Chapter 32
CHAPTER 32
ICE
S ilver was resting, which as far as he could tell was the proper medical term for ‘finally passed out after hours of being interrogated by a never-ending stream of cops and doctors. His own eyes were gritty with the need to sleep, but he couldn’t bear to take his eyes off her for more than a second. When he’d needed the bathroom, he’d called Beckett in to sit with her for the thirty seconds or so it took for him to empty his bladder.
They were all here, out in the waiting room. The friends he’d made during his short time in South Carolina. Even Frankie was here, having skipped out on her classes so she could hound the doctors and making inquiries about which hospital to send Silver to for the surgery needed to repair her hands.
Her perfect, talented, magic-making hands. Wrapped up like something out of a mummy movie because that bastard had sliced her open when she wouldn’t give him the answers he wanted, according to her statements to the police.
Ruined, because her Daddy had failed to keep her safe.
I’m so fucking sorry, Silver.
“How’s she doing?”
The question itself wasn’t unexpected, but the voice was. Jerking his head up, he stared at the couple filling the doorway, and his heart lodged itself firmly in his throat.
“Mom. Dad. What are you… I wasn’t expecting you.”
Not his actual parents, of course. Even if he’d bothered to call them, they wouldn’t have come. Nothing short of him actually dying would get them out of the comfortable house he’d bought for them after Deviant Whisper’s first platinum single. And even then it would only be for the reading of his will, so they could hear what he’d left them.
Which was nothing, and he’d taken great joy in making sure it was clearly outlined in said will that if they outlived him, they’d never get another fucking penny from his estate.
No, the couple standing just outside the hospital room, staring at him through red-rimmed eyes, weren't his parents by birth. But they were the family of his heart.
And it killed him to know he was probably losing them, as well as his best friend.
Richard Alvarez stepped into the room, and Ice swore he looked as though he’d aged a dozen years since the last time he’d seen him. “Simon already had us on a plane, as soon as he realized Adrian had disappeared. We were in the air when… when everything happened.” Positioning himself on the opposite side of Silver’s bed, he ran a fingertip down her bandaged arm. “My boy did this?”
If he could have, Ice would have taken the blame, just to erase the pain in the other man’s voice. “He did. I’m sorry. Dad—Richard. You have to know I’m so fucking sorry.”
Disappointment and fury sparked in Richard’s eyes, making Ice feel like he was twelve years old again, about to get told off for the errant baseball that had gone through the Alvarez’s kitchen window. “Don’t you dare apologize for what he did.”
“I’m not.” Forcing himself to stand, to look the man he considered a father in the eye, Ice swallowed hard. “I’m apologizing for my part in pushing him to this. I’ve been in love with Silver for as long as I can remember. And I kept that from him, from everyone, because I thought it was the right thing to do. But after…” He caught himself just before he told them more than they needed to know about Roulette. “We had a night, back in February, Silver and I. A night that never should have happened, but it did, and I finally told her how I felt about her. She turned me down flat. Told me we couldn’t risk what Ace… couldn’t risk what might happen to the band. And I’m a fucking coward, so I left. Took myself off to the other side of the country. Couldn’t bear to look her or Ace in the eye after that, so I tried to drown what I felt for her in whiskey instead.”
“You knew what she meant to him.” Now it was Valerie stepping into the room, her back ramrod straight and her skin so pale it was nearly translucent. “You knew it would kill him to lose her. How could you do this to him?”
“Val—”
“No.” Ice cut off Richard’s admonishment with a shake of his head. She deserved her say, even if it killed him to hear the words. “She’s right. I knew Ace would lose his mind when I told him about me and Silver. There are a million reasons for why I didn’t walk away from her that night. Why I didn’t send her away when she tracked me down here. And none of them make a goddamn bit of difference, because I was wrong. Not for loving her. I won’t apologize for that. But I should have been honest with Ace from the start. Before I ever touched her that way. I didn’t, and this is all my fault.”
“We opened our home to you.” Fury vibrated in Valerie Alvarez’s voice, turning her words to knives, slicing him open from the inside. “We took you in, treated you like our own flesh and blood. And this is how you repay us? I can’t even look at you right now.”
Turning on her heel, she marched out of the room, taking all the oxygen with her. Every breath was a struggle as Ice stared at the empty doorway, and he wondered vaguely how he was still standing when his heart had been ripped from his chest and ground into the linoleum beneath her feet.
“She’ll come around,” Richard said softly. “This has all been…” Trailing off, he pressed his lips together, and the haunted look in his eyes was another cut to Ice’s already bleeding heart. “She’s hurt, and she’s confused. We all are. And when she can see a bit more clearly, she’ll realize this wasn’t your fault. But for now, it might be best if you kept your distance. Just until things settle down a bit.”
“Yeah. No, I get it.” I wouldn’t want me around, either.
“I love you, Elias. So does Val. You’ll see. It’ll be okay.” Glancing down, Richard sighed as he brushed a stray curl from Silver’s face. “Tell her we stopped by, would you? And that we’re rooting for her.”
“I will.”
Richard leaned down to press a kiss to Silver’s forehead, then gave Ice a sharp nod before following his wife out the door. All the air rushed from Ice’s lungs, and his knees gave out. Thankfully, the chair was there to catch him, though it did nothing for the crushing pain in his chest.
“She’s wrong.”
Jerking forward, he laid his hand on Silver’s stomach. “Hey, sleepy girl. How’s your pain? Do you need something? Let me go find your nurse.”
“No. No nurse. Not yet.” Her eyes were open and clear for the first time since she’d been brought in. Clear, and burning with righteous fury.
There was a lot of that going around.
Ignoring the fury for now, he plastered on a smile. “Baby, you need to stay on top of the pain. Let me call someone for you, and then we can talk.”
“She’s wrong,” Silver repeated, freezing him in place as he reached for the button to call the nurse. “You aren’t responsible for what happened to me. This?” She raised her bound hand. “This was Ace, and Ace alone. He chose to lure me to that apartment, he chose to tie me to that chair, and he chose to ruin my fucking hands. So don’t you dare, for one fucking second, let him off the hook for any of those choices by taking that blame on yourself. You hear me, Elias Turner?”
A million arguments bounced around inside his mind. But all that mattered right then was keeping Silver calm, to keep her from hurting herself even more than she already was, so he simply nodded. “I hear you, baby.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Promise me.”
“Promise you what?”
“Promise me that you won’t blame yourself for what he did. We both fucked up by not being more open with him about what we’d done, but that doesn’t justify his actions. Plenty of people get their hearts broken and don’t lash out the way he did.”
“I know.” Too exhausted, too heartbroken for anger, Ice had to settle for the guilt threatening to strangle him. “But I should have told him the second I left Black Light. Maybe if I’d been honest with him from the start, you wouldn’t be lying in a fucking hospital bed right now.”
“Or maybe he would have murdered you on the spot. He’s not well, Ice. He hasn’t been well for a really long time.”
Something in her tone told him there was more there than what she’d let on so far. “What aren’t you telling me, Silver?”
Letting her head fall back against the pillow, she closed her eyes, misery etched into every line of her perfect face. “He was convinced we’d get back together, just like we always did. It didn’t seem to matter how many different ways I told him it was over, he just kept hounding me about it. Texting me constantly, calling me, talking to me like I was still his . Nothing ever seemed to get through to him. And that’s not on you, or me. That’s… there’s something broken inside him, Ice.”
“This was happening while you were here?” Maybe he wasn’t too tired for fury, after all. “And you didn’t tell me?”
One dark eye peeked open. “Sorry.”
If she hadn’t been lying in a hospital bed, he would have been tempted to bend her over the closest surface and spank her ass until she promised never, ever to keep anything from her Daddy again. But she was in that bed, and despite what she’d said, it was at least partially his fault.
So he smiled and brushed a lock of hair from her face. “We can talk about it when you’re better.”
Snorting out a laugh, she closed her eye again. “You really are shook up if you’re not threatening to beat my ass for keeping all that from you.”
That much seemed to go without saying, so he didn’t bother to respond. He just pushed the button to call for the nurse.