16. Chapter Sixteen #2
Jax steps forward, leaning over him. “I don’t give a flying fuck what you think. She will always be part of this band and she is in the hospital for something that could have fucking killed her.”
Damon pushes himself up, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “We’ll get updates. You cannot cancel a press conference over a fucking songwriter.”
A songwriter.
For half a second, I hear nothing but the blood rushing in my ears. As if that is all she is. A name in the credits.
“Go fuck yourself,” I tell him.
My hands are shaking. I hate every visible sign of fear on me, every tremor that gives me away, how scared I am right now, that I could lose her before I get to her.
Damon stares at me. “You are done. If you walk out that door, I will make sure you are finished.”
Cruz steps between us. “Back the fuck off, Damon.”
“You stay out of this.”
“No.” Cruz’s voice drops to a whisper. “You back the fuck off before I handle what Phoenix started.”
“Car’s coming around.” Jax is already moving toward the exit.
“I’m calling the hospital.” Jett has his phone pressed to his ear.
Damon’s voice follows us as we move toward the exit. “You have contracts. All of you. If you walk out of here, there will be lawsuits. You hear me? Lawsuits.”
Jax shoves the door open and we all climb into the car.
Jax drives. Jett sits in the front passenger seat, phone pressed to his ear. Cruz sits next to me in the back seat, staring out the window, his expression unreadable.
I try to keep the air moving in and out of my body. But it refuses to.
The headline keeps carving itself into the inside of my skull.
Songwriter. That word pisses me off all over again. As if she were not the first person to look at a loudmouthed asshole with a secondhand guitar and see a future worth bleeding for.
My fingers curl so tightly that my nails bite into my palms.
The first pill.
Fuck.
I gave her the first fucking pill. I can still see it in my hand. I told her to trust me, that it was nothing, just one stupid night, one stupid high. I smiled as I handed it over.
Jesus Christ.
My stomach turns so hard that acid burns the back of my throat. Then my brain really decides to fuck with me.
Her sitting beside me on that couch, asking if I’d ever had a crush on her.
And me. I gave her the truth. For about three fucking seconds. Then I hid it behind a joke because I would rather appear foolish than admit she had been able to break me since we were kids.
The nightclub. Every bastard looking at her. Every pair of eyes making me want to start swinging, even as I kept telling myself I was just being territorial.
Bullshit. I wanted her for so long I’d forgotten there’d ever been a version of me who didn’t.
The storage room. The way she gave herself to me without holding back. I took everything she offered, then walked away, pretending it was only sex because that lie was easier to carry than the truth.
Then another memory punches straight through my ribs.
The woman under the table. Her mouth wrapped around my cock. Willow standing there.
Jesus fucking Christ. I can still see her face.
I press my palm to my mouth and stare out the window as the city tears past in blurred streaks.
The whiskey from last night is gone. The high, too. All that’s left is every shitty thing I’ve ever done, lining up one after another. And for the first time in my life, I can’t talk my way around any of it.
“She’s going to be okay,” Jax says from the front seat.
No one answers. None of us know that and I’m not in the mood for lies dressed up as comfort. I have made an entire fucking career out of dressing up lies so people pay to hear them and right now every soft sentence feels useless.
The hospital appears through the windshield. Jax barely has the car stopped before I am out and moving across the drop-off area with the guys behind me.
Inside, everything smells sterile. Clean floors. Panic with disinfectant poured over them.
We get to the desk and Cruz does the talking because, apparently, I look one wrong word away from tearing the place apart with my bare hands.
The nurse looks up Willow’s name.
I perceive only fragments.
Family.
No visitors.
Critical.
The word hits so hard that my hand slams down on the counter.
My fingers curl around the edge because if I don’t hold on to something I’m going to put my fist through the nearest wall and make every person in this place understand that critical is not a word they get to use about Willow, fucking, Hart.
The nurse looks at me with tired eyes. “Sir, you need to step back.”
“No, I need to fucking see her.”
“Family only.”
“I’m her...”
The word dies before I can drag it out because there is no word for what I am.
Best friend is too small. Bandmate is insulting. The man who put the first pill in her hand does not usually have visiting privileges.
Behind me, Jax swears under his breath.
Cruz leans in, his voice smooth. He softens his expression, drops the charm into place, and starts talking in that low, careful way of his. As if he is not also scared shitless beneath all that polish. I miss a substantial portion of it. I hear Willow’s name. ICU. Waiting room. Down the hall.
Then we are moving again.
The elevator takes too fucking long. Everything does. The doors. The numbers. The air in my lungs. My own heartbeat, pounding as if it has the nerve to keep going even though hers might not.
When the doors finally open, we step out and head down the hall toward the ICU area.
Then a voice cuts in from the room at the side.
“No.”
I turn and see Graham Hart standing ten feet away. He looks older than he did the last time I saw him. Pale face. Rough stubble along his jaw. Eyes bloodshot and murderous, as if he has already imagined my head hitting the wall and found the image comforting.
Elise stands near the wall behind him, arms wrapped around herself as if she is the only thing holding herself together.
Graham walks toward me slowly, causing the guys to shift beside me.
He comes to a stop in front of me. “You don’t get to be here.”
“I know.”
His eyes flash. “No, you don’t have a clue, Phoenix. You don’t know a damn thing. You have no idea what it was like to get that call. No idea what it was like to see my daughter in that bed, so still I thought...”
His voice cracks and it does something to me worse than if he had hit me.
I would rather he hit me.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
The words land pathetic and small. A shitty little bandage slapped over a wound I helped put there.
Graham’s mouth twists. “You’re sorry?”
“Yes.”
“You think sorry gets you any closer to her?”
“No.”
“Then leave.”
“I can’t.”
His face hardens.
I drop the last piece of pride I have and let it hit the floor right here in front of everyone to see whatever is left of me pretending I am not fucking terrified. Let the whole fucking hospital watch the cocky, egotistical rockstar fall apart in a hallway over the girl he was too stupid to love.
“Please.”
Graham stills.