“We talked him into in-patient.”
I bury my face in my hands. Other than Wyatt, Sinjin is my brother’s oldest friend—Cal hadn’t joined the band until six years ago, after they changed their name to Your Toxic Sequel. In the fifteen years I’ve known Sinjin, fifteen years where he’s become more like a brother to me than one of Lucas’s friends, he’s spent half of that time in and out of rehab.
“Was it bad?” I ask.
Even though Wyatt’s mouth eases into a smile, I know this has to be painful for him. I’ve always hated it when he’s hurt because the crazy range of emotions that play out on his face makes everything from my throat to my belly feel like it’s all tangled up in knots. “Not as bad as the last time.”
My shoulders slump. The last time Sinjin had told me he wouldn’t make it if he had to go away, and it had scared the shit out of me. I start to tell Wyatt how relieved I am, but then I freeze. For some reason, he’s suddenly more interested in his phone than ogling, touching, or teasing me—or talking about Sin, for that matter. He’s holding something back.
“Okay, spill it, McCrae. What else happened?”
“He went off on Lucas’s girl.”
“Lucas’s girl?” I repeat, and the corners of Wyatt’s blue eyes crinkle. He’s laughing at me. We’re having a serious conversation, and this man is laughing at me.
Unbelievable.
“Yeah, Lucas’s girl. Damn near six feet tall, red hair, one minute she’s adjusting her halo and the next she’s telling me to f**k off.”
“Sienna,” I say. The girl who’s filling in for me as Lucas’s assistant while I’m here. Lucas had met her two years ago on a video shoot, but he screwed things up. A week ago, when he discovered that the house he bought at auction in Nashville—a house he doesn’t honestly care for—belongs to her grandmother, he moved in for the kill. He made her some f**ked up proposition to work for him in exchange for her grandma’s house, and he used me to help him.
I love my brother, don’t get me wrong, but I despise him for exploiting her weaknesses to get what he wants. “Okay . . . what exactly do you mean Sin went off on her? What did he say? Ugh, what did he do?”
Wyatt doesn’t jump to answer me, so I bring up Sienna’s name on my iPhone. Of course, it’s much too late to call her, but it gets my point across.
“Kylie,” Wyatt says. The taxi crawls to a stop just as he closes his large hand around my small one, stilling me. “I’ll tell you upstairs.” He keeps his blue eyes fastened to mine as he digs in his pocket to pay the fare.
“I can’t stay long,” I tell him a minute later as the driver pulls away. He touches the small of my back, leading me inside the hotel lobby, which is eerily quiet. “And I’ll pay you my half of the cab fare when we get upstairs.”
“No. To everything you said.”
“Asshole.” He pretends he doesn’t hear the insult, pulling me into the elevator with him. He chooses the fifth floor, leans back against the wall, and lifts his eyes to the glass ceiling. “I’ve got to say, I’m a little shocked you’re not on the second floor.”
The elevator stops, and he lowers his chin so that we’re face to face. “I can move rooms, Ky.”
The door slides open to a few college boys who look stoned out of their minds. I step out first, barely missing the roving hands of the guy with the floppy hair. Wyatt comes out behind me, muttering a string of threats to the boy before grabbing my waist to steer me in the right direction.
His suite is at the end of the hallway. As soon as we get to the door, he slides his hands into my back pockets and places his chin on the top of my head. We stay quiet for what seems like a long time, with him breathing me in and me listening to the steady rhythm of his heart. The only other sound in the hall is a woman who creeps out of her room with an ice bucket, and she stops for a moment to give us a sleepy smile. “What’s this for?” I ask him.
“Because I told you I wouldn’t try to f**k you if you came here,” he says. Arching my body back, I look up at him and twist my lips to the side skeptically. “And because I’ve missed you since you left me at Thanksgiving.”
But I didn’t leave. You just weren’t there when I needed you afterward, and I gave up.
“I left because it wasn’t going anywhere. Because there are things holding you back. The reason I didn’t show this week is because I needed to . . .” I count backward from ten. “I’ve held on to you for so many years—through Brenna and the tours and all the other bullshit. I just need a chance to catch my breath.”
Smiling sadly, he lets me go. As he turns to slide his room key in the card reader, I have to lean in close to him to hear his response. “You mean you needed a chance to f**king forget me.”
Yes.
“No,” I say.
“You’re a bad, bad liar.”
Despite my burning cheeks, I shiver when I step into his room. The first thing Wyatt always does when he checks into a hotel is to adjust the AC to its absolute lowest temperature, and this time is no different. I sit on the end of the only bed in the room and play with the edge of the white cotton duvet.
“So tell me what happened with Sinjin and Sienna.”
He sums it up quickly, explaining to me how Sin got so messed up he not only talked shit to my temp, he threatened her, too. Since Lucas is hell bent on possessing her, I have a feeling he’s furious. By the time silence falls between Wyatt and myself, my hands are balled into tight fists that leave fingernail marks in palms.