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Summer glances up from her phone and her eyes widen. “Oh shit.”
“What the fuck?” Rebel starts to roll his sleeves up past his elbows as he and Riot stride toward us. It’s as innate a move to him as it is to me. We’ve always had each other’s backs. Until he went and talked Ivy into helping him.
“Dude? What did you do?” Riot asks as he tugs a metal lighter from his pocket and starts flipping the lid open and closed like it’s a fidget toy.
“Nicole Hawthorne filed an emergency restraining order,” I say.
“Let him go.” Rebel’s face turns the kind of stormy that doesn’t bode well for anyone who gets in his way.You all right, bro?
What does it fucking look like?I mirror his expression.
“We will,” says the guard whose name I didn’t catch, as they usher me toward the exit. “Once you’re outside.”
Rebel raises an eyebrow and shoves one hand into the other.I’ll take one. You take the other?
“They’re harmless.” I slant my gaze away from him to the looming exit.
“Huh?” Pete asks.
“What on earth is going on?” Summer asks as she and my brothers follow behind.
“I, uh, I don’t know,” Rebel says.
“Come back here while that order is still in place and we’ll be forced to get the cops involved,” the first guard reminds me as they walk me through the sliding doors and into the early morning cold. “Got it?”
“Got it.” I roll my shoulders and straighten my jacket as they disappear back inside.
It’s not yet bright as my family flank me one by one.
“How’s your wife?” Riot asks me quietly as journalists and photographers spot us from where they’ve been corralled out of the way of the entrance. They want my version of the events that transpired last night. Events that still have me spinning out.
“I almost questioned it out loud,” Summer says as the paparazzi run to crowd us.
“They wouldn’t talk if I wasn’t family.” I shrug.
“You’re a real Sandra Bullock,” Summer says.
“What?”
“Like in that movie. With the guy with the eyebrows,” she adds.
“You and your rom-coms, kitten,” Rebel says in a tone that says he wants to roll his eyes so hard.
“These guys are keen.” Riot gives me a shake. “They must have been out here all night.”
“None of you say anything.” Summer takes the lead as we move through the crowd. She’s calm and collected while I’m three seconds from breaking down. She’s most likely been prepping for this the entire time they’ve been in the waiting room. Longer. Since they first heard that Ivy had been transported to the hospital. All I could think about… all I can think about is Ivy.
Riot is beside me, flick, flick, flicking that lighter top in such a nonchalant way. But I know better. He’s as wound up as the rest of us. Antsy like an electric current is passing through him and one spark will set him off like a powder keg.
Rebel is behind us. His gaze boring into the back of my head. Willing me to keep my mouth shut and my feet moving. Having my back like he always has.
Only I can’t pretend that everything is okay between him and I, because the one person I need right now… the one person who matters right now… I can’t be with. How do I find a way to be with her when her vile witch of a mother is determined to keep me away? When the state of California is behind her.
I’ve never felt as broken as I do this morning. Cut open and gutted. My insides on display for these circling piranhas with their cameras and their microphones. Their questions surround us like a wall pushing in on us.
“What happened, Rogue?” A microphone is shoved in my face.
Eyes forward, I keep walking.
