Code red, p.30
Code Red, page 30
“You’re asking us?” Wes asked.
Ambrose nodded. “One hundred percent your call. I’ll go with whatever you decide. You don’t have to answer right now. But I’m doing a press release at three o’clock. If I have something to tell them, that’d be great. If not, then no problem. We make an announcement when you’re ready.”
The five of them stared at him, and Maddox’s eyes went to mine. “I want to do it.”
Jeremy, Wes, Luke, and Blake all turned to Maddox. “You sure?” Jeremy asked. “Madz, if you need—”
“I need to do this,” he said quickly. “For me. To prove that I can. And for the fans. But for me.” He swallowed hard. “So the anxiety doesn’t win. Which is probably fucked up. No one tell Hardwick I said that.” He let out a shaky breath and gave me a smile.
No one else could have possibly known, but that was the first time he’d used the word anxiety. First time I’d heard him say it, anyway.
Jeremy clapped his hands. “Well then, there’s your answer. Thunderbirds are go.”
“Hell yes!” Blake crowed and the others cheered.
“And while we’re all here,” Maddox said. “Just so you know, I’m not going back to LA with you guys. I’m staying on the East Coast with Roscoe, just for a week, before we head home.” He glanced at Jeremy and chewed his bottom lip. “Staying with his parents.”
Jeremy’s eyes almost popped out of his head. “You’re meeting his parents, fucking wow.”
“Holy shit,” Wes said.
I felt Ryan and Amber’s eyes boring holes in the side of my head, but I never took my eyes off Maddox. I smiled at him and his cheeks tinted pink.
“Okay, everyone out,” Amber said. She was trying not to grin, and she winked at me as she shoved the boys out the door.
The room was deafeningly quiet when they’d gone.
“Should I have told them that?” Maddox asked. He was still sitting against the headboard, still holding the pillow, still devastatingly beautiful.
I nodded. “Absolutely.” I knelt on the bed and crawled up, wrapped my hand around his ankle, and pulled him so he was lying down. Then I prowled up his body and kissed him soundly on the mouth. “Yes.”
He put his hand to the side of my face, to my sore eye and temple. “Does this hurt?” He frowned. “I hate that someone hurt you.”
I settled my weight on him and he spread his legs for me. I brushed his hair from his forehead and searched his eyes. I could have lied to save him from further guilt, but if I expected him to be honest with me about his pain, I needed to be upfront about mine. “It’s not so bad. Bit tender.”
He turned my chin so he could kiss my eyebrow first, then my temple, ever so lightly. “I love you, Roscoe. I don’t know why you’re still here, why you’re not running for the hills. But I’m grateful.”
“I’m here because I love you. Because I’ve been in love with you for years. Because I see the real you.” I kissed him, pulling his bottom lip between mine. “Life’s not always going to be this crazy.”
He searched my eyes. “Will you still love me when there’s no more band, no more touring, no more screaming fans? When I can’t sing or dance?”
“Baby,” I whispered. “I will love you no matter what.”
He stared, seemingly holding onto that moment for the longest time, his eyes like glimmering onyx.
“Do you believe me?” I whispered. “Please say you believe me.”
He nodded. “I believe you.”
I kissed him then, slow and deep, and began to take his shirt off. “Tomorrow’s a concert day,” he said, smiling. “I thought that was against your rules.”
I laughed and kissed down his neck. “If you want me to stop . . .”
He groaned and rolled his hips, grinding his erection into mine. He dragged his hands over my ass and pulled me hard against him. “Does it feel like I want you to stop?”
No. No it doesn’t.
We had a full police escort to the stadium the next day. Metlife Stadium was huge, but once we were inside the grounds, we were free from fans and media.
The media, press, paparazzi, and anyone with a camera wanted any piece of us they could get their hands on. The news had been horrendous. The footage of me getting hit, of Maddox grabbing me and pulling me into the van, was on every channel, on every social media site, on every station. Maddox and I were trending, again. The footage, the headlines, the photos, the fans’ outrage and sympathy . . .
And Ambrose’s press release had gone well. He was very clear, cut and dry; anyone who even looked wrong at any of his staff would be buried by our legal team. He was in full-boss mode, and his eyes could have cut glass.
I liked it.
But we’d all agreed to avoid whatever was online. It wasn’t good for anyone’s mental health, and we had enough to concentrate on.
Maddox hadn’t slept well. But he swore he was okay. We just had one show to get through.
And once we were at the stadium, they were all business. Sound checks, rehearsals, stage checks, last minute set changes . . .
And the crowd began to roll in. The hype began to charge the air backstage and the nerves kicked in. Maddox didn’t eat much, but he seemed in good spirits. He was smiling, chatting, though I caught his knee bouncing more than usual.
“How are you feeling?” I asked him, trying to keep it upbeat.
“Yeah, good,” he said.
I wasn’t convinced, and I found myself taking deep breaths with slow releases without even meaning to. It wasn’t until I noticed him copying me that I even realized I was doing it.
“I’m okay,” he said quietly. To me or himself, I wasn’t sure.
But he kept his head down as though he couldn’t look me in the eye. And maybe seeing my blatant concern made him feel bad, maybe he needed to shut it all out for a while so he could get in the zone. Maybe me asking him if he was okay every ten minutes was making him worse.
So I made myself stop asking him.
One more performance.
One more concert.
That’s all we had to get through. It’d all be over in three hours.
It felt like I was waiting for the ax to fall. Maybe I was more nervous than him. I helped him with his earpiece, then with his shirt. When they were ready to go on stage, they stood around in a circle, like they did every time, with their hands joined in the middle.
“Atrous forever,” they cried in unison.
And I stood behind them as they waited for their introduction. Maddox took some deep breaths, his shoulders rising and falling. His hands were fists at his sides. I wanted to take him aside and run him through some deep breathing exercises, but I had to believe him when he said he was okay. Part of me knew he wasn’t, part of me hoped he could get through this.
Part of me knew this was too much and he should have said no to this concert. He should have put himself first. Instead he put everyone else before him. The expectations of his best friends, of eighty thousand screaming fans, was a cruel and unbearable weight to bear.
He carried it through the first set.
Though he missed a few steps in his choreography, and he was breathless when he sang. When he came off the stage, he threw his water bottle at the wall. “I can’t keep time,” he growled, his rage directed only inward.
“Hey,” Jeremy said, trying to soothe him. “Don’t sweat it, man. I miss shit all the time.”
“I never miss,” Maddox shot back. “I never fucking miss.”
I intervened, pulling him aside. “Take a breath for me,” I whispered. “You’re doing great out there.”
His eyes were dark fire. “Don’t patronize me, Roscoe. If I’m shit, tell me I’m shit.”
I ignored that. “You’ve got a full set to get through. You know these moves, you know the songs. Forget everything else and just go by feel. Just remember to breathe, Maddox.”
A pained look crossed his features before he shook his head. “I need to go,” he mumbled before joining the boys and heading back on stage without a moment to spare. They launched straight into another song. The crowd went crazy and we could feel the whole stadium boom and shake with the power of it.
And Maddox did well for the first few songs of the second set. He belted out notes and danced his heart out. But then he mistimed a dance move, and in the next song he missed one move altogether. In the next song he mistimed his line in the bridge, and in the song after that he missed a whole line.
Jeremy stood beside him, his arm around his shoulder and sang with him.
But it was too late.
A thread had been pulled, plucked a long time ago. He’d held it together for months, years maybe. But he was beginning to unravel.
The next song started, the music blared, and the intro began . . . but Maddox didn’t sing. Blake quickly covered for him and Maddox leaned over, his hand on his knee, trying to breathe.
“Is his mic not working?” the stage tech beside us asked. He screamed into his walkie-talkie. “Someone get a check on mic one!”
It wasn’t his mic.
Maddox spun to look in our direction, looking for me, his hand to his chest, his mic fell to the stage. And without thinking, without a single thought about the eighty thousand witnesses, before someone could stop me, I took the steps two at a time and raced out onto the stage.
Chapter Seventeen
I saw nothing but Maddox, and the absolute panic—the sheer terror—in his eyes. I scooped my arm around his back, under his arm and hauled him off the stage and down the steps. Hardwick met me at the bottom with a can of oxygen and he put the mouthpiece directly on Maddox’s face.
We couldn’t stay here. The stage crew and the production team were all standing, staring at him.
“Let’s get him into the dressing room,” I said, still with my arm around his back, and I half-carried him. He was heavy, listless.
“Can we clear the room, please,” I yelled, and the few wardrobe people quickly disappeared.
I lowered Maddox onto the couch and he lay down, the doc still holding the oxygen to his mouth. A tear rolled toward his temple, his chest heaved.
Oh, baby.
I took his hand and squeezed. “It’s okay, Maddox. We’ve got you.”
There was a monitor showing a live feed of the stage, like there always was, and Jeremy’s voice rang out. “He’s okay!” I hadn’t even realized the music had stopped out there. “He’s had some voice issues on this tour and he really wanted to sing for you guys. He’s gonna be upset that he let you down, so I’m gonna need you guys to do Maddox a real big favor, okay? We’re gonna need you guys to sing all his lines, okay? Can you do that for him?”
The crowd roared, louder than any concert I’d heard. I could feel the rumble through the floor.
The music started and we could hear the crowd sing, singing for him. Maddox pushed the aerosol of oxygen away, he held his hands to his face, and he cried.
And he didn’t seem able to stop.
Every line the crowd sang, the more he cried.
Hardwick sagged beside me, his face drawn. He shook his head sadly, and I nodded.
This wasn’t good. This was all bad.
Me running out on stage and taking Maddox off would already be online, by eighty thousand different cameras. Maddox missing his lines, pulling at his shirt collar, that’d all be out there for the world to see.
And you know what? I didn’t care. None of that mattered.
The only thing I cared about, the only thing in the world that mattered to me was Maddox.
The doc had the good sense to turn the monitor off, though it didn’t matter much. We could hear the crowd belt out the chorus.
“I should be out there,” Maddox sobbed, his voice cracking. He still covered his face with his hands, but then they were fists and he became angry. “I should be out there!”
“Maddox, I want you to breathe for me,” Hardwick said gently.
Maddox pushed up to a half-sitting position, tears spilled down his cheeks. “How can I? I freaked out on stage, in front of everyone, the whole world watching and I couldn’t fucking breathe because I’m broken.”
“You’re not broken,” I said. “Maddox—”
He shot up off the couch and stepped past us. “I’m fucking broken,” he said, then picked up the monitor and threw it against the wall. Then when that wasn’t enough, he kicked a table, shoving it into another table, and when he turned to see what else he could smash, I wrapped him up in my arms.
He tried to pull away but I held him, but he struggled against me so I relented my hold. He broke free the second I let him go, and he swiped his arm through a row of full water bottles on a table, sending them flying. Then he kicked a chair over, and I went to go to him again but Hardwick’s hand on my arm stopped me.
Maddox screamed as he pulled at his hair. He upended another table, but then he lost his footing and he fell against the wall. With no fight left in him, he slid down, his head in his hands, and sobbed, gasping for air. He tried to speak but no sounds came out, his face a mask of pain and sadness.
Unsure of what else to do, I knelt in front of him and put my hands on his head, his jaw, his shoulders. “You’re not broken,” I whispered.
“I need to go out there, on stage, Roscoe,” he rasped. “But I can’t. I can’t.” He gulped back some air. “I can’t do this. This is all I know. This is all I am. I love it, but it’s killing me.” He sobbed again. “It’s killing me.”
I turned to Hardwick. “Can you get Steve for me?” He frowned, but he dashed out the door. I put my hand to Maddox’s cheek. “Maddox, baby, I’m gonna take you out of here, okay?”
He nodded with a fresh wave of tears, and I realized then that he was fisting the front of my shirt. “I’m not leaving you,” I told him. “I’m gonna take you somewhere, just you and me, somewhere you can breathe.”
He nodded, just as Hardwick and Steve came through the door. I looked up at them. “We need to leave,” I said. “Not just the stadium. We’re leaving New York City, and we’re leaving tonight. I need to get him out of here.”
I could see the doc had a dozen questions he wanted to ask, but Steve took one look at Maddox and nodded. “Come with me.”
An hour later, I had a rental car, our bags packed in the trunk, a sleeping Maddox in the front seat, and we were on I-87 headed north.
Chapter Eighteen
Maddox slept for seventeen hours.
He appeared on the cabin deck, disheveled, and confused about where we were. Our laughter must have woken him. I ran up the embankment, cleared the two steps onto the deck, and collected him in a crushing hug. He was all warm from being in bed.
“Hey, beautiful,” I murmured.
He sighed in my arms. “What time is it?”
“Two o’clock.”
“Did you give me something that made me sleep?”
I shook my head. “No. You were exhausted.” I could hardly rouse him to get him out of the car at three this morning when we’d arrived, and he’d curled up in bed and gone straight back to sleep.
“Hey, dickbag!” Jeremy called out as he walked toward us from the woodpile.
Maddox pulled back, squinted at the afternoon sun. “Where am I?”
“Manchester,” I replied.
He looked at me, then looked out at the view. It was rolling green pastures, hills, cattle, a barn. “Uh, I’ve been to Manchester and it doesn’t look like this.”
I laughed. “Manchester, Vermont.”
Jeremy climbed the steps and collected Maddox in a tight embrace. “I just got here an hour ago. The boys wanted to come, but then all the security would have to come and it would have been a big deal. As it was, Steve wouldn’t let me come up by myself.” He pointed back down to where he’d come from, and there was Steve behind the woodpile. Steve waved at us. Jeremy laughed. “I was chopping wood. And that’s not a euphemism.”
“He was trying to chop wood,” Steve yelled. “He didn’t even know which end of the ax to hold.”
Jeremy snorted. “Not entirely true.”
Maddox scratched his head and shot me an odd look. “Is this your parent’s place? Why are we here?”
“This is my aunt and uncle’s ranch, just outside of Manchester. My parents will be here tomorrow.”
Maddox made a face. “Oh good.”
Jeremy snorted, and I rubbed Maddox’s arm. “They’ll like you.”
He ran his hand through his hair and looked out to the mountains at the horizon. “It’s nice here.”
“Thought you might prefer some open space and not another hotel room.” I gestured to the other cabin past the woodpile. “My aunt and uncle used to run those ranch stays, but the insurance made it hard. There’s three cabins, and the main house is up over the rise.”
“I’m in the next cabin, Steve’s in the far one,” Jeremy said. “How freaking cool is it here? There are some horses we can ride. We were gonna light a fire later on and cook out.”
Maddox breathed in deep and closed his eyes. “The concert . . .”
“The concert went just fine,” Jeremy replied. “We got the crowd to sing the last few songs with us and the media loved it. The whole stadium sang. It was kinda magical.”
Maddox gave him a sad smile. “I’m sorry.”
“I know you are,” Jeremy replied. “But there’s no need to be. We got through it. Just glad you’re okay.”
Maddox was quiet for a few long seconds. “Did Ambrose flip his shit?”
I shook my head. “No. He understood.”
“He’s actually been pretty good,” Jeremy said. “He put out a presser this morning. He said the band was taking a well-deserved break after the tour, which we were gonna do anyway. You could imagine the questions they yelled at him about you, but he shot that shit down pretty quick. He was kinda savage.”
Maddox nodded slowly. “And everyone else went back to LA?”
“Everyone,” I replied. “It’s just us.”
“And you wanna know the best part?” Jeremy asked, his grin wide. “There’s no Wi-Fi here. At all. If you wanna use your phone, you need to walk up the hill. We’re completely cut off from everything, like it’s the olden days.”
