When I walk back into his hospital room, I have the urge to run to him. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed. The IVs have been removed and he’s starting to look more like himself. I hang back by the door because I don’t know the rules here.
“Come here,” he says softly. I walk over toward him, and when I get close enough, he grabs me by my hips and pulls me close. He rests his cheek against my stomach, and it’s such an intimate and emotional moment that I want to live inside it forever.
By no means do I think this equates a reconciliation, but I do have hope in my heart it could lead us back to a place I thought I’d never see again.
We’re interrupted by the morning shift nurse, who hands Mark a bunch of paperwork and fills him in on what to do at home. Ethan shows up a few minutes later, and before I know it, Todd is speeding through the streets of Chicago as we head from the hospital back to Mark’s place in the back of a black Yukon. Vinny got Mark a Bears hat, and he’s wearing it down low—so low that even if his eyes weren’t covered by sunglasses, I wouldn’t be able to see them.
Ethan sat beside him when we got into the back of the car, so we’re not posed in my preferred position as we make our way toward Mark’s place. It’s less than twenty minutes, but it feels like a lifetime. Ethan talks to Mark about some gigs they’ve had to postpone. I wring my hands silently when I really want to scream at Ethan to shut the fuck up. Mark needs a break from work without worrying about everything he’s missed.
I know it’s not exhaustion that landed him in the hospital, but he still looks like he’s exhausted and he needs rest. Chatting about work might be the only way Ethan knows how to deal with this, but he’s acting like everything’s normal when Mark is dealing with the recovery of a fucking drug overdose. I’m not sure Ethan fully realizes or appreciates the implications that come with that, but then again, Ethan’s the one who thinks he’s invincible.
I feel like a very unnecessary third wheel as we pull up to Mark’s building. A line of people stands off to one side behind some caution tape, and Mark blows out a breath. Vinny opens the back door and Mark tugs on the bill of his ballcap, but it’s already down as far as it can go.
“You ready?” Vinny asks.
I can’t see Mark’s eyes, but I feel him look at me. “Keep your head down and stay close,” he says softly.
Ethan gets out first and holds up his arms in front of the line of people, who I quickly discover are photographers.
Paparazzi. In front of Mark Ashton’s home.
People who want the first picture of the man who was just released from the hospital due to exhaustion.
Mark gets out next, and Vinny stands in front of him to do his best to shield him from the cameras.
I get out last and follow closely behind Mark, just as he told me to. He links his arm around my waist, and I grab on tight to him to help steady him. I’m a little scared with this first real paparazzi experience, but I hold onto him mostly because I’m desperate to feel him against me.
I keep my head down even though I want to look at them. I want to put faces to the people who are invading Mark’s privacy. I want to know who they are, why they think taking a picture of a sick man somehow deserves the massive payday they’ll surely get. I want to know where the hell their ethics are. These are the same types of people who stood at a man’s funeral to get pictures of Mark with his grandmother.
My chest feels heavy as I think of all the implications here. He doesn’t have the luxury of privacy. His life is splashed across the tabloids—and it’s not even really his life. It’s what Penny says his life is.
We’re able to get past the crowd of people and into the lobby fairly quickly. I reluctantly drop my arm from around him once we’re inside, and the four of us step onto an elevator car alone. A woman tries to get on, but Vinny denies her entry.
Mark leans on the mirrored wall of the elevator and rests his head back with a small thud. I wish I could see his eyes, wish I had some indication of what he’s thinking.
I expect that once we’re inside, Vinny and Ethan will leave and we’ll have some time alone. He can rest, or we can talk. We’ll do whatever he’s ready to do.
Except that choice is stripped from us when we open the door and find Steve and James sitting at the kitchen table while Morgan and Angelique chat over on the couch.
Morgan squeals when we walk in. She darts across the room and pulls me into a hug. “I’m so happy to see you again.”
“You, too,” I say.
I meet Angelique’s stare from across the room, but she glances away quickly. She clearly doesn’t share the same sentiment as Morgan.
My eyes find Mark. He’s pinching the bridge of his nose like he’s on the verge of a breakdown.
“Can I get you anything?” I ask him softly.
His gaze falls on me, and I swear I see a hint of heat fire up his eyes. “I can get it.”
“Please, let me.” I set my palm on his forearm. “What do you need?”
“A beer.”
I laugh. “No.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fine, then. Some water.”
I bring Mark some water, and he’s discussing some reworking of their schedule with Vick and some guy I’ve never seen before on video chat when there’s a knock at the door.
Alone. I just want five minutes alone with Mark, yet here come more people.
I glance over at the door wondering if I should get that or if someone else will. I’m not exactly sure of my place here. Am I here as Mark’s girlfriend? Not really—we haven’t discussed it.
Because I can’t get a goddamn minute alone with him.
“I’ll get it,” Morgan says.
My attention is pulled from my thoughts when I hear shrieking. I glance up to see a trim, gorgeous woman with copper hair flinging her arms around Mark. Who the fuck is she?
The copper hair is familiar, and when she turns around, I recognize her from the Snapchat Mark sent that turned my world upside down.
“Thank God you’re finally here, Pen.” Mark’s voice has gained some strength as he’s surrounded by some of the most important people in his life, and I have no right to feel jealous as he hugs the copper-headed beauty close to his chest. “Where the fuck have you been?” He pushes out of their embrace and holds her around her biceps. He gives her a silly little shake.
“Cleaning up your mess, you fucking idiot.” She smacks him in the arm. “What the hell were you thinking?”
He rubs his arm in jest, but then his eyes meet mine from across the room. He blows out a breath. “I wasn’t thinking.”
Her eyes follow his over to me. She slips her arm around his waist as he tosses his arm around her shoulder. She leans into him and acts like what she’s saying is just for him, but I still hear it even over the music and across the room. “I assume that’s Reese?”
She knows who I am?
I finally push aside my insecurities and gather up the strength to walk over to them. “Reese Brady,” I say, sticking out my hand to shake hers. Up close, she’s gorgeous with a smattering of freckles over her nose and her wide, innocent eyes that are a glittering blue.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” she says, leaving Mark’s side to step over to me. “I’m Penny.”
So this is the infamous Penny. I’m torn on whether to love or hate this woman. She’s saved Mark’s image on multiple occasions, but she’s also painted him the way she wants—or at least the way that’ll sell the most records. But that’s also her just doing her job, and clearly, she does it well.
“Nice to meet you,” I say, glad to know pretty Penny and Mark are related, even if they’re distant relatives. I don’t want the image of them having sex in my head, and the fact that they’re related helps obliterate it.
She gives me a genuine smile then turns back to Mark. “When can you get back to work?”
“I feel fine now,” he says.
I decide to interject. “The nurse said to give it a few days.”
Penny’s head whips over to me and Ethan glares at me. Penny turns slowly from me to Mark. “Friday, then?”
“I’d probably give it through the weekend,” I say. “But he can go to his doctor sooner to see if he has medical clearance.” I feel awkward as all eyes land on me, but I was in the room when the nurse gave him his release instructions.
“Through the weekend?” Penny says as her eyes widen.
I look at the people around the room—people who love him, of course, but people who also depend on him for more than just a steady paycheck.
Mark sighs. “I’m fine.”
I shake my head. It may not be my place to interject, but I care about his health. That’s more important to me than a few awkward glances in my direction if I’m overstepping my bounds. “You’ve been out of the hospital all of an hour. You’re not fine.”
“We have studio time booked Wednesday in Nashville,” Steve says. “Will you make that?”
Everyone looks at me to answer—everyone except Mark. “Yeah, I’ll be there. We’re just laying tracks. I’ll be sitting all day.”
Penny sighs. “You’ll be traveling to get there and then working, and that’s not stress you need right now.”
He rolls his eyes petulantly and Penny looks over at me with a bit of sympathy. I think I might love her.
“All right, Vail,” she says. “Get your asses out of here. Mark and I have work to do and you’re distracting him.”
I open my mouth to protest, to tell her he can’t work right now, but Penny shoots me a look that clearly tells me to shut up.
Everyone groans, but they do what they’re told. The boys all say their goodbyes to Mark. Steve and James both give me hugs, as does Morgan, and they all file out.
Mark ambles over to the couch and collapses on it, stretching his legs out across the cushions. “Where do we start?” he asks Penny. I stand in the kitchen like an outsider, so I sit at the table and scroll my phone while I pretend like I’m not listening to every word.
“You have to get better,” she says, walking over toward him. She perches on the coffee table in front of the couch. “And that’s it for now. I’ve got the rest.”
“But you said we have work to do.”
“I said that to get everyone out of here. We do, we always do, obviously, but it can wait. I’ll bear the load for now.”
“We’ve already cancelled two shows because of this mess, and if I can’t leave my house, we’ll have to cancel more.” His voice is desperate.
“People will understand that your health comes first. Let me worry about the schedule. You worry about getting healthy.”
Mark blows out a frustrated breath.
“I’ll release a statement in the morning about how I saw you and you’re doing much better,” Penny says. “I’ll push off Nashville but won’t cancel anything beyond Thursday. We’ll see how you’re feeling. Maybe I can sort through the paps’ pics from when you got here earlier and pay someone for an exclusive. Most of them are already all over the gossip sites, though.”
“Pen, people are gonna forget about us.” I can’t see his face—he’s looking out the windows and I’m behind him in the kitchen, but I hear the fear in his voice even from here.
“No, Mark. They’ll never forget you. Don’t you get that? There’s a group of teenaged girls in Minneapolis who organized a candlelight vigil to pray for you. It went viral. I have thousands of unopened cards at the office for you. Tweets and retweets, campaigns on every social media network to send positive vibes. You were trending on Facebook last night. Honey, people will not forget you. They just want you better, and going to the studio to lay tracks on Wednesday is a stupid idea. You need your voice at a thousand percent to lay tracks on an album. You know that. You’re still suffering from lethargy. I can hear it in your voice. It’s strained. Give it a few days, drink a bucket of tea every day, shoot down honey and lemon if you need to.”
Penny glances over at me, and I silently mouth thank you to her when our eyes meet. She presses her lips together in a small smile and nods.
“Honey and lemon in large quantities will give me the shits.”
I can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of me at that. So much for pretending not to listen.
“Then don’t do that,” Penny says. “Unless you think it’ll help.”
Mark runs his hand through his hair. “This was really fucking stupid.”
“I can’t argue with you there. You ready to tell me what happened?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “Not really.”
“Fine. When you’re ready.”
He lowers his voice, and I strain to hear. “Ethan wanted to smoke, so we smoked. I was having a rough time and weed makes the pain go away, right? It didn’t, so I drank some scotch. Still didn’t numb anything. I got my hands on some morphine and took that, too. Figured since it’s a painkiller, it would kill the pain. I started to feel numb, but then I started having these crazy dreams and didn’t know if I was awake or asleep. They say I started panicking, but I don’t remember.”
“Who gave you the morphine?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She sighs, and we both know it was Ethan from that answer. “How’d you get to the hospital?”
“I don’t know. I think James finally convinced Ethan I needed to go.”
“Are you fucking dumb?” Penny asks.
I have to admit, I agree completely with her. She has the balls to say it to his face, though, and I like that about her.
He doesn’t answer.
“Do you realize what you could’ve done? Look at Hendrix. Morrison. Winehouse. Weiland. Do you need me to go on?”
“Morrison died from heart failure.” His voice is defeated with an argument so weak it’s not even an argument.
“Suspected from heroin.”
“I don’t do heroin. I’m not stupid.”
I realize I’m sitting stock still in the kitchen as I listen to their conversation. I shake my head and continue the pretense of scrolling through emails on my phone.
“Oh, but mixing with morphine is smart?” Penny asks. “You know that’s what took Paul Gray from Slipknot and that guy from Def Leppard, right?”
He doesn’t answer again, and now I’m positive I love her. She’s one of the few people in the world who talks to Mark like this. His mother, his sister, and...me? We’re the only ones, I think.
“What had you hurting so much?” she asks softly.
Mark doesn’t answer with words, but I see his head nod in my direction. I’m trying to decipher if the head nod means he’s blaming me or if it means he doesn’t want to talk about it with me in the room.
Penny looks over at me, and my eyes fill with tears. Either way, it’s my fault. I know deep down it isn’t—it was an accident on the part of a grown man who was hurting, a bad decision that led to a terrible mistake. It could’ve been much worse, though—it could’ve cost him his life, but now we have the time to sort through it, time to get to the root of all that pain and find a way to begin to heal it.
“I need some time to talk to Reese,” Mark says. “How long are you in town?”
“I have a return flight booked for Wednesday, but if you need me longer, I’ll change it.”
“You have other clients. I’ll be fine.”
She gives him a warning look, and he cowers a bit under her gaze. I giggle softly to myself as she stands to leave.
My heart races. This is it—finally. We’re finally going to get some time alone after way too many days apart.
“Text me if you need anything,” she says.
“I will.” He reaches for his phone. “Fuck,” he mutters. He glances up at me and blows out a frustrated breath.
“What?” Penny asks just as there’s a knock at the door.
She walks over to get it while I busy myself with wiping down the counters. I realize Mark probably has a Chicago housekeeper much like Hazel in Vegas, but I need to feel like I’m doing something.
I can’t help but glance over at the door—who the hell could it be now? Who would have a key card with access to Mark’s floor that hasn’t already been here?
Of course.
I hear Diane’s voice as she pushes past Penny and rushes through the room over to her son. “You’re looking better,” she says.
Mark nods to me. “Because she’s here.”
My face heats at his words, but I pretend I don’t hear them as I continue to wipe down the kitchen. Paul walks through the door a minute later with a bag of food. He ambles over to the kitchen table and spreads out a variety of soups, salads, and breads. “Anybody hungry?” he asks while Diane once again fawns over her son.
“He looks a lot better today. Doesn’t he look a lot better, Paul?”
“He looks great,” Paul says. He looks at me and rolls his eyes, and I stifle a snicker. I head over to the cabinet to pull out plates and silverware, and soon we’re sitting around the table. Mark eats like he hasn’t eaten in days, which, come to think of it, he probably hasn’t. He eats two bowls of soup and almost an entire loaf of bread before he pats his stomach and tells us he couldn’t eat another bite. Then he goes to work on a salad.
“Reese, don’t you have to go to work?” Diane finally asks me.
“I took off a few days to be here with Mark,” I say. I shred a piece of bread. “I’ll stay as long as he needs me to.”
“That isn’t necessary. We’re here to care for him now if you need to get back to Vegas.”
“Knock it off,” Mark says sharply.
Diane looks miffed to be scolded by her son, and I do my best to hide my smug smile, though I’m fairly sure I’m unsuccessful in that endeavor.
“I’m just saying we’re here, so it’s not necessary for her to be here if she has other things she needs to do.” Diane purses her lips.
Mark sighs in frustration, and I can tell she’s getting under his skin. “Why are you being rude, Mom?”
I glance over at Diane, who is the picture of innocence as a hand flies to her chest. “What? Me?”
Mark raises his brows pointedly, and Diane releases a breath.
“Fine. I just don’t think she deserves you. Not after the stunts she pulled.” She gives me a glare, and I want to ask what stunts at the same time I want to run the hell out of this penthouse as fast and far as I can.
“What stunts are those?” Mark asks the question in my head.
“Let’s not do this now,” I say, a hint of desperation in my voice.
“The whole thing with Brian,” she says.
Paul watches us all like a damn tennis match, like he’s not sure where to side. Siding against his wife will surely get him in trouble, but siding with her is a lie based on the things he said to me.
“Okay, we’re doing this now, then,” I mutter.
Mark rises from the table. “The whole thing with Brian was Brian’s fault.” His voice is a scary hiss and it’s one part sexy and one part startling. “If you believe it’s any other way than that, you’re blind.” He slams his fists on the table, and I jump.
“Mark, calm down,” Paul says. “Your brother isn’t even here to defend himself.”
“There’s no defense for what he did,” Mark says icily. He walks over toward the windows and looks out over the busy city.
“What, exactly, did he do?” Diane asks. Her eyes follow Mark as he stops in front of the window. He’s a silhouette against the bright backdrop of the midday light.
Mark chooses his words carefully but doesn’t turn from the window, doesn’t look at any of us as he speaks. “Brian used Reese as a way to get revenge on me.”
“For what?” Diane asks.
He whirls around. “You really want to know?”
I stare down at my plate, mortified at what’s happening.
“I fucked the girl he was in love with, so he did the same thing to me.”
I feel sick at his words. These are things about sons no parent should ever know, and these are definitely things about me that I don’t want Mark’s parents to know.
“Language,” Diane says sharply. She hasn’t moved from her spot at Mark’s kitchen table despite their heated words.
Mark rolls his eyes. “I’m sorry, mother, but you’re in my house and I’m thirty-four-years-old. I think you know by now that I swear.”
“Between your exhaustion and this girl, you’re a different person, Mark,” Diane says. Her voice is bitter and clearly speaks to the fact that she doesn’t approve of the change.
He shakes his head. “No, I’m not. I’m the same Mark I’ve always been. I’ve just had a rough couple months.” He turns back to the window, and we’re all silent as we stare at his backside. “I was screwed over by my own brother and found out about it the same night Pops died. I’ve had to cancel shows, I’ve got a PR nightmare with this damn hospitalization, I’ve got Steve leaving the band, and everything with Reese is fucked up and I can’t even get two seconds alone with her to tell her the things I need to say.”
Wait a minute.
Steve’s leaving the band?