Down All Your Darkest Roads

Chapter Nineteen

Things quickly unravelled in Fleetwood Mac soon after Christine's birthday. Lindsey's ongoing problems with the band triggered a devastating domino affect, causing past resentments to unfurl between all of them. It had gotten so bad that the toxicity started affecting Christine and Stevie's relationship, something neither of them were emotionally prepared for.

Stevie returned from a television interview she took part in with Lindsey and it was clear from her face they had had a massive falling out. Christine was half-listening to Stevie's rant when the subject suddenly changed.

"Oh and is it true you wrote Little Lies about me?"

"Sorry?" Christine blinked.

"He told me Little Lies was inspired by how you didn't trust me and thought I was an unstable, crazy bitch." Stevie accused. "Is that true?"

"Lindsey's exaggerating, I never said it like that." Christine answered.

"So you did write that song about me! Why didn't you tell me?!"

Christine looked at her steadily but felt prickly and uncomfortable remembering her initial guilt over the song and what Stevie would think. She was also annoyed Lindsey betrayed her confidence in the first place.

"Does it really fucking matter now?" She ran her hand tiredly through her hair. "But yes, if you must know, I wrote that song about you because I was frustrated by how you were acting at the time and it was after you called me an alcoholic. I was upset and hurt so I poured those feelings into my music, it's no big deal now."

"I'm your girlfriend!" Stevie exclaimed in disbelief. "Of course it's a big fucking deal! Or do you not give a shit about my feelings?"

"I'm assuming you've conveniently forgotten about the billions of whiny ballads you wrote about Lindsey?" Christine countered sarcastically. "What about his feelings? Or John's feelings for that matter? We've all written songs about each other so feel free to write a revenge track about me if it bothers you so much."

Stevie opened her mouth to retort but changed her mind, choosing to shrug sadly and leave the room. Christine watched her go, feeling too exhausted and drained to run after her.

----

Christine mooched around her studio before she went looking for Stevie to apologise for her guilt-induced reaction. Technically, Stevie was right; but her delivery was terrible and it raised Christine's guard up immediately. She was starting to have problems differentiating between 'normal feisty Stevie' and 'unwell Stevie' and it drove her up the wall.

"Stevie?" She called out as she walked around the house with Layla trailing after her.

No answer.

Thinking Stevie might have taken a nap, Christine made her way to their bedroom. Instead of sighting a Stevie sized lump under the blanket, she found clothes and shoes strewn all over the bed and Christine realised she had gone out without saying a word. Sighing, she tided up Stevie's mess while Layla looked up at her bewilderedly.

"Mummy's legged it." She said to her crisply.

Christine cleaned up the bathroom, growing more and more frustrated as she rinsed out eye shadow flakes in the sink and wiped down pressed powder smudges on the counter. Unable to help herself, she opened the medicine cabinet and examined Stevie's pill organiser, disturbed to discover she had missed a day's worth of doses.

She numbly placed the box back in the cabinet and sat on the toilet seat with her head in her hands. She gave Stevie her privacy and naively trusted her to do the right thing when clearly she should have been more hands on. Stevie was out there doing God-knows-what while withdrawing; she had to find her.