Sinners at the Altar (Sinners on Tour 6)

Myrna grinned. Her plan to get them back together was already working.

“You two should get your own room. We’re using every inch of ours.” Myrna poked the five-inch strap-on against the back of Brian’s leg to remind him which inches they’d been using most recently.

Sed didn’t smile. If fact, he looked like he was about to burst into tears. Myrna didn’t know the man was capable of looking that miserable.

Sed took a deep shuddering breath and blurted, “It’s Trey.”

Myrna’s buoyant heart sank to the pit of her stomach. Brian sagged against her. She hadn’t expected Brian to need her to be his rock so soon, but she could be that for him. His rock.

Chapter Nine

The trip to the hospital was bad enough for Brian without him having to endure Jessica Chase’s presence in their taxi. Not only had the fight that put Trey in the hospital started because of her, the woman turned Sed into a complete asshole. Well, her leaving him had. And Brian was in no mood to be in the same country as her, much less the same vehicle. Perhaps he was focusing on his intense dislike for the woman—more precisely his hatred of the woman’s effect on his friend’s intellect—more than on Trey’s injuries because thinking about losing his best friend made him want to vomit. Or scream. Or cry. Or break something. Sitting calmly in the back seat of a cab wasn’t going so well for him.

A cold sweat trickled down the center of his back, and every muscle in his body ached from the tension about to destroy him. If Myrna hadn’t been gripping his hand, he very likely would have lost his mind.

When the cab stopped in front of the hospital entrance, Sed and Jessica hopped out immediately, but Myrna refused to budge.

He looked at her in question, needing to hurry.

“He’ll be all right,” Myrna said calmly, stroking the hair from his face. “I know this is tearing you up inside, but you can’t let Trey see you like this. He’s going to think the Grim Reaper is standing over his bed. You can fall apart later, I promise. But be strong for him now.”

Brian didn’t know if he could effectively hide his turmoil, his anguish, his fucking helplessness, but Myrna was right. He had to pretend to be confident that Trey was going to pull through unscathed, because the alternative was too horrendous to bear. Even the thought was crippling.

He nodded. “I’ll keep it together somehow.”

“I’m here. You can lean on me, okay?”

He nodded mutely. He wondered how she knew how much he needed to hear that.

“I love you,” she said, not waiting for his answering sentiment before she climbed out of the cab.

He’d really needed to hear that too.

Trey was in high spirits when they finally entered his room ten or twelve centuries later. The time blocks had probably been minutes, but each had felt at least a hundred years long. Brian pretended that Trey’s head injury wasn’t serious—grand mal seizures weren’t all that bad, were they?—and joked around with him only because any other action would have reduced him to a blubbering idiot. Trey hooked two fingers into Brian’s front pocket and clung to it the entire visit, so Brian was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one faking calm and collectedness. Brian managed to keep up pretenses until the brain surgeon shooed them out of Trey’s room and Myrna wrapped her arms around him in the waiting room down the hall.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“N-no,” he said. “I said it would serve him right if it turned out to be something serious, and now…” He swallowed the sob trying to choke him.

“You didn’t mean that, sweetheart. You know you didn’t.”

He hadn’t, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d said it. And it had happened.

It had happened.

Oh God.

Brian crushed Myrna against him and turned to face the wall so no one would see the tears swimming in his eyes. He tried to stop them from falling, but his effort was as effectual as trying to stop the sun from setting. He did manage not to weep, by sucking air through the paralyzing fear squeezing his throat like a vice.

When the rest of Trey’s support team entered the waiting room, Brian pushed Myrna away and wiped his damnably leaky eyes on the hem of his T-shirt. Jessica entered with Sed, and Brian clung to the anger he felt toward the woman. Anger would keep the tears at bay. Compared to anguish, anger was an easy emotion for him to deal with.

So as he sat beside Myrna waiting for Trey to come out of surgery, he allowed himself to stew. Whenever he found his mind wandering to Trey and how much he would lose if that man was ripped from his life, Brian glared at Jessica sleeping peacefully against Sed’s shoulder and welcomed his aggravation at her reappearance in Sed’s life. For hours Brian focused on all the trouble the woman had caused—Sed’s grief and sleeplessness and his fucking callous disregard for Brian’s emotional entanglements with women. The fight at his bachelor party had started because of her. Everything bad thing that had happened to Brian in the past twenty-four hours—Hell, in the past two years—was Jessica’s fault. His argument with Myrna last night. Trey’s head injury. The black eyes Brian had sported on his fucking wedding day. Sed’s damaged throat. All of it—Jessica’s fucking fault.

Brian clung to his hatred for the woman like a security blanket. His disgust was the only thing that kept him from curling into fetal position under his uncomfortable chair and sobbing.

He had himself worked up into a fine fury toward the strawberry-blond bombshell by the time the doctor came into the waiting room to announce that Trey had made it through his surgery.

When the doctor said, “Brain injuries are tricky,” Brian knew he wasn’t going to hold it together much longer. Either he was going to have to hit something or he was going to fall apart in front of his new wife, his band mates, one of his rock heroes—Trey’s older brother, Dare—and that fucking pain in the ass, Jessica Chase. He was in no shape to sit waiting for Trey’s anesthesia to wear off, and his brilliant wife—bless her—seemed to recognize that.

“Brian and I will come back at eight a.m.,” she said, bossing around rock stars as only she could.

Eight? Yes, that should give Brian enough time to get his head together, and maybe Trey would be ready for company by then.

God, please, let him be ready for company by then.

“Then Sed and I will come at noon,” Jessica said.

As if Trey would want to see her at all. Brian glared at her. She didn’t belong here. He didn’t want her here. He knew Trey wouldn’t want her around either. But maybe Sed deserved her, because he was hanging on her every word like a lovesick tool.

Myrna had a bit more tact. The traitor actually seemed to like Jessica. Brian’s need to lash out grew exponentially by the minute. He said his goodbyes quickly, but avoided Sed, lest he punch him in the face. He couldn’t very well punch Jessica. He grabbed Myrna by the elbow and hurried to the elevator, hoping to God that they could get the hell out of this oppressive fucking hospital before he was forced to confront Sed face to face. He wasn’t sure he could control his rage at this point.

“Why are you so mad?” Myrna asked as he hammered on the down button at the bank of elevators.

“I’m not.”

“Bullshit, baby. You’re like a ticking time bomb.”

He couldn’t deny it, so decided to vent. “Why did she have to come back now of all times?”

“Who?”

“Jessica.”

“Do you have a problem with her?”

“Yes, I have a problem with her. I hate her fucking guts.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he yelled and commenced to lean solidly on the down button.

Myrna gathered him into her arms, and he stopped harassing the elevator.

“You don’t hate her,” Myrna said.

“I do.”

“No, you hate that she turned one of your best friends into a pussy-whipped douche.”

He almost chuckled. It came out more like an exasperated gasp.