“Fuck Gabriella!” he growled. “This has nothing to do with her. Nothing.”

“Then maybe it has something to do with Dallas…” When all I heard was his heavy, angry breathing on the other end I knew I had hit the nail on the head. I actually liked Dallas, a lot. She was so bitchingly honest that she had wormed her way into my heart within days and I talked to her regularly. “So, you’re going to let a chick break up your friendship, possibly even destroy OtherWorld?”

If Axton left, that was most likely to happen. The band wouldn’t survive without Axton as the front man. He was the reason they had gotten noticed by Rich Branson. Axton was why they had thrived. Sure Wroth kicked ass as a guitarist, but he would rather be working on his farm in Tennessee than on stage. Devlin, Zander, and Liam? Sure there was talent there but they needed someone with Axton’s charming arrogance to lead them. “That isn’t you, Ax. You don’t let women mess with your life like this.”

“I saw them, Emmie.” His voice had lost its harshness all of a sudden and all I could hear was the hurt and dejection in it. My heart hurt for him. “I saw him kissing her yesterday.”

“Liam and Dallas?” I sighed. “So you found Liam. You didn’t approach him, did you? He’s doing really well at that place, Ax. Don’t mess with him right now.”

“Don’t worry about the fucker. I didn’t touch him and I didn’t let him know I was there. He’s alive, that should be all the proof you need of me not going near him.” The harshness was back and I wasn’t sure which I hated more—the coldness or the dejection. One hurt me just as much as it did him, the other pissed me off to the point that I wanted to be the one hurting him. “He had his hands on my girl’s ass. His goddamn lips on her. I’m through with him.”

“Liam isn’t Dallas’s type,” I found myself assuring him. It was true. Liam was too broken, too needy for someone as strong as Dallas. She needed someone like Axton to really satisfy her. “Maybe what you saw wasn’t really what you are thinking. She’s been helping him, Axton. Going up there on Sundays to show him that he isn’t alone during all of this. I talked to her just a few days ago and she said they were friends.”

“You know, I didn’t even blink when Liam said he was messing around with Gabriella. It didn’t matter. She was toxic for me and I was toxic for her. Her hooking up with one of my friends didn’t bother me… But Dallas? He can’t fucking have her, Em.”

“He doesn’t have her for anything except for friendship. Why don’t you talk to her about it? I bet she would tell you the same thing. She’s too smart to get involved with Liam romantically.”

Axton’s laugh was full of anything but humor and it scared the shit out of me. “I’ve been calling her, texting her, showing up at her fucking apartment and even her job. I’m two steps away from being a damn stalker. She refuses to talk to me.”

“I’ll talk to her, then,” I told him, adding that to the long list of things I needed to do within the next week. Obviously this was driving my friend toward psycho territory. “For now, just take a walk or go find some skank to screw. Anything to clear your head. Let’s get through the tour in a few months and if you still want out at the end of it, then we can talk about it.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

I closed my eyes and squeezed the bridge of my nose, trying not to lose my cool with him in the next ten seconds before I hung up. “I’ll be in New York next week. I’ll see you then.” And smack you in the balls a few times to get your head out of your fucking ass!

“Fine.” And he hung up without even saying good-bye or that he loved me. Rolling my eyes because I wasn’t a stranger to dealing with thirty-plus-year-old adolescents, it was just rarely Axton who was the one acting so immature.

I replaced the receiver and picked up my cellphone; might as well cross one item off my mile-long list while it was on my mind. It rang three times before the Texas drawl answered. “Hey, redhead.”

“Dallas, do you have a few minutes…?”

Chapter 28

Lana

It was official. I couldn’t see my feet. Muttering a curse I stood in front of my mirror trying to see if I had on matching shoes. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened. Two days ago I had gone to my doctor’s appointment and it wasn’t until I had used the bathroom before the exam that I had found out I had a black flat heeled shoe on my left foot and a brown one on my right. And it wasn’t just because I couldn’t see what I was doing.

I was so scatter brained at the moment that it felt like I was a seventy-five-year-old dementia patient some days. Grocery shopping? I couldn’t even follow a list because I could read that thing a million times and still forget at least three things on it. Snack time? I’d actually made myself a sandwich, got distracted, and then ended up making another one because I’d forgotten about the first.

Thank gods Emmie and Nik would be arriving in the morning. Since my sister wasn’t able to come out for the birth of my child, Emmie was the next best thing. I didn’t want to admit it but as it got closer to my due date the more scared I was. I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions for the last two days and if this was just a taste of the pain to come then I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to go through with it without the epidural. That just pissed me off because I had already made my birth plan and I had been adamant that I didn’t want the epidural or drugs of any kind. I wanted to have the baby completely naturally.

I hadn’t told Drake about the Braxton Hicks or even about my fears. He was fighting a really bad cold and had stayed home at my insistence the day of my last doctor’s appointment. For the last two nights he had been sleeping on the couch in the living room so that he couldn’t get me sick too. It wasn’t helping my anxiety to not have him sleeping beside me every night, but I understood his reasoning. If I was sick when the baby came then there was a huge chance the baby would get sick too.

Even though he was sick and running a low-grade fever, Drake was still going to work tonight. It was the season finale and he wanted to be there if for no other reason than to support Kurtis Quinn who was one of the two finalists. He’d already left for the studio a few hours ago to get ready. There would be last minute details to go over as well as makeup—which Drake hated—and wardrobe to sit through.