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Chapter 3
Rex
I pinch my eyes open and groan. My ribs feel like they’ve been pummeled.
“Hey, buddy. You awake?”
I turn to look in the direction of the voice. “Blaise. What the hell are you doing here?”
My friend, Blaise O’Malley, smiles brightly. “I’m your emergency contact!”
“Oh. Right.” Men over thirty shouldn’t have the drummers of their bands as an emergency contact. “What time is it?”
“Four.”
I glance out the window. It’s dark. “In the morning?”
“You betcha,” he says, nodding once, his red hair flopping out of place.
“You drove out here at four in the morning to…” I begin.
Blaise shrugs. “Well, I got the call at, like, one. And I was awake anyway, so –”
I chuckle. Even smiling hurts. Shit. “Dirty son of a bitch.”
Blaise’s eyes widen. “No, it was – I was working on a new –”
“Giving you a hard time, B,” I cut him off. Blaise, of all my bandmates, lives the least rocker lifestyle of us all. Sure, he’s a fucking badass drummer and can fly off the handle if the spirit calls him. But he disappears from parties after half an hour and if he has left a string of broken hearts in his wake, I don’t know about them. “What the hell happened?”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but Carmen is…” He drags his finger across his neck and makes a squelching sound from the back of his throat.
“Carmen? My bike? She’s – no.” I shoot upward. Or try to at least. Not only is my body in incredible amounts of pain for unknown reasons, but I’m hooked up to all sorts of needles, bits and bobs. Shit. I really screwed up, didn’t I? I groan in pain.
Blaise stands and guides me back down into the pillow. “Hey, take it easy man. You almost died.”
“I did?” I ask.
“You don’t remember what happened?”
I furrow my brow and stare up at the ugly foam-tiled ceiling. “Was driving to Joshua Tree. Then… started raining.”
“Yeah, that storm was no fucking joke.”
I shake my head. I could have driven in the rain with no problem. It was the – oh. “Hydroplaned,” I lie through my teeth, not willing to say I was distracted by the memory of a beautiful Latina woman when I saw the name of her town on a passing billboard.
“Thank God you had some sense and were wearing a helmet, else you might…” Blaise gulps back on his words.
“Don’t cry, man…”
“Sorry,” he says, pressing a hand over his eyes. “But if you had –‘”
“I didn’t,” I say firmly.
Dropping his hand, Blaise sniffles, holding back his tears. He’s the most sensitive of the four of us and I’d usually chalk it up to that sort of thing. However, I guess he’s allowed to be emotional if I almost died. That feels fair.
“Sorry,” he chokes out.
“No apology necessary, bro,” I say.
