My fingers trembled as I pressed the connect button on my phone and pressed it to my ear. I swallowed hard as I listened intently, my eyes were focused on the man singing one of my favorite songs to at least five thousand fans. Blinking back tears, ones that were more for the man I loved than myself, I told the person on the other end of the phone to start making the appropriate arrangements. Arrangements I had set up a year ago when Nik’s mom had started going downhill in her fight with Alzheimer’s.

While the guys finished up on stage, I got busy taking care of the other million and one things that would have to be done by morning. First I called Rich Branson and what a lovely conversation we had. Gods, I hated that fucker! While talking with him I surfed the net and found plane tickets for the five of us to get to California by dawn.

When the concert came to a close, I stood directly on the sideline of the stage and made sure that Shane didn’t run off with the salivating groupie skanks that had been eye fucking him all night. Seeing my expression, he handed his guitar off to a stage tech and headed toward me along with his three band brothers.

Drake and Jesse reached me first, and I just squeezed their hands. They could guess what was wrong by the look in my eyes and they stepped behind me as I reached for Nik. Those ice blue eyes turned stormy as I grasped his hands. I had to swallow twice before I could get the words out. “I’m so sorry. She’s gone, Nik.”

The agony on his face at my words nearly crippled me, but I had to be the strong one here. Nik needed me and I’d let him lean on me for as long as he had to. Those eyes that haunted my dreams as well as my waking hours filled with tears, and he pulled me against him. No sound left him. He just held on to me and didn’t let go.

My arms held him close, rubbing my hands up and down his tense back. His pain soaked into me, making it hard to breathe for a moment. Jesse squeezed his shoulder as Drake and Shane surrounded us. “I’m sorry, bro.”

Nik sucked in a deep breath, his hold on me easing as he took half a step back. “What do I need to do?” he whispered brokenly.

“Nothing,” I assured him. “I made sure that everything was set up when she had the feeding tube put in. I told the administrator to follow the plan we talked about …” He really didn’t need to know all of that. We had argued about it for several weeks before he had finally let me make the funeral arrangements for the future event of his mother’s death. I had hated myself, but I knew that he wouldn’t have been able to make the decisions that needed to be made when the time did come and Sarah passed on.

“I have to tell Rich that we are leaving the tour.”

I gave him a tiny smile. “No, Nik. I’ve already taken care of all of that. Everything has been arranged from the flight to the car that is going to be waiting on us when we land. I even called Tommy and told him we were going to use his house while we are in town.”

I had hated talking to that old pervert nearly as much as I had hated talking to Rich. Tommy Kirkman wasn’t exactly my brand of rocker with his taste for overly young girls, but my guys respected him and looked up to the old rocker who had taken them under his wing and shown them the ropes. So I tried to keep the peace.

I was lucky to get a flight that had room for all five of us. Of course we were spread out. Drake and Shane were all the way in the back by the bathrooms and Jesse somewhere in a middle aisle with a few business men. The only two seats beside of each other that I had been able to get were close to the front of the plane and Nik asked me to sit with him.

I tried to stay with him as much as I could in between going to the bathroom because of the air sickness I always got. There had been no time to get a prescription for the patches that normally eased my discomfort, so I struggled through. Being close to Nik, knowing that I was helping even a little bit, soothed something inside of me. I tried to rub his back, but he just wanted to hold my hand.

It was only a three hour flight, but we were all exhausted by the time the plane touched down at LAX. Aunt Sarah, as we had all called her, except for Nik who called her Mom, was the only decent female I have ever came into contact with. Drake and Shane’s mother had been nice, but she had worked all the time and I had rarely seen her the few years I knew her.

While Aunt Sarah had been kind, she had still been distant with me. I didn’t hold it against her. I knew that she thought I would one day turn out like my mother, and that she hadn’t wanted her son to get pulled into that type of lifestyle. I had made myself a promise at the age of five that I was never going to let myself become my mother. If I was ever lucky enough to have a child I would devote my life to being the best mom. My kids would never have to wonder if they were going to get fed that day, or sleep with one eye open just so they wouldn’t be taken by surprise by a midnight beating.

The limo was waiting and we all climbed in for the trip to Tommy Kirkman’s house in Beverly Hills. Tom was out of the country for the next year or so, business or pleasure I still wasn’t sure. He tended to mix the two anyway. It made relaxing in the man’s house that much easier. I hadn’t told the guys but when I was seventeen Tom had tried to seduce me. One try and that was all he needed to know not to fuck with me again.

There were still several hours to go before we had to go to the nursing home to make sure that everything was in order. I hoped that Nik wouldn’t want to go, that Jesse or Shane could just go with me to sign the papers that needed my attention. But when I suggested Jesse go, Nik went a little crazy and stormed off toward the room he normally claimed as his when we stayed with Kirkman.

Jesse’s big hand touched my shoulder gently and I covered it with my own, comforted just having my friend so close. I wasn’t sure what it was about Jesse, maybe the fact that he was the one that had always played the role as my mother and father, but I always needed him close or I began to feel anxious. I had an odd connection to all of my guys. Shane was like my best friend while Drake was just like a brother to me.

And then there was Nik. I needed him in my life just as much as I needed the other three, but with Nik I was always being pulled in two different directions. He was my friend. He was the man I loved. I couldn’t have it both ways and had learned early on that he only thought of me as his little sister. The girl he had spent the majority of his life taking care of.

I was okay with that. Really, I was. And for the most part I could handle the skank groupies that warmed his bed on a nightly basis.

Oh, who was I kidding? It was driving me crazy.