29. Jamie
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jamie
Sparks opened the back door of his car and then helped me out while I still had Hayat wrapped around me like a cuddly koala. When I was out, he combed his fingers through her tangled hair, his face tormented as he saw the trails left behind from her tears.
Muttering a curse, he took her from me. With a growl from me, but a happy sigh from Hellion, I relinquished her to him. Wrapping herself around him exactly as she had me, she pressed her face into his neck and let her hair fall over his shoulder. Kissing her forehead, he reluctantly started up the pathway to the Cutters’ front porch.
Following behind them at a slower pace, I pressed the doorbell and waited for someone to answer. It was the middle of the day. Would her parents even be home?
It took a few minutes, but the door finally opened, and Evan Cutter stood there, staring at me with sleep-blurred eyes. He was a more welcome sight than that Bentley motherfucker. Added bonus for the kid wearing long basketball shorts and a tank top. The top of his head reached past the top of the doorframe. He would have to duck to get through. He was only seventeen, so he still had a few more years of growing to get through.
Seeing his sister in Sparks’s arms, he snapped fully awake. “What the fuck did you do to my sister?”
Hayat finally lifted her head and gave her brother a weak smile, sniffling because her nose was still stuffy from all the crying she’d done. “Hey, baby bro. This is Sparks and Jamie. They’re mine.”
Eyes the same shade as his sister’s narrowed, brows puckered up like a wrinkled bulldog. “What do you mean by that, Hayat? They’re your friends? Or they’re your fuck boys or—”
Sparks’s snarl had the kid’s voice fading, and he took two steps backward into the house. “Right. Not my business. Got it. Come on in. Mom and Dad are at work. Don’t worry, I’ll let you be the one to give Dad that aneurysm by explaining who these guys are to you.”
As Sparks carried her inside, she sniffled again, which had Evan grabbing my arm when I followed. “She’s been crying ?”
“Little bro, right now, the only thing you need to know is that Sparks and I are not the reason for her tears. You have an issue with someone making her cry, get the fuck in line.”
“Who made her cry?” he whisper-roared, flames of wrath shooting high in his aquamarine eyes.
“Ask Maddie Dawson,” I suggested, following my friend as he carried our girl up the stairs.
Hayat’s room was a mixture of darks with a random splash of purple. Band posters were framed on her walls, all of them signed. Her bed was a simple queen-size with a lavender-colored comforter that had a huge black skull in the middle. A desk sat near a window that held her laptop, a few books, and a rolling chair.
Placing Hayat on her bed, Sparks started to step back, but she grabbed hold of his shirt. “Could you…stay?”
Hearing that quaver in her voice, seeing the uncertainty in her eyes, killed me. Ky’s bullshit was rolling over onto us, making her unsure of our feelings. How much we worshiped this girl I would give up everything for. Every. Fucking. Thing.
Sparks caught my eye, his expression reflecting the torment I felt. Hayat gave a tug on his shirt, and he didn’t hesitate. Kicking off his shoes, he climbed into bed beside her. Hayat pressed her face into his chest, her arm going around him. But then her head popped up, and she looked right at me. “Jamie, please.”
That was all I needed, and I was pulling my shirt over my head, toeing off my shoes, and crawling in behind her. My hand slid between her and Sparks, flattening against her stomach and tucking her back against me. For a little bit, Sparks and I played a mild game of tug-of-war, until she giggled and just closed her eyes.
“I love you both,” she mumbled, already falling asleep. “So much it hurts.”
Hearing Sparks gulp, I met his gaze over her head. Tears stung my eyes, but that was nothing to the emotions in my friend’s brown eyes. Hayat sighed in her sleep, burrowing between us as if she was cold. I grabbed the end of the covers and pulled them up over us.
“I swear, Jamie. If Ky ever makes her feel like this again, I will take pleasure in hanging him upside down and draining him of every drop of blood in his body.” Sparks brushed a light kiss over Hayat’s forehead.
“Do it,” I encouraged. “I’ll put a few drops in a vial for her to wear as a pendant around her neck. A warning she can show off to anyone who so much as thinks about hurting our Hellion. Fuck with our girl, we’ll just add your blood as a token of our love around her neck.”
For all of two seconds, Sparks’s feral frown shifted to a half smile. But then it was back, and he was tucking Hayat’s head to his chest, letting her even breaths soothe the darkness inside him.
We didn’t stay long, not wanting to cause a commotion when her parents got home from work and risk waking her up. On our way out, we waved at Evan, who was eating cereal out of a giant Tupperware bowl. It was filled to the brim, but he was a literal giant, so I figured it took a lot of food to keep him going. I stopped long enough to talk to him and give him my cell number, along with Sparks’s. Letting him know to call either of us if his sister needed anything.
Sparks drove back to Carver Towers, neither of us talking much. We were both lost in our own heads, our own fears, our own rage. Seeing Hayat’s swollen, bloodshot eyes, her red nose, the tracks from her tears down her face, had ripped something open in me. And while I knew Maddie had played a part in that, it was Ky—along with Sparks and me—who was responsible for keeping our girl’s eyes dry.
He hadn’t protected Hayat’s heart. Hadn’t given her the reassurance that she needed. Hadn’t gone after her when she’d walked away.
She’d been hesitant with him since Saturday night, but what happened back at the ASM office had felt like the final nail in his coffin. His actions—or, rather, his lack of reaction—had hurt Hayat. And I couldn’t let that stand.
Ky had told Hayat he loved her, but what had he done to show her?
Words were so easy to utter, but actions were a labor of the love a person performed for the ones who meant the most to them.
Parking in his usual spot, Sparks turned off the car but didn’t reach for the door. He glanced over at me for a long moment, and I saw his throat bob before he turned his gaze out the front window, his hands clenched around the steering wheel. “Are we…” He closed his eyes, knocking his head against the seat over and over. “Are we going to lose her, Jamie?”
Pain I hadn’t felt since the last day I’d seen my biological family tore through my chest, but this time, it was a hundred times worse. My parents had always been absent, my siblings fucked up from the unchecked choices they’d made since our nannies had switched so often that they didn’t have any actual supervision. I’d left because I didn’t want to become like any of them. Any fuckups would be my own and not something I would blame on others. Not my parents, or my older brother and sister, or the nannies. I was responsible for me and no one else.
But losing Hayat?
That wasn’t going to happen. I wouldn’t accept it. Ky’s fuckups wouldn’t destroy my current and future happiness with the best thing to ever happen to me.
Before Hayat, I would have said all I needed was my two best friends, my bass guitar, and Autumn’s Slumber.
Now?
I would walk away from everything, everyone, just for her. She was the one thing I couldn’t live without. And I sure as fuck wasn’t going to try.
“We’re not losing her,” I gritted out, pissed that it was even a thought in his head. That because of Ky’s stupidity, it was a possibility.
“What if she doesn’t want Ky anymore? And what if by her not wanting him, she doesn’t want us?” His eyes were still clenched closed, his olive skin turning gray, but his cheeks were pink with the emotion he was desperately trying to hold back. “I love her, Jamie. And I never thought I would love anyone, not like this. She’s this sassy goddess with legs for days and hair that smells like heaven. When she smiles, everything shitty that I ever did doesn’t matter. My demons don’t terrorize me when she holds my hand. And that sassy mouth. Fuck! I want to hear her tear me or you or anyone else apart, while at the same time stuff my dick in her mouth to shut her up. Losing her means losing all the good parts that I’m only just now discovering about myself.”
Grasping his shoulder, I squeezed, hard. “You and I aren’t losing her. Ky has his own choices to make. Although, I’m not sure that’s going to matter to Hayat, but whatever. She’s got plenty of reasons to block him out. But that girl is ours, Sparks. We’re going to take care of her. Love her. Ensure every one of her needs is met. And if that means saying goodbye to Ky and Autumn’s Slumber, then that’s what we do.”
Breath rushing out of him, Sparks swallowed roughly and glared around the garage of our apartment building. An attendant sat in his little office, feet propped up, watching something on an old-school mini-television, maybe a baseball game. Sparks and Ky had been friends before I’d joined their little group, so I knew this was a hard decision for him.
Stabbing his fingers through his hair, he screamed from between clenched teeth before reaching for his door. I followed, the two of us walking to the elevator that would take us straight up to the penthouse.
Walking into the apartment, we took two steps inside, and Ky came out of the living room. His hair was sticking up in all directions, his gray eyes so wild, I expected lightning to flash across them from the storminess within. “Where is she?” he demanded, his eyes flickering around, as if we were hiding her behind us.
“Where is she?” Sparks repeated quietly, each word barely a whisper. Snorting a laugh that held no humor, he drew back and punched Ky straight in the face.
Staggering back, Ky held his jaw, now sporting a growing, matching bruise to the one on Sparks’s face that Miguel had given him days earlier. “What the fuck is your problem?”
“You!” Sparks yelled, his chest heaving as he flexed his fingers. His knuckles were split open again, blood slowly dripping down his fingers. “You’re the fucking problem, Ky. You let some chick come up to you and hug you, practically fucking kiss you on the lips, and you didn’t correct her. Didn’t put distance between you. Didn’t even tell her that you have a girlfriend who was standing right there watching you like her heart wasn’t breaking. Then that same girl attempted to alienate us, all of us, when this band is about unity. About family. You know, the one we created together. But you tell us to hear her out. To listen to this grand plan to promote us across social media. All of this after Hayat told you she didn’t think Maddie was the right fit, that the plan wasn’t how we wanted to present Autumn’s Slumber. But instead of correcting Maddie, again, you let her treat our girl like she was going to fuck everything up.”
Ky shook his head. “I was just trying to de-escalate the growing tension. We were there to discuss work, not for the girls to throw down in an all-out brawl.”
“Right,” Sparks said with a snort, but he was practically shaking with his anger. “Of course that was what you were doing. Fucking moron. You were still attempting to make up for whatever it is that you think you owe that girl. Some shit you weren’t a part of and didn’t even know about until after it all happened. You put her feelings first over Hayat’s, when she is the one who matters. Hayat comes first over anything and anyone.”
Shaking his head in exasperation, Sparks walked away from Ky, all the way to the other side of the living room, before turning on him again. “And then when Hayat asked our opinions? You just stood there…what? Tongue-tied because you weren’t sure how to ‘de-escalate the tension’? Or because you didn’t want to hurt poor, pitiful Maddie’s feelings?”
He rubbed at his throbbing jaw. “I…I don’t know why I hesitated.”
“Right,” I sneered. “You’re so full of shit, Ky. Seeing that Maddie girl got you all flustered.” I shook my head.
“Hayat thinks she’s going to fuck up the band,” I informed Ky, because he didn’t seem to be focused on that. “She let your little friend get in her head, because you allowed her to. Now, she’s telling Emmie Armstrong to get Atticus to take her place.”
All the color drained from Ky’s face. Taking a stumbling step back, he dropped down on the edge of the long end of the sectional. I glanced around the room, taking in the space that we’d created as a comfort for all three of us. Now, without Hayat there, it felt empty. Lifeless.
Fuck that.
“We’ll fix this,” Ky muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face and into his hair. “Once we talk to her, she’ll understand why I hesitated, and we can erase all that bullshit from her head.”
Sparks shot me another look, and we both rolled our eyes. “There is no we in this plan of yours, motherfucker. You’re the one who hurt her. You were the one who made her think that shit. You will be the one to convince her that Autumn’s Slumber is the band she was meant to be in. And if you don’t?” Sparks shrugged. “Well, then that’s a conversation for another day.”
Ky jerked as if Sparks had just punched him again. “What are you saying, man?”
“You know what he’s saying, Ky,” I answered. “There are plenty of things I can live without. But there is one that I can’t. And I’ll walk away from you and the band before I ever chance losing Hayat.”