I jumped up, turning her so she was facing me. Open, lifeless eyes stared up at me.

“NO!” I shouted, my fingers going back to her neck. Nothing. Before I could stop myself, I pulled her into my lap and held her. “Jill, wake up. I’m here. God, I’m here. I let this happen to you, baby. I’m so sorry. Please wake up for me. I’m going to get us out of here right now.”

Jill’s head bobbed as I held onto her, tears streaking down my face and dripping onto her lifeless one. She was gone. She’d probably been gone since I’d left two days ago on a ‘trip’. What the hell had they done to her? Had they done this on purpose?

“Such a shame,” Ray cackled at the door. “She loved my dick, though, and shit if that pussy wasn’t sweet. But turns out, she loved the needle just a little more. You were going to save her, were you, Frat Boy?” He guffawed, coming closer. Rage sliced through me. He did this. This was all his fault. “You know better than that,” his foul breath said into my face. “You weren’t getting her out of here, and you aren’t getting out of here, either. This is your consequence for even trying to outsmart us. I fucked her while she took her last breath. My cum is still in her pussy. Wanna see?”

I laid her down gently back onto the bed and stood up, my fists clenched at my sides. “You killed her!”

Ray shrugged. “She’s a dime a dozen, Frat Boy. I can have someone sucking my dick in less than five minutes. But see . . . she meant something to you, and you showed us disrespect. This is what you get.” He stepped closer to me. “Don’t fuck with me, Johnny. This is only one small part of what I can do to you. You’re lucky I didn’t go after precious Julia and put my dick in her as she died.”

I shot up, sweat covering my body as I realized I’d been dreaming again. I looked around, realizing it was late afternoon, and I’d been sleeping most of the day. God, I wished the nightmares would stop. It would greatly help my ability to sleep.

I felt sweat dripping off of my face and reached up to wipe it off when I realized it was tears. I’d been crying in my sleep. Pissed off, I flung the covers off and stood up, pacing my room. I didn’t fucking cry. Not anymore. Jill, the only woman I’d ever loved, had died because of me.

This was why I couldn’t get any more involved with Bex. I thought back to the notes, and a cold shiver came over me. There was no way, right? They were all either locked up or dead.

I shook my head, grabbing a pair of clean underwear and shorts and heading for the bathroom. No. I couldn’t start being paranoid. So I’d gotten a few notes. They probably meant nothing.

“I’m leaving early tomorrow,” Bex said, not looking at me. We were wrapped in my sheets, both of us naked after three rounds of mind blowing sex. Julia and Carter were out with Calia, and Bex and I had been making good use of the privacy.

First I’d had her in the kitchen, then the shower, and finally the bed. I studied her face as she twirled the sheet with her fingers, wondering what she was thinking.

“I know,” I said. “I have to go back to Colorado next week.”

Her eyes snapped up to mine. “Why?”

I paused, wondering if I should give her any information. My attorney had called and said I needed to come back for the hearing to see if my record could be expunged. Ever since Julia had heard I was going back, she’d been begging me to come right back afterwards and live in Florida for good. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. Bex being here was very tempting, but I was afraid that if I lived here I’d get too attached to her.

“I have some business I have to attend to,” I chose to say. Her brow furrowed at my cryptic answer. “Plus, you’ll be gone until next month, anyway.”

“Are you coming back?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”

“Tell me something,” Bex said, shocking me. She smiled shyly.

“Yes?”

She waved her hand in between us. “What do you . . . where do you . . .” Bex smacked her hand down on her leg and looked away. “Never mind.”

I reached over and covered her hand. “What is it? Talk to me.”

She shook her head. “I can’t make the words come out.”

I looked over at the Gibson still sitting covered on my chair. I stood, carefully lifting it by the strap and handing it to her.

“What is this for?”

“My sister got me this. Play. Tell me what you want to say in song.”

She looked from the Gibson and then back to me. “But you haven’t played it?”

I shook my head. “She’s trying to make me. But I can’t. So you do it.”

Bex looked down, strumming her fingers on the strings. God, it was beautiful. I wasn’t sure which thing I thought was more breathtaking than the other. Here she was, the woman who had done more for me than I’d ever thought possible, sitting naked on my bed playing the guitar I’d wanted for my whole life. I was too frozen to do anything about either thing that I wanted so badly I could barely see straight.

Oh shit.

Either thing?

I wanted her?

I wanted to play?

Holy fuck, I wanted her?

My chest tightened and I clutched it, refusing to allow the panic to take me over. I was stronger than this shit. I had to be. I didn’t want her, and I couldn’t play again. Neither of those things were in the cards for me.

After quickly tuning the guitar, Bex closed her eyes and began to sing. The sound of her voice effectively stopped the panic from taking me over.

“Here I am, a lost and lonely girl. All I ever wanted was to be loved. But you didn’t care. You threw me away like the trash I was. I’m broken. . . . so broken . . . I can’t ever be fixed again . . .”

As she sang the chorus again, about being broken and not able to be fixed, my mouth dropped open. She was telling me what she couldn’t tell me in words. She’d been hurt badly. I could’ve figured that already, but she and I weren’t so different. Our poisons might’ve been different, but the pain was the same.

When she finished she looked away from me, silence taking over the room.

“Bex,” I said, reaching over and pulling her towards me. “That song . . . I’ve never heard you play that.”

“I can’t sing it in front of an audience,” she said, shifting her eyes away from me again. “I wrote it years ago. No one has ever heard it before. Before you.”

“It’s too raw,” I said. She nodded. What was happening right now? I was afraid to know but terrified to stop it. “Thank you for trusting me with it.”

“I know we’re both fucked up,” she said, straightening her spine and looking directly at me. “There’s shit that’s happened to me that I’m not sure I can ever talk about. I’m the first person to shy away from any sort of emotional connection to anyone. Ask Natalie or Beau. And we agreed that this was a no-strings, don’t-get-attached-thing.”

“But that’s not what it is anymore,” I finished for her, shocking the shit out of myself. Where the hell had that come from? Bex’s eyes widened, the same surprise evident on her face. “We both said that, yes. You’re leaving tomorrow, and I have shit I have to deal with in Colorado.”

Bex nodded. “I’m gone for a month. Johnny . . .”

She worked the sheet with her fingers again. I wanted to know so badly what was going through her head, because fuck if I knew what was going through mine. It was a jumbled mass of wires trying to reconnect.

“Come with me,” she said finally.

Out of all of the things I thought she might say, that wasn’t one of them. “What?”

She nodded, her jaw firm like she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I’d seen this Bex enough to recognize determination when I saw it. “Come with me. On tour.”

My mouth dropped open, my mind reeling. What the hell was I supposed to say to that? Go on tour with her? Around the country? On a bus? With her band? “Bex . . .”