Leaving Jesse and the others in the living room, I followed after Nik. His door was unlocked and I barely knocked before opening it and glancing inside. My heart broke for him when I saw that he was sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. I shut the door softly behind me and went to him.

Dropping to my knees in front of him, I touched his hands gently. I had such wonderful memories of those hands on me from just a few weeks ago, but I put those thoughts out of my head as I wrapped my arms around him. He buried his face in my neck and I felt his tears falling onto my skin. His hands caressed down my back and then I felt his hot, rough hands touching my bare skin under my T-shirt. Being skin to skin with Nik was like being offered a glimpse into paradise. It was enough for me because I knew it was all I would ever have from him.

How long I sat there on my knees just holding onto him, I wasn’t sure. My legs had long since fallen asleep when Nik raised his head. “Will you stay with me until we have to go?”

“I’ll stay as long as you need me, Nik,” I promised.

I thought I saw a flash of something intense cross his face but was too tired to question it as I stood. For the next few hours I lay in bed with him. One arm was under his head while the other wrapped tightly around my shoulders. His fingers played with the ends of my hair like they always did, and I wondered if the action was just as soothing for him as it was for me. Neither of us spoke and I let myself relax to the sound of his steady heartbeat under my ear as I rested my head on his lean, muscled, hard chest.

The sun came up but we stayed where we were. It was after eight before he finally moved around, trying to work some of the kinks out of his stiff body. When he left me to shower, I took a moment to make a few necessary phone calls before going to shower in my own room.

Over the next two days I stuck to Nik’s side like glue. It was where I wanted to be the most, and I was so thankful that it was where Nik wanted me too. It was like a dagger shredding my heart as I watched him silently cry while his mother was slowly lowered into the ground.

Aunt Sarah was the last of the family we had, except for Drake and Shane’s dad and sister back in Ohio that they didn’t acknowledge. So now it was officially just the five of us. We only had each other, and that was okay with me. Those four guys were all I had ever had anyway.

We returned to the tour and everything began to get back to normal.

Until I started getting sick.

Chapter 8

What’s Wrong With Em?

I didn’t think I was going to get over my mom’s death. Even with my band brothers and Emmie to help me through it all, I was still having a difficult time over two months later. She had been special, a one of a kind loving person, and I felt cheated that she was gone.

Being so out of it I didn’t notice how sick Emmie was until I heard her throwing up on the tour bus one morning. At first I thought it was Drake because he was always in there first thing in the morning emptying his system of the poison he had filled it with the night before. So it came as a shock when I saw Emmie coming out of the bathroom a few minutes after I heard the toilet flush.

I didn’t say anything right away. After all, I wasn’t sure if it was something serious or not. When I mentioned it to Jesse later that morning he looked disturbed. We talked and I started putting a few things together. Emmie was sleeping all the time and she had lost weight, not to mention the mood swings that I hadn’t questioned until now. When I looked at her a few hours later I saw that she was skin and bones, and she hadn’t had any weight to lose to begin with.

Jesse and I cornered her that afternoon as the bus drove toward another city for yet another concert. We were all burnt out, and I suspected that the heavy pace was taking it’s toll on Emmie just as much as it was the rest of us. Maybe more. We didn’t really think about what she had to do to keep our lives simple. She was always taking care of something, planning ahead so that everything ran smoothly for us. We were taking the summer off, having our first vacation since we had hit it big. Just a few more days, two more concerts in Galveston, and we were headed to Florida for three full months.

Emmie being Emmie, she pointedly refused to go see a doctor at first. When Jesse told her just how worried we were, she reluctantly gave in. It shouldn’t have bothered me when she agreed for him, but it did. And when she crawled onto his lap to comfort him because he was so worried, I saw red for a minute.

I had to sit there and watch them. Emmie was wrapped around Jesse like she belonged in his arms. It felt like a punch directly to the chest, but after a few minutes of hating my best friend I realized that no matter how I felt all I really wanted was for Em to be happy. If Jesse was what she wanted, I would step aside and let her have him.

I prayed that wasn’t the case though. It was getting harder and harder to hide how I was feeling. A song had been scrambling around my brain for a few weeks now and I knew that I had to get it out. Maybe, just maybe, once I had the song ready and Emmie heard it she would realize that I loved her…

Perhaps she would be able to come to love me too.

When Emmie fell asleep in Jesse’s lap, I had to get up. I couldn’t watch them sleeping together. Walking through the moving tour bus, I went straight through the sleeping quarters without stopping. Shane and Drake were already asleep, taking up one set of the bunks. I could have climbed onto the top bunk on the other side, which was my usual bed anyway, but I wanted to feel closer to Emmie.

She always took the front of the bus. It was her own space and we usually respected it as hers. Her computer was on the long table in front of the couch that she normally slept on, and there were a dozen different papers scattered around the computer. I stretched out on the couch on my stomach, hugging her pillow under my head. Breathing deep, I took in the scent of her shampoo—lavender and vanilla.

It gave me a little peace from the ache seeing her with Jesse caused, as well as the nagging worry I felt after opening my eyes to just how sick she was now. A few lines from the song I was working on clouded my brain, and I hummed the lyrics a few times as I slowly drifted to sleep.

Gentle yet firm hands pushed on my shoulder. I turned over, still half asleep until I felt Emmie snuggle against my bare chest. She put her head on my chest and closed her eyes. My heart swelled as I wrapped her safely in my arms. Tenderly, I brushed a kiss over her forehead, breathing in her sweet scent.

“You don’t know how happy you just made me,” I whispered, knowing that she was already asleep and couldn’t hear me.