“I have to go. I love you.”

“Love you, Em!” And he hung up.

Nik was already tossing my clothes into a carry-on. “What can I do?” he asked from across the bedroom at my closet.

“I have to go to New York.”

“I know. Should I stay here with Mia? Or do you think we should take her?” He looked concerned.

I bit my lip again. I hadn’t spent one night away from my baby girl since we had brought her home from the hospital. “I don’t know.”

Nik stopped what he was doing and came back to me. “Get Jesse, Layla, and yourself on tonight’s flight. If this takes more than a few days, then I will bring Mia and Lucy out. Okay?”

I nodded, tears already spilling from my eyes. Nik kissed me tenderly and pushed my phone into my hands. “It’s going to be okay, baby. Mia will be okay.”

“I know…” Closing my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath. After a moment, I opened my eyes and hit Jesse’s name on my contact list.

It rang and rang and rang. When it went to voice mail, I hung up and dialed it again. “This better be good,” Jesse growled into the receiver several rings later.

“Jesse.”

“Emmie?” He was awake now and I was sorry that I had scared him. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I assured him. “But you need to wake Layla up. Pack her a bag and I’ll pick you both up. Drake…” How did I tell him without him going nuts? How did I keep one of the guys I loved so much from killing another one of the important men in my life?

“What about Drake?” he demanded. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine.” For now, I thought as I pulled on a pair of jeans. “Listen, I will explain on the way to the airport. Just get ready.”

“Okay. Okay.” He sounded stressed. “It isn’t Lana, is it?” His voice cracked and I closed my eyes. Layla and her sisters were his world now. If anything happened to any one of them it would destroy him. Which was why I feared for Drake’s life!

“Lana is fine. She and Drake are having some issues. That’s why I need Layla. Okay? Now hurry, Jesse!” I hung up before he could question me further. “Nik, will you call a taxi?” I asked even as I was surfing my phone for LAX.

It took twenty minutes and paying double what I would normally have agreed to pay, but I got the three of us on a flight for one o’clock out of LAX into JFK. As soon as the taxi pulled up, I hauled ass. I kissed Nik goodbye, fighting tears as I had to leave him and Mia behind even for a day or two. Jesse and Layla were already outside waiting for me. Nik was going to walk over and pick Lucy up.

Layla looked wild as she climbed in the back seat beside me. My best friend hugged me tight. “Is she okay? Really?”

“There are different types of okay, Layla,” I told her. “I’m just not sure which type she falls into.”

Jesse’s eyes darkened. As the taxi driver drove like the hounds of Hell were after him, which was what I was paying him good money to do, I could see the way his eyes changed colors with his emotions.

“What happened?” he demanded, and I knew that he wasn’t going to take my evasion tactics any longer.

So I told them what I knew. They were quiet, their tempers growing as they listened to me, and I was just finishing up by the time the taxi pulled to a stop in front of LAX. We had exactly fifteen minutes to get our tickets, get through security, and board our plane, but I had so much experience with cutting it close like this that it went smoothly.

With just two minutes to spare, we dropped into our seats. Unfortunately, none of us were seated together. I was smashed between two business men while Jesse was in the very back of the plane with three older ladies who were on their way to visit their grandchildren. Layla had it the easiest. She had a window seat with two teenaged girls beside of her that were already asleep by the time the plane took off.

Five and a half hours later, the plane touched down. It was almost seven, and I wasn’t in any mood to be trifled with as I pushed us all into a cab and barked out the address for Drake and Shane’s apartment. I knew that Lana needed us, but Drake had to be taken care of first.

Drake and Gabriella.

If that little slut was still there when I arrived, I was going to do what I should have done the first time she gave me that twisted, bitchy smile. Her classic, Italian beauty wasn’t going to be very pretty when I got done with her!

Drake

Cotton mouth woke me from a dead sleep.

Groaning, I reached for Lana, wanting to kiss her before I got up for a glass of water. When I didn’t feel her, my eyes snapped open and my head felt like it was going to split in two, but that didn’t matter right then. Lana’s side of the bed was rumpled and still felt warm, but she was gone. The sound of the shower calmed my racing heart and the sudden fear that she wasn’t there.

I closed my eyes again, trying to take stock of my aches and pains. I was hung over, that much was obvious to me. Besides a pounding head, cotton mouth, and a queasy stomach, I was okay. I was mad as hell at myself for backtracking and swore that I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

The shower turned off in the bathroom and I sighed, ready to face Lana’s wrath. I deserved for her to be pissed, but I knew that she would forgive me for this slip. Even if she hadn’t said the words Friday, I knew that she loved me…

The bathroom door opened. I jumped out of bed so fast I nearly fell on my face. My head and stomach protested, but I didn’t give a fuck if I threw up or passed out. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Gabriella grimaced at my loud voice. “Dude, down an octave please. Some of us aren’t used to a raging hangover like the pro that you are.” She held her towel around her with one hand and touched her temple with the other.

My mind, still cloudy with the after effects of liquor, was going crazy. The day before flashed through my brain: being upset over not seeing or talking to Lana all day, going to Axton’s to visit with Liam, the party, Gabriella stumbling around, the urge to drink, and the overpowering need to down a bottle!

My fingers started shaking and I ran them through my hair. I hadn’t been able to resist the need and had grabbed the first bottle I saw. Of course it had been Jack Daniels. I had downed the nearly full bottle in a matter of minutes. By the time Axton had come back to find me, I was out of it because it had been so long since my last drink…

From there everything was a solid blank―no fuzzy memories, nothing, just a big black void. That shouldn’t have surprised me. Downing a bottle that fast always made me black out, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t done something stupid.