Page 176 of Broken Lines

“Holy fuck,” I breathe.

“It was a week, Jackson. And I was awreckback in Liverpool. I mean I didn't sleep or eat, and it was just worse. It wasworsethan the waiting for the phone call or waiting to see a picture of him with some girl on some music blog somewhere. So, I snapped, and I flew to LA to meet you guys.”

“I remembered that” I say quietly with a small smile.

I remember Alice surprising Iggy at the hotel, and I remember watching my friend drop to his knees in tears as he just hugged her around the waist. And I remember feeling so…notenvious. But just sad, knowing deep down that I would never have that.

Knowing that I wasn't wired that way, like Iggy and Alice were.

Except, maybe I was. Maybe it just took me twenty years to find it.

And then lose it.

“We knew the break had been a mistake.”

Alice starts to cry.

“But, just the same, he was with someone else while we were apart. He told me that straight out and honestly when we got back together. He’d been drunk, and sad, and all of that. But…” she shakes her head. “There was another girl. And it almost broke me.”

She looks away.

“But I accepted it, because I loved him. I accepted that he’d been lost, and away from home. I was his only lifeline, and I’d cut that off because I was scared of losing him. And in doing so, he found something with someone else, just one time. And that…”

She looks up at me with teary eyes.

“That was hard, Jack. But I accepted it. And I accepted it a month later when he told me that girl had contacted him, and that she was pregnant, and that it was his.”

I blink, my pulse thudding heavily in my ears.

I’ve never heard awhisperof this. I knew the man for almost his entire life, and I never heard one fucking peep about any of this.

I want to be angry. I want to feel betrayed, because I want to think I’d have told Iggy about all of this in a fucking second if the roles were reversed.

My eyes close.

But that’s bullshit. I mean maybe I would have, but I can’t make that call now in the glow and safety of hindsight.

“She wanted him to be with her.”

My eyes open as I stare at Alice.

“What?”

“The girl. She wanted Iggy to choose, but….”

She smiles sadly.

“He picked me, Jack,” she whispers with a broken, sad smile on her face. “Iggy picked me. He told this girl that he’d do whatever it took for the baby—I mean financially, parentally, all of that. But that he couldn't be with her.”

I swallow as Alice looks away.

“She lost it, and she said no. I mean, no to all of it—the money, the help, him being a part of the kid’s life. She cut him out, Jackson, and it really it fucked him up for a while.”

Her mouth twists.

“You know, that's when he first used. Heroin, I mean. That was the first time, after she told him he couldn't be a part of this kid's life. She was in love with him, I think. And he was in love with an unborn child whose life he’d just been told he couldn’t be a part of.”

I want a drink. I want a drinkso fucking badlyit physically hurts. The world spins as I storm across the kitchen to what looks like a liquor cabinet of some kind, and all but yank the door off the hinges.