The Rocker That Needs Me (The Rocker...) (20 page)

“I think she just did that,” Shane muttered for the first time, joining in. “And he has no one to blame but himself, Em.”

“She knew that it would destroy him.” Emmie pointed at me, looking wild. “She knew that she had all the power here, and she used it against him! If she loved him the way everyone seems to think she does, she never would have done that.”

Her words were like a slap to my face. I couldn’t find the words to defend myself against her because part of me knew that she was right. I stared at the man that stood with his head hung, tears falling form his eyes, and knew that I had made this mess. This was all my fault…

“She used it to protect herself! Drake is a grown man, he makes his own mistakes. Stop putting his mess on her shoulders.”

I didn’t even hear Shane’s words. His voice was just background noise to me as I fought the urge to vomit. I had made a mess of my life, and I had ruined the future I had wanted so badly with Drake. With a pain filled cry, I turned and ran down the hall toward my room.

Drake

I didn’t know what to expect as I left my apartment with my out of town guests. Emmie flagged down a taxi as soon as we were out on the street, and I was the last to slide into the back. Layla gave me a grim little smile as Emmie gave the driver the address from the front seat.

I tried to return her smile, but my face felt frozen.

The ride felt like it took an eternity, but it was over far too soon. I was torn between wanting to hurry and fix this and wanting to put it off in hopes that it would just fix itself. When we reached Lana’s building, we had to wait downstairs until someone let us up because Emmie and Layla had never been there before.

Some muscle head guy answered the door, and I noticed a shirtless guy seated on the couch that I had to assume was Linc because he was checking me out as soon as we stepped inside the apartment.

“Who the hell is this?” Jesse demanded.

Muscle Head glanced at the guy on the couch. “He’s with me.”

Shane came from down the hall, and I wondered if he had been in Lana’s room. “It’s cool, Jess. Lana is safe.”

“Random guys come in and out of this place regularly?” Jesse asked, his brow furrowed and his eyes stormy. He sounded like a protective father.

“Not as often as you would think.” Linc tried to put him at ease.

“Linc would never let anyone hurt us.” Harper appeared behind Shane, her hand touching his back before stepping around him. “There’s isn’t anything to worry about.”

“I don’t like it,” Jesse grumbled but didn’t comment further. How could he without sounding like a hypocrite after all the years we had put Emmie in the line of one night stands? Some of those girls were dangerous in their own right, but Emmie had been able to take care of them.

“Linc, I think I’m going to go, man…” Shirtless said, eyeing us all with apprehension now.

That caught me off guard. Muscle Head was Linc? I couldn’t picture him as gay. He was too…Not! “No way! You are not the roommate. She said you were gay…”

“Dude, I am.” He pointed at the shirtless guy still sitting on the couch. “See? That’s the guy you saw me hanging out with last night. Remember? We talked for like twenty minutes last night, man. Me, you, Dallas, and Axton? Ring any bells there, man?”

“Of course he doesn’t remember.” Lana’s voice had my head snapping around. She looked pale, sick. My heart constricted. I did this to her! “If he was inhaling Jack Daniels like I suspect he was, then he would be lucky to remember his own name today.”

“Angel…” I took a step toward her.

“Don’t.” Her voice was cold. “Don’t ever use that word again.”

Layla moved closer to her sister. She said something but I could only focus on Lana. Her shirt was three times too big on her, her yoga pants something that I had seen a thousand times. Her hair was a mess even pulled back into a ponytail. There was sweat on her upper lip and across her forehead, and I wondered if she was feeling ill.

“I wish I could take last night back,” I told her, taking a few more steps closer. Maybe if I could just hold her everything would be okay. Her glare stopped me. “I know I let you down, Angel…”

“I said
don’t
.”

The words came out as a whisper, but they felt like they were shouted inside my head. She didn’t want me to call her
Angel
. It was understandable after everything I had put her through during the last twenty-four hours. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt any less. “Nothing happened.”

“And you know this because you remember? You know that nothing happened?”

“No, I don’t remember anything from last night, Angel. But…”

“But nothing! If you don’t remember, then how can you be so sure that nothing happened?”

“Because your sister beat it out of Gabriella,” Jesse’s assured her.

“I… What? She did what?”

Jesse had a look of pride on his face and a half-grin tilting his lips. “Yeah, I know. It was so hot. Between her and Em, I think the bitch is bald in a few places.”

“She admitted that nothing happened and you believed her?” I thought there might have been hope in her voice.

Jesse shrugged. “She may have only been saying that to get Layla off of her. Not that it worked. I had to pull her off. Em, what was your take? Do you think she was lying?”

“I doubt that anything happened. Drake hadn’t had a drink in months. That much liquor in his system...he was probably useless below the waist.”

I wasn’t in the least embarrassed to have Emmie talk about the probability of my dick working or not. If anything, I was relieved that she thought that. Maybe it would help convince Lana…

Lana’s eyes closed and I thought she was relieved, that everything was going to be alright now… Her next words made my head spin. “It wouldn’t be the first time that he was that drunk and was able to function,” she whispered.

“What are you saying, Lana?” Layla asked. “You...?”

Lana’s gaze locked with mine. “You can’t remember anything, but until you do, I won’t ever believe that you didn’t have sex with her.”

I swallowed hard, knowing that she was telling me that unless I did remember, we were over. “I’ll never remember, Lana.”

“Yeah, I know. Just like you will never remember our night together.”

I felt like someone had actually punched me in the gut. “Our night together?” My voice was weak.

“The night before Jesse and Layla got married? The night you took my virginity?” Her whisky eyes were on fire. “I’m sure that night is a blank hole in your mind. Probably why you don’t know why I was so shattered the next night when I heard you fucking some slut against the hotel room door that separated our rooms.”

“No!” I moved without even realizing I was doing so. I grasped her arms, holding on to her even though I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to hold on to
us
. “Tell me that it didn’t happen!”

“I can’t.” She jerked away from me.

A sob seemed to be trapped in my chest, tears spilled, but I didn’t care. The last nail was being hammered into my coffin, and I didn’t know how to stop it. I was defenseless to stop the pain that was starting to consume me.

Emmie and Shane’s raised voices didn’t even penetrate the darkness surrounding me. Lana ran away from me, and I knew that my world had official stopped. Cold, gentle fingers touched my arm, and I blinked my eyes to see through my tears. Layla stood beside of me, her face a mixture of emotions. “I know this is hard, but you have to go. Jesse is going to kill you, Drake.”

I glanced at my friend, seeing the storm building with each passing second. “Let him,” I told her. An end to the pain I was feeling would be welcomed…

--

I don’t know how I ended up on the floor.

One minute I was standing in Lana’s living room, feeling the worst pain of my life, the next I was out cold. Emmie was leaning over me, her hand firmly tapping me on the cheek as she yelled my name over and over again. “Drake!”

I blinked, unable to keep my eyes open for longer than a second or two before I had to close them again. “Fuck!” I exclaimed, raising a hand to touch my throbbing jaw. “What happened?”

A shadow appeared over me, and I squinted up at my brother. “Layla tried to warn you, bro. Jesse has a freaking badass right hook on him.” The brief glance I got of Shane’s face told me he wasn’t feeling any empathy for me. “You’ve been out for about two minutes.”

I groaned, turning on my side so I could try to get up. “Where’s Lana?” I demanded.

“In her room. Probably throwing up again.” I shot Shane a frown as I straightened. “She hasn’t been in the best shape this morning. Finding her boyfriend asleep with another woman’s naked ass against his crotch tends to turn a girl’s stomach.”

“Fuck,” I muttered, running a shaking hand through my hair. “I need to talk to her.”

“You need to go home.” Emmie’s cool voice told me, and I turned to look down at her. “Jesse is holding onto his temper by his fingernails. Layla pushed him down the hall so he wouldn’t kill you.”

“I’m not leaving until I talk to Lana,” I told her, pushing past my brother and heading toward Lana’s bedroom. Jesse’s punch must have knocked some sense into me because I was seeing things more clearly now. If I didn’t talk to her now, didn’t see her now, then I was going to lose her forever.

The muscle head stood in my way when I reached the hall that led to the bedrooms. Linc was a hulking brute, even bigger than Jesse in size and muscle. “Leave her alone, man. I don’t want to kick your ass.”

He was bigger than me, outweighed me by at least twenty pounds of pure muscle, but I wasn’t in the frame of mind to care. I had only one goal and that was to get to Lana, to plead and beg for one more chance. No one was going to keep me from her.

“Lana!” Harper’s scream was full of fear. Linc didn’t even hesitate; he just turned and ran down the hall. Everyone followed, and I pushed through the masses of family and roommates to get into Lana’s room.

She was lying in the doorway that led into the connecting bathroom. Harper was leaning over Lana, trying to make her wake up. Layla was already there staring down at her sister in horror. I followed her gaze and my heart stopped when I saw that her yoga pants were covered in blood.

“Lana, wake up!” Harper pleaded, as she tapped her on the cheek. “Please, please, please, wakeup.”

Shane was just behind me, and when he saw the blood on Lana’s pants, the blood that was still almost gushing out of her and flooding the tan carpet under her, he made a gagging noise. Emmie pushed him toward the door, her phone already to her ear. “Get out, Shane. Go wait for the paramedics!”

I bent down beside of Lana. Her face was pale, the life seeming to drain out of her. I grasped her hand. It was so cold. “Angel…” I whispered but she didn’t even flinch.

Linc pushed Harper out of the way and felt Lana’s neck for a pulse. “It’s very slow.” He said, looking over at Emmie who was on the phone barking out orders. I could only guess she was talking to 9-1-1.

My heart was racing, fear gripping me so hard I almost couldn’t breathe. I wanted to do something, anything, but I was useless. It felt like an eternity before the paramedics arrived, but it was only ten minutes. My heart stopped when Linc yelled that Lana had stopped breathing just as the paramedics came through the door. I was pushed out of the way so they could get to her.

Layla was talking to the EMT in charge, asking if she could go with them, but they couldn’t let her or anyone else, not when Lana was barely hanging on. As they loaded her onto the gurney, I reached for her hand once more. Her fingers were like ice now, and I was doing nothing but praying, almost willing her to live. I had heard what the paramedics had said, I knew what was wrong. One more thing I was responsible for. One more thing that threatened to take Lana away from me forever…

Lana was losing our baby.

Lana

I sat on the end of my bed, my head in my hands as I sobbed. I had just destroyed the man I loved.

I knew that nothing happened the night before. I couldn’t not believe it when both Layla and Emmie had beaten it out of Gabriella. It had just taken me a minute to get it straight in my head. Now I had to fix what I had broken in the next room, and I had no idea how I was going to do that.

I should never have told him about our night together. It hadn’t done anything but hurt him, something that I had been aiming for as the words slipped from my mouth. But now I regretted it. Emmie was right. I did hold all the power and I had used it against Drake, when I should have loved him.

Harper knocked on our bedroom door, and I raised my head as she stuck hers around to look in at me. “Are you okay?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” That seemed to be my answer for everything today. “I messed up really bad, Harper.”

She stepped into our room and closed the door behind her. “It will be okay, sweetie. Drake loves you just as much as you love him.”

“I know.” If nothing else, I knew that Drake loved me. He needed me, and I needed him. Sighing, I pushed the hair that had fallen from the ponytail out of my face. “Is he still here?”

“He’s out cold right now. Your brother-in-law knocked his socks off.” A grim smile twisted her mouth. “Layla has him in Linc’s room trying to cool him down.”

Perfect. Now, I had caused two men that had been friends all their lives to fight. “I better go deal with them then.” I shifted on the edge of the bed and grimaced in pain. My cramps were getting worse. I sucked in a deep breath, trying to get through them without whimpering. My period was late, nothing unusual about that, but now that I was getting ready to start, it was going to be a real bitch to get through.

When the last one seemed to pass I got to my feet. “I just need a minute…” I murmured. As I took a step toward the bathroom the world seemed to tilt. I felt something thick and sticky run down my thighs and had enough sense to look down. My yoga pants were covered in blood…

The pain was awful. I had nothing else to compare it to. I blinked my eyes open, unsure what I was going to find. The hospital room wasn’t on my list of things to expect to find. There were tubes coming from all directions: oxygen in my nose, an IV in my left arm, and a heart monitor on my chest. I shifted my legs and my entire body protested in pain. A whimper escaped me.

Strong, cold fingers brushed across my forehead. “Angel?”

“Drake?” I whispered his name. My lips were dry and cracked, my throat felt like I had swallowed glass. “What…happened?”

He was pale with a few days growth of hair on his jaw that hadn’t been there when I last saw him. “I’m sorry, Angel. This is all my fault.” His voice cracked and I saw the tears in his eyes.

I gripped his hand, scared. “Nothing is your fault. Stop thinking things like that.” I tugged on his hand, pulling him closer. I had no idea what had happened, but I knew that Drake wasn’t to blame for anything. “I love you, Drake.”

The sob that left him made my heart ache. “I love you, Angel…” He kissed my forehead. “I love you more than anything in the world.”

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked. “Why do I hurt so bad?”

He closed his eyes. “You had a miscarriage. Our baby is gone.”

If I thought I was in pain before, it was nothing compared to hearing those words. “I…” Tears blinded me. “I was pregnant?”

Drake nodded. “I’m sorry, Angel. I should have protected you.”

“Stop saying you’re sorry!” I cried. “You aren’t the only one that is in this relationship, stupid. I knew we weren’t being careful…” Maybe I had hoped for something to happen, like getting pregnant. I hadn’t been worried about not being careful because deep down I had wanted Drake’s baby. It was selfish, but I had secretly wanted that tie to him.

And I hadn’t even known it had actually happened. Our child had been growing deep inside of me, and I hadn’t known. A sob felt like it was being ripped from my chest. “Drake, our baby!”

He gathered me into his arms as much as he could without hurting me. “I know. I know, Angel,” he whispered brokenly as he gently rocked me.

The door to my room opened so suddenly I was startled. A man with graying hair and a white coat came in with a nurse in pink scrubs right behind him. “Miss Daniels,” he greeted, and I raised my head from Drake’s chest. “It’s good to see you awake.”

I frowned at him. “How long have I been out?” Maybe that should have been my first question to Drake, but I was still a little disorientated and was finding it even harder to focus with the news that Drake had given me.

“Three days, off and on.” The doctor put his iPad on the little table beside of my bed, and Drake reluctantly stepped back to give the doctor access to me. “You have had everyone in the waiting room on pins and needles waiting for you to wake up. Mr. Stevenson here has refused to leave your side, and your sister has been driving my staff up the wall wanting an hourly progress report...” a small smile tilted his lips “...but we have managed.”

I couldn’t find the will to return his smile. I hurt too badly, physically and emotionally. “Drake said I had a miscarriage.”

The doctor nodded. “Yes… These things sometimes happen in first pregnancies, but yours was a little different. You had an ectopic pregnancy, where the baby settled in your fallopian tube, and as it grew that tube ruptured. You nearly bled to death. I had to remove the tube.”

My hand went to my lower stomach, and I felt the bandage that covered the incision. “Will I…” I broke off and raised my eyes to meet Drake’s “...will I be able to have another baby?”

“Because of the removal of the fallopian your chances of conceiving have been cut in half, but I see no reason for you not to be able to have another baby.”

Relief washed over me and the tears started falling once more. “Really?”

The doctor nodded. “You are a healthy young woman. There is no reason that you shouldn’t.”

It took the doctor ten minutes to examine me. I was one big ache by the time he and his nurse left with a promise of bringing me pain medication soon. I lay back against the pillows while Drake continued to look out the window where he had been the whole time the doctor was checking me over. “Drake?”

His shoulders lifted and fell as he let out a long breath, but he didn’t turn around. “I do nothing but hurt you.”

I closed my eyes, scared that he was about to tell me goodbye. “No.”

“Yes.” His movements were jerky as he finally turned around to face me. “I took advantage of you back in December then cheated on you the next day.” I flinched at the remembered pain that had caused. “Then I turn around and do the same thing. I’m all kinds of wrong for you, Lana.”

“Angel,” I whispered, and he frowned.

“What?”

A tear spilled down my cheek, and I quickly brushed it away. “Angel. Not Lana, never Lana again. I’m your angel, Drake. Don’t ever call me Lana again.”

“I…”

“And you are wrong. I don’t think you cheated with Gabriella. Even drunk, you wouldn’t do that, especially with her.” I lifted my hand, offering it to him, silently begging him to come to me. “You aren’t wrong for me, Drake. You’re the best thing in my world. I can’t imagine my life without you.”

He took a hesitating step forward. “I love you, Angel. More than anything, I love you.”

“I love you too.” It came out a vow, which it was. “Hold me, Drake. Please hold me.”

He moved quickly and then his arms were around me, and I felt some of my tension ease. “I thought I had lost you.” His tears soaked my neck as he buried his face in my shoulder. “I thought I had lost my reason for living.”

I combed my fingers through his hair, soothing us both a little. “You could never lose me, babe. I’m yours, forever.”

--

I was almost asleep when I heard the door to my private room open. Thinking it was Drake coming back after visiting hours, even though I had made him promise to go home and sleep, I raised my head. If I were honest, I would admit to being selfish enough to want Drake to come back, even though I knew he was dead on his feet after sitting beside my bed for the last three days.

It wasn’t Drake, however. I blinked in the dim lighting coming from the tall street lamps outside my window, thinking at first that I was indeed asleep and dreamed the man that quietly made his way toward me. I was awake, and he was very real.

“What are you doing here, Cole?” I demanded, my voice hoarse from the tube that had been down my throat during my emergency surgery three days before.

He stopped a few feet away. I couldn’t see his eyes in the dim light, but his face appeared pale. “Axton and I came to visit you yesterday, and I spoke to your sister and brother-in-law.” His voice was gruff, full of some emotion I couldn’t place in the old rocker. “Why didn’t you tell me, Lana?”

My heart turned cold, and I pulled the covers up to my chest. “Tell you what?” I tried to play dumb, but he wasn’t having any of that.

“You are my daughter.” He thrust his hands into his jean pockets as he frowned down at me. I wished I could see his eyes, those eyes that were identical to my own, but they were in the shadows. “Would you have ever told me yourself?”

I clenched my jaw, upset with my sister and Jesse for telling this man anything. “Probably not,” I told him truthfully.

A small grin tilted his lips even though his brow was still furrowed. “At least you’re honest. You have fire, Lana. God, you remind me…”

“If you say I remind you of you, I will throw something at your head!”

“…my sister,” he finished, a full blown grin making his face relax in a way that made him look at least ten years younger. “You remind me of my sister. You look a little like her, actually. I’m surprised that I didn’t notice it before.”

I didn’t want to get into a big discussion with Cole Steel. “What do you want, Cole?”

The grin disappeared. “I wanted to see how you are doing. To make sure that you were okay.”

I felt anger start to boil in my veins. “As you can see I’m alive.” He flinched as if I had slapped him hard enough to knock a few teeth loose, but I refused to feel sympathetic toward him. For me, his concern came eighteen years too late.

“I know you don’t like me much, Lana. I don’t blame you in the least for hating me, actually. When you were born, I wasn’t a very nice person, more like a real bastard.” He sighed. “I lost everything and I blamed you for it, even when I knew that you were the only innocent one in the whole damned mess.”

“I never wanted your money,” I spit the words at him.

“And I never planned on stopping the child support.” He surprised me by admitting that. “It was just a ruse to force your mother to let me see you.”

Despite myself, I found myself wanting to know more all of a sudden. “Why?”

Cole grimaced. “At the time I thought I was going to die of throat cancer. I wanted to make peace with everyone in my life, you included. That was before they removed the nodule on my vocals and discovered that it was benign.”

“I’m so glad that when you found out you weren’t going to kick the bucket you decided I wasn’t worth your time after all.” I rolled my eyes at him, angry with him and myself for even daring to wonder about that time in my life. “I think you should go now. I’m tired.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Lana. I’m sorry that I have.” His face was full of remorse, but I wasn’t willing to let myself care.

“Did you ever sort things out with your son?” I called after him before he had reached the door. The fact that I had a brother had never really mattered to me. Even at the age of eight, when I had first realized that I had a brother, I knew that the boy I shared blood with was a douche bag.

Cole turned. “No. His mother poisoned him against me. Now, even as successful as he is in the movie business, he isn’t much to be proud of. Not like you, Lana. You, I have always been proud of. For not turning out like your mother, for growing up to be so mature and independent.”

“Layla was a good role model. She raised me, took care of me, and did the things that you should have had the balls to do.” The words came out full of venom. “You weren’t man enough to take care of your responsibilities. Others had to do your job.”

“I know.” He wasn’t making excuses and that made me even angrier, which was completely crazy.

“You don’t deserve to be my father.”

“I know that too.”

“Stop it!” I shouted. “Just stop it!”

“Stop what, Lana?” he asked, his voice calm in my fury. “Stop agreeing with you? I know that I’m a piece of shit. I know that I let you down when I should have done everything in my power to protect you. Not a day goes by that I don’t wake up hating myself because of what I did to you. Fuck, girl. I didn’t even know your name until Jesse Thornton nearly tore my head off yesterday. And when I realized that the little girl I had tossed aside like yesterday’s garbage was you… That my little girl had been so close to bleeding to death, and I hadn’t gotten to tell you all the things I wanted—needed—to tell you, I lost it.”

Angry, frustrating tears spilled down my cheeks, and I scrubbed them away with the hand that wasn’t tangled in my IV line. “And you think that coming here and baring your soul will wipe away the past?” I shook my head. “It doesn’t work like that, Cole.”