Page 55 of Pretty Little Rocker

Hayat finally lifted her head and gave her brother a weak smile, sniffling because her nose was still stuffy from all the crying she’d done. “Hey, baby bro. This is Sparks and Jamie. They’re mine.”

Eyes the same shade as his sister’s narrowed, brows puckered up like a wrinkled bulldog. “What do you mean by that, Hayat? They’re your friends? Or they’re your fuck boys or—”

Sparks’s snarl had the kid’s voice fading, and he took two steps backward into the house. “Right. Not my business. Got it. Come on in. Mom and Dad are at work. Don’t worry, I’ll let you be the one to give Dad that aneurysm by explaining who these guys are to you.”

As Sparks carried her inside, she sniffled again, which had Evan grabbing my arm when I followed. “She’s been crying?”

“Little bro, right now, the only thing you need to know is that Sparks and I are not the reason for her tears. You have an issue with someone making her cry, get the fuck in line.”

“Who made her cry?” he whisper-roared, flames of wrath shooting high in his aquamarine eyes.

“Ask Maddie Dawson,” I suggested, following my friend as he carried our girl up the stairs.

Hayat’s room was a mixture of darks with a random splash of purple. Band posters were framed on her walls, all of them signed. Her bed was a simple queen-size with a lavender-colored comforter that had a huge black skull in the middle. A desk sat near a window that held her laptop, a few books, and a rolling chair.

Placing Hayat on her bed, Sparks started to step back, but she grabbed hold of his shirt. “Could you…stay?”

Hearing that quaver in her voice, seeing the uncertainty in her eyes, killed me. Ky’s bullshit was rolling over onto us, making her unsure of our feelings. How much we worshiped this girl I would give up everything for. Every. Fucking. Thing.

Sparks caught my eye, his expression reflecting the torment I felt. Hayat gave a tug on his shirt, and he didn’t hesitate. Kicking off his shoes, he climbed into bed beside her. Hayat pressed her face into his chest, her arm going around him. But then her head popped up, and she looked right at me. “Jamie, please.”

That was all I needed, and I was pulling my shirt over my head, toeing off my shoes, and crawling in behind her. My hand slid between her and Sparks, flattening against her stomach and tucking her back against me. For a little bit, Sparks and I played a mild game of tug-of-war, until she giggled and just closed her eyes.

“I love you both,” she mumbled, already falling asleep. “So much it hurts.”

Hearing Sparks gulp, I met his gaze over her head. Tears stung my eyes, but that was nothing to the emotions in my friend’s brown eyes. Hayat sighed in her sleep, burrowing between us as if she was cold. I grabbed the end of the covers and pulled them up over us.

“I swear, Jamie. If Ky ever makes her feel like this again, I will take pleasure in hanging him upside down and draining him of every drop of blood in his body.” Sparks brushed a light kiss over Hayat’s forehead.

“Do it,” I encouraged. “I’ll put a few drops in a vial for her to wear as a pendant around her neck. A warning she can show off to anyone who so much as thinks about hurting our Hellion. Fuck with our girl, we’ll just add your blood as a token of our love around her neck.”

For all of two seconds, Sparks’s feral frown shifted to a half smile. But then it was back, and he was tucking Hayat’s head to his chest, letting her even breaths soothe the darkness inside him.

We didn’t stay long, not wanting to cause a commotion when her parents got home from work and risk waking her up. On our way out, we waved at Evan, who was eating cereal out of a giant Tupperware bowl. It was filled to the brim, but he was a literal giant, so I figured it took a lot of food to keep him going. I stopped long enough to talk to him and give him my cell number, along with Sparks’s. Letting him know to call either of us if his sister needed anything.

Sparks drove back to Carver Towers, neither of us talking much. We were both lost in our own heads, our own fears, our own rage. Seeing Hayat’s swollen, bloodshot eyes, her red nose, the tracks from her tears down her face, had ripped something open in me. And while I knew Maddie had played a part in that, it was Ky—along with Sparks and me—who was responsible for keeping our girl’s eyes dry.

He hadn’t protected Hayat’s heart. Hadn’t given her the reassurance that she needed. Hadn’t gone after her when she’d walked away.

She’d been hesitant with him since Saturday night, but what happened back at the ASM office had felt like the final nail in his coffin. His actions—or, rather, his lack of reaction—had hurt Hayat. And I couldn’t let that stand.

Ky had told Hayat he loved her, but what had he done to show her?

Words were so easy to utter, but actions were a labor of the love a person performed for the ones who meant the most to them.

Parking in his usual spot, Sparks turned off the car but didn’t reach for the door. He glanced over at me for a long moment, and I saw his throat bob before he turned his gaze out the front window, his hands clenched around the steering wheel. “Are we…” He closed his eyes, knocking his head against the seat over and over. “Are we going to lose her, Jamie?”

Pain I hadn’t felt since the last day I’d seen my biological family tore through my chest, but this time, it was a hundred times worse. My parents had always been absent, my siblings fucked up from the unchecked choices they’d made since our nannies had switched so often that they didn’t have any actual supervision. I’d left because I didn’t want to become like any of them. Any fuckups would be my own and not something I would blame on others. Not my parents, or my older brother and sister, or the nannies. I was responsible for me and no one else.

But losing Hayat?

That wasn’t going to happen. I wouldn’t accept it. Ky’s fuckups wouldn’t destroy my current and future happiness with the best thing to ever happen to me.

Before Hayat, I would have said all I needed was my two best friends, my bass guitar, and Autumn’s Slumber.

Now?

I would walk away from everything, everyone, just for her. She was the one thing I couldn’t live without. And I sure as fuck wasn’t going to try.

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