Page 95 of I Would Die for You

“Oh, thank god,” says the voice, getting ever closer.

“Dad?” she croaks, her brain trying to assess whether he is the lesser of the evils.

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been going out of my mind!”

“I’m fine,” she says, taking two steps toward him in a panicked rush to get him away from there. To get thembothaway from there.

“Ishein there?” asks John, his relief immediately replaced with anger toward the man he holds responsible for all his family’s woes.

“Leave it, Dad,” says Cassie, putting her hands on his chest as he forges toward the closed door of room 245.

“I swear to god, if I get my hands on him…”

“Dad, please!” says Cassie, feeling as if a steam train is thundering through her head.

“Edwards!” he bellows, slamming an open palm onto the door. “You piece of scum. Get out here!”

Cassie pulls at her dad’s arm. Shehasto get him away from there.

“I’m not leaving here until he looks me in the eye,” he roars.

Terrified that the commotion is going to draw attention, Cassie throws a glance down the corridor. “He’s off his head,” she says. “He’s not making any sense.”

“Well, he’d better make sense ofthis,” says John, banging on the door again. “Because I swear, if youevergo near either of my daughters again, I’ll fucking kill you!”

The silver key jumps from the lock and Cassie holds her breath as her father watches it fall, as if in slow motion, to the floor.

52

Nicole’s despondency at not finding Cassie at their mother’s grave turns to a sense of alarming panic when she gets back to the Savoy to see lights turning the air blue. There’s no sound of sirens—as if it’s already too late—just a crowd of hysterical teenagers tearfully screaming, “We want Ben!” and “Secret Oktober forever!” Girls lean on one another for support, fearing that if they let go, their grief will see them fall to the floor.

Nicole catches sight of a young girl sitting on the curb with her head on her knees, her shoulders convulsing as she laments the end of the world as she knows it. She looks up, her face stained with tears, as the crowd start up an impromptu rendition of “Souls,” one of the band’s few ballads. It makes her cry even more, the words of lovers passing in the night, evoking the trauma of two people who were once soulmates and now can’t bear to be in the same room together.

“What’s going on?” Nicole asks her, looking at the line of policebarricading the front entrance. There’s no way she’s going to be able to get back in there now.

“They’re saying there’s been an accident,” sobs the girl.

Nicole’s brain scrambles as she remembers leaving Ben and Michael at each other’s throats. She’s probably jumping to ridiculous conclusions, letting her overactive imagination get the better of her.

“What’s happened?” she asks, forcing herself to stay calm.

“It sounds really serious—someone said they heard Ben screaming and shouting. There was a girl…”

Cassie.

A burning heat envelopes Nicole’s ears, shutting out the noise and commotion. She knows it’s hearsay at its worst, but she has to know what’s going on. Her whole world might be inside that hotel.

“I need to get in there,” she says, going up to a policeman standing guard.

He smirks, as if she’s a teenage fan chancing her arm. “That won’t be happening,” he says.

“I’m with Ben Edwards,” she says, not only because it’s the truth, but because she wants to test his reaction. A flicker of something crosses his features, as if he momentarily wonders whether she should be apprehended, but it’s gone in a flash.

“So is every other girl here, apparently,” he says with an air of smug superiority.

A siren sounds in the distance, the piercing wail getting closer with every passing second. There’s a collective intake of breath as an ambulance appears at the end of Savoy Place, slowing as it contemplates turning in, but suddenly the accelerator goes down and it continues straight on.

Nicole looks at the four police cars parked at jaunty angles across the front of the hotel and can’t help but feel buoyed by the fact that if therehadbeen an accident, ofanykind, then there would most definitely be an ambulance already in attendance—though her optimism is all too quickly extinguished when she realizes that there’s no way they can bring anyone out of this entrance.

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