Crash Into Me (19 page)

Chapter Eighteen

“Call 911!” Ryder yelled at Jared. “I don’t think he’s breathing.”

“Are you sure?” Jared was already dialing his cell phone as he raced across the room
to where Wyatt was passed out on the couch.

“No, I’m not sure! But it doesn’t look like it.” He laid his head on Wyatt’s chest,
listened for the beating of his heart and the telltale movement of his torso that
foretold breathing. But there was nothing there. Goddammit.

Not again. Wyatt was not doing this shit to him again.

But he was, and this time he wasn’t just unresponsive. He was dead.

No. Goddammit, no. Ryder wouldn’t accept that. He didn’t have a fucking clue how long
his drummer had been like this, but he was not going to lose one of his best friends
on the dirty floor of a dressing room in Houston. It wasn’t going to fucking happen.

Grabbing Wyatt by the shirt, Ryder pulled him onto the floor. Covered Wyatt’s mouth
with his own and delivered two rescue breaths. As he did he was reviewing his very
rusty knowledge of CPR in his head. “Ask them how to do CPR,” he said to Jared, who
was frantically explaining the situation to a 911 operator. “I can’t remember how
many compressions I’m supposed to do in a row.”

“Thirty.” Suddenly Jamison was there, falling to her knees beside him. “Right here,”
she said, putting her hands in the center of his chest and beginning rapid compressions.

“Okay, breathe for him,” she said. He did, twice, then she started compressions again.

“The ambulance is about seven minutes out,” Jared said.

“Stay on the line with the dispatcher,” Jamison told him, a little breathless as she
continued the compressions. “But call security, see if they have a defibrillator they
can get in here. If we get a pulse, we can use it. Plus, there should be EMS on scene
for the concert tonight—see if they’ve arrived yet. And give security a heads up about
the ambulance. They should have someone waiting to bring the paramedics back here.

“Breathe,” she told Ryder and he did, a little awed at how competent she was. How
fast she’d taken over when fear had been a raging nightmare inside of him.

She started CPR again. “Jared, there’s water running in the bathroom. Someone’s taking
a shower. Go in and find out what time they went in there. We should try to have an
estimate for the paramedics for how long Wyatt’s been down.”

“Right.” Jared sprang into action, all but flying across the large room. Then a bunch
of things happened at once.

She got a pulse.

Wyatt’s body started to shake, then to convulse. The dressing room door burst open
and two security guards ran in, followed by three paramedics with a gurney.

And Jared fell over, landing on his ass just outside the bathroom door. He was sheet
white.

“Let us take over now, ma’am.” The paramedics eased in beside Jamison, helped her
roll Wyatt onto his side so he wouldn’t hurt himself. Then one began firing off questions
as the other started an IV.

Ryder answered the first couple of questions, torn between terror that Wyatt would
die, rage that he’d done this to himself—and all of them—again, and concern for Jared,
who hadn’t moved from his spot on the carpet. He looked almost as bad as Wyatt did.

Jamison crossed to him just as Victoria stumbled out of the bathroom, a small towel
wrapped around her dripping body.

Seconds later, Micah followed her out.

He was also wet and wearing only a towel, and for a second Ryder felt like his head
was going to explode. Had he somehow fallen through a wormhole into an alternate reality
where everything was fucked up beyond all recognition?

Because this couldn’t be happening. Wyatt couldn’t have overdosed again, couldn’t
have been lying there—dead—in front of him while Micah was in the bathroom screwing
Jared’s fiancée. It couldn’t be real because not even rock and roll was this fucked
up.

Except apparently it was. Because even the paramedics, while working on Wyatt, were
watching the scene play out with the kind of bug-eyed fascination people had only
for celebrities and disasters of epic proportion. How nice that Shaken Dirty could
provide both tonight.

“Jared, I’m sorry,” Victoria sobbed, throwing herself onto the ground beside him.
He just stared at her numbly as she tried to climb onto his lap.

And into the middle of all of that walked Quinn, carrying three pizza boxes and whistling
the melody for one of the new songs he and Ryder were working on. He’d barely made
it two steps before he froze, the pizza boxes sliding onto the ground with a sickening
squish.

It was the last straw. Ryder sprang up and headed straight for Jared, who hadn’t said
a word even as Victoria and Micah piled ridiculous justification on top of ridiculous
justification. He wasn’t sure either one of them had even noticed the paramedics across
the room where they continued to work on Wyatt.

Ryder grabbed Victoria, pulled her kicking and screaming off of Jared and carried
her back inside the bathroom. “Put some clothes on before you come back out here,”
he barked at her.

After closing the bathroom door on her mid-rant, he turned to Micah and shoved him
roughly toward the door. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“I’m not going any—”

“Now!” he roared, grabbing the bass player by the back of his neckand marching him
straight out the door—and into the crowd of backstage crew from the various bands
who had just begun to gather outside of their dressing room. With one glance, he spotted
a dozen cell phones, but Ryder couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when Wyatt was
dying and the rest of the band was ripping itself apart at the seams.

He slammed the door in their faces and turned to Quinn. “Go after him. Find out if
he knows what Wyatt took and how long ago he took it.”

He crossed to Jamison, who was trying to coax her brother to his feet. He reached
down, hauled Jared up. And barely resisted the urge to go after Micah and throttle
him. Jared was the best guy in the band. The nicest, friendliest, least fucked up
by a mile. And everyone in Shaken Dirty knew how much he adored Victoria.

“Take him back to the hotel,” Ryder told Jamison. “To your room. Stay with him and
if Micah or Victoria are stupid enough to show their faces, don’t let them fucking
near him.” He pulled some money out of his pocket, pressed it into her hand. “Have
security call a cab for you.”

She nodded. “What about Wyatt?”

“I’ve got him.”

“I know.” She stood on tiptoes, started to kiss his cheek, but at the last second
she backed away. He didn’t blame her. Jared was the band’s leader, the one who kept
things running smoothly. Who figured out what needed to be done and then did it. But
Ryder was the guy who checked in on everyone, who made sure that everyone in the band
was doing all right. And he’d royally fucked that job up … again. He’d been so busy
thinking about Jamison that he hadn’t seen just how bad Wyatt was getting—or how out
of control Micah had become. He hadn’t had a clue and now this had happened.

He’d never felt like more of a failure.

“What about the concert?” Jared asked, his voice wobbly and unsure, as different from
his normal breezy confidence as it could get and still come from the same vocal chords.

Ryder gestured at Wyatt, who was breathing on his own. But the paramedics were pumping
him full of all kinds of shit as they prepared to transfer him to the nearest hospital.
“I think it’s safe to say we aren’t going on tonight.”

“Yeah.” Jared ran a hand over his eyes, looking shattered and shell-shocked. “Call
me as soon as you know what’s going on with him. I’ll come up to the hospital.”

“Of course.” Ryder didn’t have the heart to tell him the whole Micah/Victoria thing
was probably going to break wide open in a matter of minutes, if it hadn’t already
done so. Combined with Wyatt’s overdose, it was going to be big entertainment news.
He’d get their manager, agent, and publicist on this mess as soon as possible, but
Jared still might be better off hiding out for a couple of days rather than dealing
with the paps in full attack mode.

Jamison hustled him toward the door just as Quinn burst through the crowd and back
into the room. Ryder didn’t even have time to fill him in before Victoria came out
of the bathroom, red-eyed and whimpering.

He ignored her as he tried to get his fury under control. Focused instead on Wyatt.
“Did Micah say what he took?”

Quinn shook his head, disgusted. “He was too busy trying to defend himself. Said Victoria
took off her clothes and climbed in the shower with him uninvited.”

“That’s not true!” Victoria said on a gasp.

Ryder pinned her with a look that had made even the most rabid photographers take
a few steps back. “Do you actually think anyone here gives a shit what you have to
say? Get the hell out of here. And leave Jared alone or I’ll make sure that even the
worst gossip rags in the business won’t touch your story.”

“I love him.”

“Yeah. I think we all got that.” He turned to Quinn. “Get her in a cab, will you?”

“With pleasure.”

Ryder didn’t bother to watch and see if she went willingly. Instead he crossed to
the paramedics and said, “Our best guess is still heroin.”

One of them nodded. “Yeah. He’s got the classic OD signs.”

Ryder’s stomach sunk as he wondered what the hell this was. Was it really just an
accidental overdose—which would be bad enough—or was it something darker, something
worse?

He said as much to the paramedics, who nodded as if unsurprised. The big one told
him, “We’ll know more once we’re at the hospital.”

“Do you think he’s going to be okay?”

“Right now his vitals are holding steady. That’s something. But they’ll have to run
a bunch of tests before anyone can give you a definitive answer.”

“Yeah. Of course.” He didn’t like the sound of that, but there was nothing he could
do except wait. Nothing any of them could do.

“We’re ready to move him. You’re welcome to ride with us in the ambulance.”

Like he’d be anywhere else. Wyatt was his friend, his responsibility. He’d already
fucked up with him twice. He wasn’t going to do it a third time.

Chapter Nineteen

Jamison was about to jump out of her skin. It seemed like she’d been waiting for her
cell phone to ring for hours, but it hadn’t. Not once.

Ryder had called Jared a few hours ago, told him that Wyatt was stable. They weren’t
yet sure of how much damage he’d done to himself this time, but he’d come around.
Had carried on a short conversation with Ryder and while he’d seemed confused, it
had appeared that all synapses were firing. Which hopefully was a sign that his brain
hadn’t gone very long without oxygen before they’d found him.

Jesus, she couldn’t believe this, couldn’t imagine that she was thinking about brain
damage and Wyatt in the same sentence. If the idiot made it through this okay, she
was going to kill him.

That’s if Ryder didn’t do it first.

Ryder. She sighed heavily even as she worried over him—over what to do for him and
about him.

She knew something was off between them, had known even when she’d stood in the little
dressing room of horrors. It was why she’d backed off from comforting him. The last
thing she wanted to do was to add more stress to him in the middle of an already terrible
situation.

God knew, this whole thing with Wyatt had to be killing him. It was killing her and
she wasn’t even in the band. Part of her wanted to be at the hospital with Ryder,
supporting him as he dealt with management and PR and all the other shit she knew
he had to be going through. But at the same time, there was Jared, who was an emotional
wreck. She didn’t feel comfortable leaving him either. Which was why she was sitting
here on her bed,

hip to hip with him and Quinn, both of whom were shoveling in ice cream and watching
an old horror movie. Quinn had shown up about half an hour ago, after spending three
hours at the hospital with Ryder as they waited to talk to Wyatt’s doctor.

Micah had texted all of them a few times. He was down the hall in Shaken Dirty’s suite
while they all hung in her single occupancy room—the irony of that was not lost on
her-—and he wanted to explain. But none of them were in the mood to listen, least
of all Jared. Her brother hadn’t said much since they’d gotten back to the hotel,
but she knew he was devastated. He loved Victoria, had been so looking forward to
a break in the tour so they could plan their wedding.

Now she wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Wasn’t sure what any of the guys were
going to do, especially now that the tour break seemed to be coming earlier than expected.
Wyatt was in no shape to go back on the road, that was obvious. And she didn’t have
a clue how Jared would be able to step foot on a stage with Micah. She was all for
professionalism, and so was he, but for him making music was an intensely private
thing, one he only did with people he liked and respected. Seeing as how he was probably
one step away from wanting to kill Micah—a small step, likely—she had no clue how
any of this was going to work out.

And neither, it seemed, did anyone else. Hence the ice cream and horror movie marathon.
Well, they could cope with the worry any way they wanted. She was tired of waiting
around for Ryder to contact her. Now that Quinn was here to hang with Jared, she was
going to the hospital. If her being there was a problem, she would leave. But she
didn’t want to leave him there on his own any longer than she had to.

Getting through security at the hospital was a lot harder than she’d anticipated.
Apparently the press and Shaken Dirty fans both had been making annoyances of themselves,
until the hospital had posted security guards all over the floor Wyatt was on. Without
proof that you belonged on the floor, you weren’t allowed off the elevator.

After trying to talk her way onto the ward to no avail, Jamison finally broke down
and called Ryder. He met her at the elevators two minutes later and that’s when she
got her first good look at him since this whole debacle began. Her heart nearly broke
in half.

He looked exhausted, like he’d been to hell and back in the hours since she’d last
seen him. And he probably had. Embarrassment and paparazzi be damned. The second she
got off the elevator, she threw her arms around him and held him as tightly as she
possibly could. For long seconds, he didn’t move—not to hold her back, not to pull
away, not even to breathe. And then he shuddered, the tension in his big, muscular
body draining in an instant. She wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t have fallen if she hadn’t
been there to support him.

“How is he?” she asked, once he finally let her go.

“Addicted to heroin with a side of suicidal thrown in.” His answer was flippant, the
pain evident in every line of his body anything but.

“How are you?”

“Not addicted to heroin or suicidal.”

“That’s the best you’ve got, huh?”

“At the moment? Pretty much. Yeah.”

“Can I see him?”

“Of course. But he’s kind of in and out. Depending on how the tests go, they’ll be
keeping him until tomorrow…”

“And then?” she asked.

“That’s the fifty million dollar question. The backers are pushing for him to finish
out this tour before going to rehab—”

“No!”

“Exactly my feelings. The label wants him in rehab tomorrow so he’s ready for the
big tour in the fall. They’re pushing me to get him into one of three ninety-day programs.
They’ll foot the bill for everything…”

“But you don’t like the programs?”

“Shit, I don’t know anything about the programs. I’m just worried about how I’m going
to get him to go. I don’t think he’s there yet, in his head.”

“He nearly died today, would have if you hadn’t gotten there when you did.”

“More like, he would have died if
you
hadn’t gotten there, Jamison.” He lowered his forehead to hers. “Thank you for saving
him.”

“You don’t ever have to thank me for helping.”

“Yeah, well, he sure as hell won’t, so somebody should.” He pulled away, paced a few
yards down the hallway. As he did, a chill worked its way up her spine, though she
couldn’t have said why. But there was something about the way he walked, the way he
looked at her, that made her nervous.

“This is his,” Ryder said a minute later, stopping in front of the only room on the
floor with a huge security guard posted in front of it.

She nodded, following him inside. Wyatt was sound asleep, hooked up to an IV, a blood
pressure cuff and a heart monitor. She looked at Ryder quizzically.

“He’s been having some arrhythmia. We have to talk to a cardiologist tomorrow, find
out if it’s going to be permanent.”

Worried tears bloomed in her eyes. She tried to blink them back, but when he stiffened,
she knew Ryder saw them. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe this was a bad idea.” He headed for the door.

“I’m allowed to feel bad for him. For both of you.”

“Don’t feel bad for me.”

Someone had to. Why couldn’t he see how much he was hurting? How much he needed someone
to lean on? “Come on,” she said after a few minutes passed in total silence. “I’ll
buy you a cup of bad vending machine coffee.”

“I don’t want coffee.”

There it was again, that tone that told her something very not good was running through
Ryder’s head. Icicles ran down her spine as she forced herself to ask, “What exactly
do you want, then?”

…

Jamison’s question hung in the air between them. Though he knew she was waiting for
an answer, Ryder was having a hard time giving her one. Not because he didn’t have
the words but because—for the first time in his adult life—he really didn’t want to
say them. And not just because he didn’t want to add to this ridiculous shit pile
of a day they all had going on here.

But, whether he wanted to or not, the words needed to be said. Jamison had nearly
been hurt once on this tour, had had to deal with groupies and watching one of her
closest friends overdose. Add in the clusterfuck his head was at right now and it
was pretty much a guarantee that he was going to screw up. She would get hurt—he would
hurt her—and he didn’t want to do that. He couldn’t—he wouldn’t—fuck up her life the
way he’d fucked up Carrie’s. The way he’d fucked up his mother’s.

After getting the security guard’s reassurance that they wouldn’t be disturbed, he
settled her in a chair against the wall in Wyatt’s room. A quick check told him his
friend was still sleeping peacefully and that the nurse had just been in.

All of which meant they wouldn’t be disturbed for a while. It was perfect timing,
or at least the best timing he was likely to get. So finally, though it hurt more
than he’d thought possible, Ryder opened his mouth and forced out the words that would
change everything. “I think maybe this thing between us has run its course. The tour’s
over, we’ll all be heading out to different places. It’s probably time for us to go
back to just being friends.”

For long seconds, she didn’t say anything, just stared at him with those huge amethyst
eyes of hers. He waited for her to tell him off, to call him a bastard, to scream
at him for leading her on like all the other women he knew would have done.

But in the end Jamison didn’t do any of those things. She didn’t do anything at all,
really. Just nodded like he’d told her the weather. Or what she’d expected to hear
all along.

Then she stood up and crossed to him. Dropped a light kiss on his cheek. “Okay.”

Okay
? That was it? He felt like he’d just ripped his fucking heart out and all she could
think to say was
okay
? “I’m not trying to hurt you, Jelly Bean. In fact—”

She placed two fingers on his mouth. “Shh, I told you when we started this thing that
I was a big girl and I could take care of myself. It’s fine. I’m fine. But I should
probably get going. I want to check on Jared, make sure Micah and Victoria are leaving
him alone.” She walked over to the still-sleeping Wyatt and dropped a kiss on his
cheek. “When he wakes up tell him I came by and that I’ll be back tomorrow.”

She headed for the door, pausing only to press a kiss to his cheek as well. “Good
night, Ryder.”

And then, just like that, she was gone and he was left staring after her, wondering
what the hell had just happened. Before he could figure it out, Wyatt’s voice, weak
but with an unmistakable note of authority, rang through the room.

“You’re a fucking moron. You know that, right?”