by Malcom, Anne
Wyatt was watching me with rapt attention. “No, you’re not one of my groupies, they’re actually nice to me.”
I rolled my eyes, exhaling. “They’re nice to you because they want to get in your pants, then tell everyone they slept with the bassist of Unquiet Mind. If they don’t want to trap you into pregnancy, that is.” I quirked my brow. “I hope you use protection.”
He leaned back, putting his hands behind his head. His biceps bulged as he did so, and his tee rode up, exposing how low his jeans were.
Low enough to see he was tattooed all over that ‘V’ that pointed to the most useful spot on a man.
I swallowed and took another hit.
“Of course I use protection,” he said, taking the joint as I gave it back to him and sat across from him, despite him patting the area beside him on the outdoor sofa.
No way was I doing that to myself.
“No way do I want a kid.”
I nodded, lead settling into my muscles as the weed took over. It was nice. The ocean in the distance. Knowing that Lexie was happy, safe. Knowing that maybe the universe was through fucking with her and she might get a happy ending.
I kept my eyes on the ocean. “Yeah, I’m gonna take an educated guess and say the women that follow bands around with the single goal of fucking their way through them would not make good mothers. Better to wait for when you grow up.” I moved my eyes to him. “So in about fifty-eight years?”
He scowled at me. “I’m not growin’ up,” he replied. “That’s the whole point. No strings. No fuckin’ chains. Especially no kids.”
I raised my brow. “No kids? Ever?”
It surprised me. Yeah, Wyatt was a rock star who fucked everything with legs and decent tits, drank heavily, indulged in other substances on the regular, barely slept and was always in some scandal or another...but there was something other than his outward persona. He was more than Wyatt Summers, the bassist of Unquiet Mind, Lothario and casual drug user.
He was a good person. Loyal to my best friend. He’d die for her. He would die for all of his family. He was thoughtful, treated everyone the same as he did before he got famous—with respect. He laughed easily, joked even easier—usually at Sam’s expense. And I’d seen him with Lexie’s little brothers, he doted on them.
I always imagined he’d find some knockout with some sense, brains and more than decent tits and he’d have a beautiful family with her. On the odd occasion I’d thought of it, I’d felt vaguely sick.
He would make a good father. An unconventional one for sure. But good.
“No way do I want kids,” he said, something moving in his eyes. “I’d surely fuck them up. Not the same ways my parents fucked me up, but I’d fail at something. Don’t need that on my shoulders.”
I frowned. There was something more to his words. His blank stare. That didn’t make sense. I didn’t know much about Wyatt because I made a point not to know more, to like more about him. But I knew out of the three boys—now men—he had the best parents out of the lot. That meaning his parents weren’t alcoholics or bigots. Not a hard pile to come out on top of, to be sure. But also from what I’d heard, they didn’t sound like they could be responsible for the shadows behind his eyes.
But appearances were deceiving.
“Everyone’s parents fucks them up in some way or another,” I said by response, forcing myself to not ask for what I desperately wanted—more. More of that pain. Of his story.
He glanced to me. “Yeah, and I’m not doin’ that to a kid. Plenty more men out there that would make better fathers than me. I’m still figuring out how to be a human being.”
“I’m not sure if that’s something we’ll ever figure out,” I replied. “We’re all just pretending.”
The silence settled over us, pleasant. Heavy. Not something we afforded in the times we were together, considering Wyatt was always weird and intense and I was always prickly and pissed off about responding to the intenseness.
“I’m back!” Lexie declared, bounding out the door. “Is it time for cocktails yet?”
If there was ever a time for my best friend to save me from making a very stupid decision, it was then.
Pity I wasn’t there to save her in the hours that came after.
* * *
I was pacing. Only because if I moved, maybe this feeling of dread, of stone cold fear, might not settle. Might not take root.
But it already had. It had the second this whole nightmare started.
Wyatt entered the room.
I didn’t stop pacing.
“This is my fault,” I said, to no one in particular, but I guessed to Wyatt since he was the only one other than myself here. Everyone else was away doing things, productive things to help look for Lexie.
After she’d been kidnapped by her murderous stalker.
While I had been sipping my cocktail, daydreaming about Wyatt and then wondering why she was taking so long in the bathroom. Then I realized what happened. The second Lexie got her happy ever after, that’s when life started to show her—us—that fairy tales were bullshit and nightmares were real.
And now I was here, at the beach house after being questioned outside the restaurant by the police, by Keltan’s security team. All of those people were tearing apart the city looking for Lexie. And I was pacing.
“I let her get kidnapped,” I continued. “If I’d...”
Wyatt took hold of my shoulders, forcing me to stop moving and to face him. “If you’d what, babe?” he asked, eyes hard and body taut. He was afraid too. The fear was palpable, mixing with my own, bitter, rancid and inescapable. “If you’d had the power of foresight, followed her to the bathroom and then likely gotten yourself stabbed, just like Clyde?” He shuddered. Physically shuddered after saying that.
Likely for the same reason I did, because he knew that Lexie was in the hands of someone who didn’t mind drawing blood.
Clyde was critical.
He might not make it.
So this person didn’t mind taking lives either.
I swallowed ash.
“We could not have you bleedin’ out on a bathroom floor in addition to losing Lexie,” Wyatt continued. “We couldn’t handle that.” His eyes bore into mine. “I couldn’t handle that.”
The intensity of his voice, the words, it shocked me into stillness for a second. “I could,” I whispered. “I could handle that better than not knowing where my best friend is. If she’s...alive. She’s all I’ve got, Wyatt. I’m fucked without her.”
Wyatt squeezed my arms. “She’s not all you have.” The intense look returned. “And we’ll find her.”
“That’s not a promise you can make,” I whispered.
Something moved in his eyes as he regarded me, perhaps heard the cracking of my voice, of my soul. “Yeah, it fuckin’ is.”
He stepped back striding over to snatch his jacket.
Panic filled me.
“Where are you going?”
His hands were on the back of my neck and his mouth pressed against mine before I could understand what was happening.
He kissed me long, hard and desperate. “I’m going to make sure I keep the promise I just made you,” he said against my lips.
And then he walked away.
* * *
Wyatt kept his promise.
Kind of.
Him, Noah and Sam joined in on the search when Greenstone Security had two different possible locations for Lexie.
They found her.
After she was shot.
Fatally.
She’d died on the way to the hospital. Been brought back. Barely. And now she was fighting for life somewhere in here. The hospital I was currently standing in, the hospital that was currently crushing me. It was death. Contained in a place. People came here to get saved, sure, but more people came here to die.
I didn’t know how long I’d been here for. How long I’d watched Killian pace the waiting room like a caged animal. I focused on a small red stai
n on his hand, one he’d missed when he was washing them.
Blood.
Lexie’s blood.
He was pacing the room wearing her blood and an empty stare.
No one spoke. It was strange. In all the time I’d known this band, this family, it was never quiet. Noise was kind of a recreational hazard of being rock stars. But now, the silence echoed through the room, through our hearts. A silence that would be permanent if Lexie didn’t pull through.
Killian’s head jerked toward the door and I found another red stain on his neck. How much had Lexie been bleeding for him to have her blood on his fucking neck?
The thought was stopped in its tracks by a low voice.
I turned my head in the same direction as Killian.
Seeing Mia come through the doors wrapped in her husband’s arms, pale and terrified, I froze. She hadn’t seen me yet, likely because she wasn’t looking around the waiting room for people alive and well. No, she was looking for her daughter, who was not well, who we didn’t even know if she was alive.
I yearned to go to her. To seek comfort from the only mother figure I had left. But I couldn’t. Not only because she had no comfort to give in the face of losing her daughter. But because if I looked at Mia, if I spoke to her, if we shared our pain, it would make it real.
Final.
So I ran.
Like the coward I was.
I didn’t even know where I was going. But when I got far enough away from Mia, from the waiting room, I told myself it was farther away from reality.
I found a corner, deserted and quiet.
Perfect.
I leaned against the wall, sank down, rested my head on my knees and utterly lost my shit.
* * *
I didn’t know how long I’d been there before he found me.
Time didn’t really mean much when your world was falling apart.
His arms around me held me together as best they could.
“She’s gonna pull through, Em,” Wyatt murmured, laying his lips against my head.
“But what if she doesn’t?” I croaked. I blinked through my tears to focus on Wyatt’s red-rimmed eyes. “Everyone thinks I’m strong, that I can handle anything. But I can’t handle life without Lexie. A life knowing she only just got happy again, she got what she deserved only long enough for it to get taken away again.” My voice broke at the end and Wyatt yanked me back into his arms.
“None of us can handle life without her,” he said. “And that’s why we’re not going to.”
His voice was certain. A statement.
But it was also a prayer.
* * *
Wyatt finally convinced me to go back to his place with Sam and Noah. After I finally got enough courage to face Mia and her grief. To face my own. That was only because Wyatt was at my side, his hand firmly clutching mine. Mia had all but launched herself into my arms.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispered, her voice raw from crying.
I jerked. “I’m okay?”
She yanked me to arm’s length, sorrow etched into every part of her. “You were there too,” she rasped. “This...animal would do anything to get to Lexie.” She hiccupped. Bull yanked her into his body, obviously unable to witness his wife in that much pain outside his arms.
Wyatt’s hand was in mine again, and he pulled me so my side pressed into his.
“If something had happened to you too,” Mia continued, seeking solace in her husband’s embrace. She shuddered. “I couldn’t lose both of my girls. I just couldn’t.” Her voice cracked and tears started streaming down her cheeks and her heartbreak couldn’t stay contained a second longer.
My girls.
I had always considered Mia the mother I never had, and she’d always treated me like a daughter, but hearing her say it out loud, amongst this much pain was almost too much to handle.
“We’re not losin’ Lexie,” Bull growled, his normally iron voice crumbling slightly.
This was Bull, the biker badass, who pretty much was the scariest motherfucker around.
So his voice was always certain, his words law.
But like Wyatt before, this wasn’t law. This was a prayer.
I sat beside Mia and Bull for a long time.
Hours, a lot of them.
And then there was the horrific moment when the doctor came out. Mia was out of her seat the second he arrived in the waiting, Bull along with her. Killian was there first. He’d been staring at a wall for hours. No one had approached him. I wasn’t even sure he was aware of the rest of the world. That the rest of the world existed.
But the man in the white coat with a tired expression mattered. Because he was the man that held his life in his hands.
And as it turned out, crushed it with a handful of words.
I didn’t hear them.
I didn’t need to.
I just heard the most horrible wailing sob escape from Mia’s throat around the same second she collapsed into Bull’s arms.
Prayers, as it turned out, weren’t answered when asked biker badasses and rock stars.
Sleep was a stranger to me. Even with the amount of whisky that Wyatt, Noah, and I had silently drunk before skulking to different corners of the mansion to be alone in our grief. With our fear.
With the agonizing fucking truth of what the doctors had said. About Lexie’s chances of survival.
That there were none.
We were to say our goodbyes.
Goodbye to the girl who brought sunshine into my life with her friendship.
Who saved my life without knowing it.
Who was the kindest person in the world, regardless of fame or fortune.
How in the fuck did you say goodbye to sunshine? That’s what I was wondering in the darkness, belly full of whisky and sadness, wishing for the oblivion of sleep.
Wishes were like prayers.
They didn’t come true for rock stars, badasses or broken people.
After being alone with my demons my entire life, I couldn’t take another second of solitude.
Which was what had me knocking on Wyatt’s door and padding into the dark room illuminated only by the flickering of the TV on the wall, sound muted.
“I just—”
“Come here, Em,” he growled into the darkness.
I didn’t hesitate. I crossed the distance between the door and his bed and crawled onto it. When I was close enough, Wyatt grabbed me and pulled me against his body.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt, his skin was warm and welcoming, taking the edge off the chill that had settled in my bones the moment we learned that Lexie had been shot.
He didn’t say anything as he pulled the covers over both of us, moved me so my back was nestled into his front.
There was nothing to say.
* * *
It carried on like that for three days.
Us spending every waking moment at the hospital, waiting for news that didn’t come, a miracle that didn’t arrive. And the nights were spent silently encased in Wyatt’s arms.
We didn’t address it. Nor did we do anything more than sleep. But Wyatt made a point to be near enough to touch me at any point of the day. Which wasn’t saying much, since I was almost always holding his, Noah, or Sam’s hands. But there was no escaping how different Wyatt’s touch felt.
There was also no escaping how much that didn’t matter right now.
It was interesting how simple things got in the midst of death.
How it was just inhaling, exhaling, going through the motions of living while we stared at beige, sterile walls.
That fame Unquiet Mind had accumulated?
Nothing.
The Ferraris Sam collected?
Nothing.
That apartment I’d considered so vital?
Nothing.
Money in the bank?
Nothing.
All that mattered was the next second we didn’t see a doctor come through the doors announcing Lexie’s death.
Killian never left her, of course. Never spoke. Didn’t eat. Sleep. Didn’t acknowledge anyone in the room.
This news was all second-hand. Because I didn’t sit beside Lexie. The friend who’d unwittingly saved my life by bringing me into her family. The girl who always called to check on me. Who wanted to take care of me the second she had the means to. But who understood how important it was for me to take care of myself.
The person who would give me everything was lying in a hospital bed on life support and I couldn’t even muster the courage to walk into the room and hold her fucking hand.
It was because I was scared, terrified, that she’d die when I was there sitting with her. And that I’d have to find a way to live with the vision of my best friend’s death inside me. Which was stupid, whether I was inside or out in the waiting room, her death was going to hit me the same. Crush me the same. But in moments like this, people cling to strange logic to keep themselves together.
Sam’s was the whisky he kept in a hip flask that was always on his person. That it somehow might numb something.
Noah’s was sitting in the hospital chapel when he wasn’t sitting with Lexie. Like maybe if he sat there enough, someone up there had to notice him, answer his prayer.
Wyatt’s was sitting with me and holding my fucking hand, and then holding onto me in his sleep.
Killian’s was refusing to do anything but hold onto Lexie’s hand, refusing to go through the motions of survival until she did.
None of them were going to make a difference, of course. But we liked to kid ourselves that our actions held some kind of sway over our futures.
When in reality, our future was one bullet away from being totally shattered.
* * *
I didn’t think it was the prayers from rock stars or bikers.
Or Sam’s whisky intake.
Mia’s quiet sorrow.
Bull’s badassness.
Or even Killian’s furious love.
Or my own stupid fear.
No, it was Lexie who made a miracle happen.
The miracle being her waking up from the coma that the doctors said would be permanent.
It was Lexie that saved her own life and all of ours.