“Rolling Stone. Are you fucking KIDDING me?” Sam shouted into the phone. He paced around the hotel room. No, you could safely say he skipped. Noah lounged on the sofa eating Cheetos. Wyatt was doing sit-ups on the floor. Lexie was curled up in an armchair, scribbling their latest song into her notebook. It was about heartbreak. Shocker. Considering most of the songs she wrote were filled with pain and suffering, nothing that mirrored what she felt in her own heart, of course, but a fraction. And that fraction made for good music. The best, actually. Good enough to get them noticed in a big way. Well on their way to becoming famous. They had almost finished their album. Already released a single that made it to the top freaking ten within a week of being released. They were making money. Not a little, but a lot. They had fans. Not a little either. A lot. The boys had girls. Groupies, you might call them. A sickening amount of them. Lexie had her own group of guys who tried to sleaze onto her whenever they were out partying. She barely noticed them. How could she? They didn’t know her. Didn’t want to know her. Only one person knew her down to the depths of her soul, owned her soul. That person also ripped her heart out and stomped over it with motorcycle boots. It was a mangled mess, one that only beat for music, one she feared would never be repaired enough to give to someone else.
“Did you hear that, Lex?” Sam shook her by the shoulders. “The cover of fucking Rolling Stone! What did I tell you fuckers?” he addressed the room.
Everyone was laughing and grinning. Lexie played along, even had a sip of the champagne that appeared out of nowhere. She was only eighteen, so strictly not allowed to be having it, but she found, being in a moderately successful band made things like the legal drinking age insignificant.
When her phone rang she did her best to sound cheerful and not full of pain like she normally did. Except when she was on stage. That’s when she let it all go. Put all that hurt and suffering into her music. Her version of therapy. Unquiet Minds’—the name that had finally decided on two years ago—pathway to success.
“I have no idea how you actually know this fast, since Sam literally got off the phone with our actual manager, but yes, you can totally be behind the scenes and be my stylist,” Lexie greeted her mother’s call, knowing she would already be losing the plot. Though she didn’t know how she’d be behind the scenes of their shoot with her water being about to burst and all, but she’d find a way. She’d have the baby between shots, knowing her. She’d found a way to spend huge amounts of time with them in LA when they were there, and more often than not that meant Zane. Which Lexie loved. Some people would hate having their mom and crazy protective biker stepfather around when they were trying to make it as a band. Lexie didn’t. She wished they would come on tour. Her mom was her best friend. Zane was her...dad. Maybe not in blood, but she knew that’s how he thought of her. How he treated her. His silence was what she needed sometimes. Just to be around him, play songs with him.
So when he instead of her mom spoke through the phone, she knew something was wrong. She knew it the minute he spoke.
Lexie was pretty sure Sam broke the land speed record in the drive from San Francisco to Amber. It definitely shouldn’t have taken them just over an hour. Regardless of that fact, Lexie was glad Sam drove like a madman. And she launched herself out of the car the minute he pulled up. The band followed. When it became apparent she couldn’t drive herself due to the fact she was freaking out, Sam insisted he drive. When the rest of the boys heard what happened, they would not hear of them being left behind. Lexie’s mom was like a second mom to them all. The band was a family. They stuck together.
When Lexie raced through the doors to the hospital, she laid eyes on her other family. The club. She tried not to flinch at the sight of Killian and the way he stood when he saw her. The way his eyes on her gave her strength at the same time as sending a bullet through her fractured heart. She tried to ignore him. She mostly succeeded because she saw Zane, and everyone else fell away. She ran into his arms. He squeezed her tight and she relaxed slightly at how strong they were.
“Mom?” she asked quietly when he had pulled back.
She did flinch when she saw the look on Zane’s face. The one that told her he was slipping back into that man she met changing a tire over two years ago. That couldn’t happen.
“Don’t know anything yet, Lex,” his voice was rough and he seemed to be barely holding on.
She put a hand on his arm. “The baby?” she asked in an even smaller voice.
Zane’s eyes turned solid and he seemed to be unable to speak a moment. “Don’t know ‘bout him either, doll,” he said with resignation in his tone. Like he had already mentally prepared for the loss.
Lexie wasn’t having that. “They’re going to be fine,” she told him firmly, not letting herself believe anything less.
She moved to grasp his hand in hers and squeezed it tightly, to reassure him. His eyes softened just a tad and he moved to put his arm around her.
They stood like that for half an hour, not speaking, Lexie actively ignoring the concerned gaze of the man who ripped her to pieces. She was too busy focusing on holding her dad together. On praying for her mom.
The only time Zane spoke was when he quickly and flatly described what had happened. Lexie knew his tone wasn’t due to lack of feeling, but instead too much of it. He had found her mom bleeding and unconscious. She was eight and a half months pregnant. Zane looked like he was going to snatch one of the doctors who kept hurrying through the waiting room. She had to physically stop him from striding through the doors marked “medical personnel only” at one point. She reckoned that wasn’t the first time either, because when he made the move Brock, Cade and Lucky all got up quickly.
Finally, a doctor came through the doors and his eyes settled on the club, who had taken over the entire waiting room.
“Mia Williams?”