He reached for the sheets again, pulling them tight around his hips. “Three nights ago?”
“Yes. You were on some pretty powerful painkillers and you slept like the dead. I’m guessing you needed it. You probably didn’t get a lot of rest the last couple of weeks, what with all that blissful bonding you and Jasmine were doing before you flamed out in a blaze of so-not-glory.”
“Who played for me?” he asked quietly, though he already knew.
As soon as Lila had posed the question, he remembered the feeling of Jazz’s calloused fingertips brushing over his skin. She’d never used a pick with any regularity, preferring to run her fingers down to bloody stubs no matter how many times he admonished her.
Damn stubborn woman that he loved more than his own life.
“I see you already know.” Lila brushed invisible lint off her pale yellow skirt. “From what I’ve heard from your bandmates, she barely kept it together long enough to get through the set. But she did it for you, and she did a damn fine job. She and Nick concocted this stupid story about your granny again to save your ass. Little did they know they shouldn’t have bothered. Guess you must like the smell of bacon frying in the morning.”
Shame wound through his stomach, curling upward to encompass that hollow area in his chest that somehow still contained his heartbeat. He’d been so certain it would stop when he’d been lying in the fetal position in that shitty parking lot where Cricket’s bastards had left him. His own fault for thinking they’d stick to the verbal deal they’d set. The money he’d offered hadn’t been enough, so they’d taken their payment another way.
When he was lying on the ground, beat all to hell, he’d had plenty of time to replay where he’d gone wrong. He hadn’t been dead yet but he hadn’t been fully alive either. He’d been caught in a sort of purgatory, the option to die or to live in his hands if he chose quickly.
And he’d chosen the same way he always did. His choices always took him back to Jazz. He would’ve dragged himself there on his hands and knees if he had to.
He nearly had.
“She was in his lap,” he murmured. “I’d just been beaten all to shit, and God, I hated myself in that moment. But when I hauled myself in the door, he was holding her, and I just fucking lost it. She’s—”
“She’s your drug, worse than any line of powder because you’ll kill each other and claim it’s in the name of love.”
He started to argue until the truth in her answer sunk deep into his bones, way beyond where he could reach to fish it back out again. “Yeah,” he said finally, rubbing the ache brewing behind his eyes. So many damn aches. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”
“She shares your addiction, by the way. She’s no more capable of cutting the cord than you are.”
He made himself meet her surprisingly understanding green eyes. “Is that…is that how it is with you and your husband?”
“Oh God no.” Her light laughter shocked him. “Maybe it was once,” she said after a moment. “I was young back then and idealistic. But life changes you, and now I scarcely remember what it is to love that desperately. That even if you gave every breath, every beat of your heart, it still wouldn’t be—couldn’t be—enough.”
He nodded. “That pretty much sums it up.”
“You need help,” she began, holding up a hand when he started to argue. “Hear me out. I don’t just mean for the coke. I mean you need help to bring some balance back into your life. Your life, Gray, not hers. Because if you don’t have a life worth living, you have nothing to give her. Do you understand that? If you’d died, where would she be right now?”
His eyes filled and damn if he didn’t hate himself even more for it. “Better off,” he whispered.
“You don’t truly believe that. I don’t believe it either, not for a second.” She grabbed hold of his hand and resisted his attempts to pull free with a shockingly firm grip. “The way you feel about her is the kind of love most women dream of. That, my friend, is some epic Titanic type shit, right down to Jack giving up the damn piece of wood, no matter how moronic that appeared to the more logical viewers in the audience.” Her mouth quirked. “Us rational types might make fun of behavior like that but wish with our whole hearts that one day, someone might fall that madly in love with us.”
He frowned. “I never saw Titanic.”
“Figures.” She laughed. “Perfectly good waste of an analogy.”
“Jazz told me she hated that movie.”