Skylar
Alexis pulls to a stop in front of the emergency entrance of the hospital. The engine dies and somehow the silence in the car is louder than the empty highway we took to get here.
I look over. She sits speechless in the driver’s seat—with her jaw tight and her hands are clenched at ten and two on the steering wheel in a febrile attempt to stop them from trembling.
The Alexis who eats chaos for breakfast looks like she wants to hide under a bed and curl up into a fetal position.
The only thing Chandler said after informing me that there had been an accident was that I needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible.
After that, he hung up. I couldn’t tell if it was because of all the turmoil or because it sounded like it was taking everything in him not to break down.
I swallow back bile, the entire exchange burrowing a jagged hole in my stomach.
“Is he awake? Have the doctors seen him yet?” I force the questions out like there are splinters wedged in my throat.
Alexis inhales before answering. “I don’t know, honey. All Chandler told me was they hit another car and that I needed to get you and then get my ass here.”
There’s that word again. Honey.
Alexis waits for a response. When she doesn’t get one, she exits the car and opens the passenger door for me. My legs feel like jelly when I climb out.
“I’m going to park.”
Her steps are fast and deliberate. Her expensive heels clacking against the dark pavement.
I stare at the large lit-up building in front of me and debate running away.
Alexis is back at my side a moment later, almost like she sensed I was way more flight instead of fight.
The smell of antiseptic assaults my nostrils and the fluorescent lights buzz as we make our way to the intake nurse.
She quickly calls over a security guard and tells him where to deposit us.
No one is gossiping to one another or trying to sneak a photo. No one is asking for autographs.
It’s almost like a different world entirely.
The security guard steers us toward a private waiting room where Storm and Chandler are already sitting. Their complexions pallid under the harsh hospital light.
My stare snags on Storm first. He’s sitting with his head bowed, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles are white.
He’s praying, I realize.
While Chandler paces the shiny linoleum floor with his phone glued to his ear. The only bit of normal in this nightmare. “I don’t know, Vic. The doctors haven’t updated us yet. They just rushed him into surgery.”
My heart stutters, tripping over his last sentence.
“Surgery?”
My voice comes out mechanical and detached. Not like someone who just found out her fiancé was in a car accident and rushed into emergency surgery.
Josh will have practically instant access to all the drugs he wants now.
“I have to go,” Chandler says, hanging up on Vic.
The Vic Doherty. Founder and owner of the most esteemed record label out there.
His eyes flick to me, then Storm, before settling back on me. The wordless exchange between them is private and hefty…the kind that shifts the already tense energy of the room into something even more troubling.
Chandler steps toward me, taking both of my hands in his clammy ones.
He’s breathing hard…like he just ran a mile.
It’s weird. Perturbing even.
“Skylar—”
His fingers squeeze and he stills, almost like he’s bracing himself.
Something ominous and intuitive settles in my gut. An overwhelming, penetrating awareness that’s colder than the ice in the machine humming in the far corner.
“He’s dead,” I whisper, sparing him the terrible task of having to be the one to break it to me.
My words sit between us like a live wire.
The sad looks on their faces gives me the answer.
The three exchange a sorrowful and knowing glance. Like they’ve all been sharing a secret but now the cat’s out of the bag.
“They…” Chandler swallows, his face collapsing with more emotion than I’ve ever seen from him. “They pronounced him at the scene.”
Storm’s eyes flick to me, glassy and laden with some kind of apology.
Pronounced him at the scene?
“Pronounced him dead?”
Chandler nods before wrapping his arms around me. “I’m so sorry, honey.”
That word, yet again.
Because Josh…died.
The world pulls tight. Hospital lights warp. For several moments I legitimately can’t breathe.
My body decides for me. I won’t…can’t…accept it.
Not without making sure.
“I want to see him.”
Chandler pulls back. “I don’t think—”
“I. Need. To. See. Him.”
It’s not up for negotiation.
I have to see him with my own eyes.
I need proof.
Storm stands, raising his hand to hush Chandler who’s still protesting.
“Come on. We’ll find the doctor,” he says, effectively silencing Chandler.
Placing a muscular arm around my shoulder, he guides me out of the waiting room.
The hallway is somehow colder than the rest of the building.
I feel like I’m underwater as the nurse leads us to where Josh is.
I was prepared to go to the morgue, but Storm didn’t want me going down there so he arranged for them to place him in a private room.
This way it would be less…disturbing.
The nurse’s footsteps come to a stop at a room at the very end of the hall. “Are you sure you want to do this? He hasn’t been transferred and cleaned up by the funeral home yet.” She looks at Storm. “It won’t be pretty.”
I’ve survived worse, lady. Much worse.
“It’s okay,” Storm says, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be right out here if you need me.”
I open the door and walk inside but stop short when I’m halfway to the bed…because it’s him.
He’s dead, I remind myself.
But what if he’s not?
That thought gives me the courage to walk the rest of the way.
I freeze when I see him. Really see him.
I don’t really know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.
Dried blood covers most of his pale and blue-tinged face. Like he’s wearing makeup for Halloween.
Only, this isn’t a costume or pretend.
His vacant expression is the worst kind of honest. It’s like he’s here but he’s not.
A mannequin in a storefront. Lifelike, but not alive.
I study his face, my breath catching as I take it all in.
Bruises smear his skin, but the angle of the light makes his cheekbones look like something carved.
Something innocent and beautiful. Almost angelic.
Like the little boy I fell in love with.
The one who saved me.
I thought it would make me happy to see him this way after everything.
I failed to realize that everything encompasses far more than just eighteen days imprisoned in a room.
It’s my childhood. My first kiss. My first love.
My hero.
Some part of me is convinced that if I touch him, the universe will right itself.
My fingertips meet his cheek. His skin is as cold as my current reality.
But not quite as cold as the painful, gut-wrenching truth.
The boy who shared my demons turned into one.
A violent tremor goes through me, followed by a laugh that feels and sounds like broken glass.
He can’t hurt me anymore.
I won.
So why does it feel like I lost everything?
Chandler’s words from earlier are an ominous nudge. Rushed into surgery.
Obviously, it wasn’t Josh like I thought.
Phoenix.
The realization punches the air from my lungs. I’ve been so focused on Josh being dead, I never asked how Phoenix was doing.
The truly innocent party in all this.
And now, the collateral damage.
No. Oh god. Oh, no.
“Phoenix!”
His name tears through me like a jagged saw and the pain is immediate.
What if he dies, too?
The thought is a scream that has nowhere to go.
My knees give and sounds rip from my throat. Not quite a shriek, more like a prayer. A desperate plea for the universe to save him.
Phoenix has to live. He has to.
The door swings open and Storm rushes to me.
He smells like weed and sorrow when he wraps his arms around me, hoisting me back on my feet.
“I’m so sorry,” I say over and over. “I’m so sorry.”
Storm’s his best friend. Hell, his brother.
“Phoenix!”
Chandler barges in next—eyes wide and concern skittering across his face. “I knew this was a terrible idea. She—”
“Keeps screaming for Phoenix,” Storm interjects, his voice oddly flat against my cries.
“What?” Chandler questions, clearly confused. “Why?”
Because I put the poison in a place where the children could touch it.
I was trying to erase a monster, but I ended up throwing one of the world’s best people into the chaos.
All this blood is on my hands.
“Phoenix!”
The door clicks open and a different nurse from before enters. “Family only.”
I’m the only one in the room who comes the closest to that description.
The only one who can claim to be both the hurricane and the wreck.
Rough hands, the kind belonging to a drummer, clasp my shoulders. “Come on.”
I plant my feet. He needs to know. “I’m sorry.”
I’m so fucking sorry.
“We need to get her out of here. Now,” Chandler yells. “She’s obviously not well.”
No, I’m not. I feel sick. Hell, I am sick.
Phoenix might die.
And it’s all my fault.
I sob Phoenix’s name until my vocal cords are shredded as I’m carried out of the room.
“It’s okay,” Storm soothes. “It’s okay.”
It’s not okay.
He turns down a corridor that smells like disinfectant and stale coffee. An unsympathetic nurse who must have spent too many years dealing with all these horrors tosses around words like surgeon and trying to stabilize like he’s a piece of machinery they’re trying to fix.
What they don’t say is, “he won’t die.”
“Is he going to…”
I can’t bring myself to utter the words. Doing so might give them credence.
“Is he going to be okay?” Storm finishes for me.
The nurse shuffles her feet, unsure how to answer.
“Did he code again?” Storm presses, his deep voice cracking with emotion on the last word. “Can I see him?”
Code?
A doctor approaches a moment later. His eyes are kind and tired. “We’ve stabilized him for now. We’re doing everything we can.”
“Is he—” My voice cracks. “Alive.”
The doctor looks between Storm and me. “His spleen ruptured and we had to operate immediately to get the bleeding under control. He’s still in critical condition. He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s alive for now.”
Alive.
The word is a miracle I don’t quite deserve.
“Immediate family will be able to see him in a few hours as long as he remains stabilized.”
“I am immediate family,” Storm barks.
The doctor nods once before scurrying off.
Chandler’s hand finds mine. Storm looks at his phone. “Grams’s plane just landed. She’ll be here soon. God help them, because the woman will burn this place to the ground and I’ll light up a joint with the motherfucking flames if they don’t let us see him.”
Chandler nods in agreement.
Then there’s nothing but a thick stretch of silence…humming with everything unsaid.
The band will forever have a hole after this. So will my chest.
I plop down on a chair. Defeated in a way I’ve never been defeated before.
Please make it through this, Phoenix.
Chandler drapes a jacket over my shoulders because the room is cold and because he doesn’t know what else to do. There’s no one to order around. No tasks to complete.
Storm perches on the arm of my chair, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose…like he is trying to stop his world from spinning in reverse.
I press my forehead to the window and watch the rain outside.
Josh is dead. Phoenix is in surgery. Memphis is nowhere to be found.
And I’m the one ensnaring everyone in this web of destruction I’ve created.
Shit. Does Memphis even know about Josh yet?
“Where is he?”
“Who?” Chandler questions.
“Memphis.”
Just saying his name aloud hurts like hell.
“Valerie’s flight got delayed. He’s still at the airport,” Storm answers clinically, like he’s on autopilot.
I sit up straight. “He knows?”
“Yeah.”
The silence that follows shortly after is both absolution and indictment.