for heartache… I was such a hypocrite, the way I criticized Trey for not having any consideration for Freddy and yet there I was, willingly kissing him and not once did I think about Leo, the man who’d stood by me during my darkest hour…People like me should come with warning tags; I wasn’t fit to be involved in anyone’s life.

  I was damaged goods. No use to anyone, just a waste of time and effort. Who would want me?

  I stay in the shower until the skin on my fingertips starts to shrivel up like a prune.

  Chapter Four

  I didn’t really want to go out for coffee with Freddy after last night. I didn’t want to hear about Trey and his sexual escapades with all those women and yet, I so desperately needed answers. Some tiny part of me thought that if I had a better understanding of why Trey had become the way he was, then maybe there was chance, no matter how small it was, that I could fix him.

  I wasn’t sure how far I was going to get, but if nothing else it would be good to catch up with Freddy again, and besides, I needed a decent coffee to cure my seething hangover.

  I lazily blow dry my hair, run over it quickly with the straighteners then shove it up in to a high pony tail. I take whatever clothes are nearest to me from the closet and slap on the bare minimum of make-up. There was no point trying to look glamorous today, I didn’t feel like it and it wouldn’t fool Freddy anyway.

  It’s just after lunch when Freddy comes knocking on my door. He looks a little worse for wear himself. We walk through the cold streets and catch up on some light conversation as we head to the coffee shop. He tells me about the many new additions to his little black book and I happily listen as he boasts about his accomplishments.

  When we arrive at the coffee house, Freddy grabs us two big comfy armchairs by the window whilst I get the drinks in; a plain black coffee for me and tea for Freddy.

  I take the drinks over to our seats and we both release little gasps of ‘aah’ as the warm liquid loosens and soothes our cold bodies from the icy weather outside.

  I had to take a couple of minutes to admire how well Freddy was looking. He had an enviable tan, his features were more defined and even through his baggy clothes it was clear that he’d bulked up; his chest looked stronger, his back and shoulders broader – he’d definitely been hitting the gym. He still had the same adorable smile and seductive brown eyes which brought out his boyish good looks when he wore his cheeky grin. It was clear to see how, with just one look, he could get so many women into his bed.

  We carry on chatting about random stuff, catching up on what we’d missed from each other’s lives over the years. It was nice just talking to him but, inevitably, the conversation soon turns to Trey.

  It felt strange, talking about Trey behind his back, but just as much as I desperately needed to know what had happened, it seemed like Freddy needed to get it off his chest. I had a strange feeling this conversation was going to leave me scared and Freddy relieved.

  “So… what happened to him, I mean where did it all go wrong, Freddy?”

  “Not long after you left…”

  It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear, I didn’t want to discover that I was the reason behind Trey’s downfall.

  “He found it so hard when you guys broke up, he missed you like you wouldn’t believe, but we were on tour, our schedules were so busy that he didn’t really have time for loneliness, he just threw himself into the tour and poured all his energy into the performances…”

  “What happened when the tour finished?”

  He lowers his eyes to his cup as he swishes his tea around… this was where the real trouble begins…

  “At first he just wrote, he went through whole journals worth of writing, mostly about you and then he came up with masses of new songs for the next album… some of them were really good, really profound and meaningful then others… well let’s just say he got a little too carried away with his memories of you and started converting your intimate moments into lyrics…”

  I could feel my face turn red at the very idea of mine and Trey’s intimacy being turned into a song… eugh.

  “But of course, none of those songs ever made it on to the album”.

  “Oh, thank God”.

  He laughs at my response but the smile on his face and the lightness of the moment is short lived as he resumes with what he was saying.

  “So yeah, everything was going ok for a while, he wasn’t exactly happy but he was coping…”

  “But…?”

  “But then your film came out, the one you left him to go and film in Australia, it hit number one at the box office and suddenly you were everywhere… Your picture was on billboards all over the world, you were in every magazine, chat shows in every other country…”

  “What’s that got to do with Trey though?”

  “Well you looked amazing, Harmony, like really gorgeous and happy and healthy… you were doing so well for yourself, we watched a few of your interviews when we were in the states and you just sounded so bubbly, you’d moved on with your life, you’d won major awards, and then you were being romantically linked to every other guy in Hollywood…”

  I had an idea of where Freddy was heading with this and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hear, but I had to listen, I needed to know.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Trey was really happy for you that you were living the dream but he just couldn’t get his head around the fact that you seemed to be so over him and he was still pining after you every day… then the pictures of your wild nights out with certain other Hollywood actors hit the tabloids and he just couldn’t take it, he hated seeing other guys with their hands all over you…”

  “Wait, are you telling me he ended up like this because he got a little jealous?”

  “Harmony, you and I both know that Trey doesn’t get a little jealous, he gets very jealous, like pathological… I don’t know when he saw you with other men, it was like something inside him just flipped, and he became totally withdrawn and really snappy with everyone… He took his aggression and frustration out on George and James and other members of the team, even Jost… everyone put up with it for a while but then his behavior just got out of control, he had a different girl every night…”

  I had to wince a little at that bit.

  “He started drinking really heavy, stopped writing songs, got mixed up with drugs… he completely changed, Breaking Jane wasn’t going anywhere, I mean how could we do anything when our front man was a total wreck, everyone just got fed up with him, eventually George and James went off and took on other projects… the band collapsed”.

  “I don’t understand, the band was everything to Trey…”

  “I know, so when we stopped making music, we got less and less media coverage, which of course just made Trey all the worse, I mean fame was a drug for Trey, the detox was something he couldn’t handle…”

  I’d heard enough, it hurt too much to discover how all of Trey’s current demons and troubles had stemmed from me.

  “I’m so sorry, Freddy, if I’d known we’d have all ended up here I would never have taken the job”.

  “Hey, now don’t you dare start blaming yourself, you did the r
ight thing, how were you to know Trey would react the way he did, none of us knew”.

  Freddy’s words were comforting and reassuring but I still felt horrible…

  “You know it wasn’t all plain sailing for me either, Freddy”.

  He looks at me, his eyes tinged with pain at my statement. I knew how much Freddy cared about me; he loved his brother more than anyone else on the planet but the look in eyes tells me he wants to hear my side of the story.