Page 99 of Before You Fell

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.”