Page 2 of Whenever You Call

He didn’t respond, and I didn’t need his lies to know the truth. The high never got quite high enough for Cole, no matter what he put in his body, what he achieved with his music, or how much money he dropped into his account. He’d always wanted more, and that would never change, especially when it came to my patience and forgiveness.

I was all out of both, drained and depleted, broken from a toxic love instead of healed from a marriage I’d desperately wanted to be real.

“Fine,” I said, pushing up to standing and hovering over his limp body. “I’ll give you your peace.”

“Praise fucking Jesus.”

“Take an entire life of it because I can’t do this anymore. I won’t let you continue to hurt me, and I won’t let you break that little girl’s heart the way you keep breaking mine. It’s over. All of it.”

He didn’t respond verbally, but his head fell to one side, and he pushed two fingers to his brow before he offered me a half-hearted salute, inserting the dagger of his indifference straight to my heart without a care in the world about how much it made me bleed.

What is wrong with you?I wanted to scream.When did you stop caring? Why can’t you see the wonderful life you have and how amazing it could be if you’d just stop for a minute to think about somebody but yourself?

“I’ll never forgive you for forcing me to do this when you promised me you’d never let it happen,” I said instead. “I deserve better. Go to Hell, Cole.”

Despite my shaking limbs and the new hole in my heart, I turned and walked away without looking back. There was nothing there for me now. Nothing but a man made up of broken promises, endless lies, and poisoned blood—blood I refused to have on my hands.

“Enjoy your divorce,” I told him. “You’ve earned it.”

Chapter1

LOGAN

Los Angeles

He was going to die by my hands.

The unmistakable noise of the paparazzi helicopter above us became the soundtrack to a movie scene I didn’t want to be a part of. We tore through the streets of Beverly Hills, the distinctive sirens of the LAFD ambulance doing nothing to get us to Cedars-Sinai any faster. The entire unit rocked, making shit fall off the shelves whenever my partner turned a corner and the vehicle swung out wide.

“Fuck this traffic!” Jerry shouted up front. “Get out of the way, asshole!Move!”

The patient lay on the gurney in front of me with clammy skin, his pallor turning a frightening shade of blue I never liked to see. Beneath the bag on his face sat dry, cracked, purple lips he now refused to move.There’d been no response to pain stimulus. Narcan hadn’t done shit to bring him round. The chest compressions didn’t seem to be doing a damn thing anymore other than testing my strength and rhythm.

Come on, you asshole. Come on!

“I can’t hear you talking, Logan! Why can’t I hear you?” Jerry called over his shoulder as he drove us through the streets of Los Angeles to get our patient to the ER as fast as humanly possible.

Not just any patient, either. This one was known the world over.

ColeFuckingNewman.

Rock royalty, the man of the moment, and the face on every billboard within a hundred-mile radius of the West Coast of the United States.

Yet all I could see when I looked down on him were the memories of my best friend. The one who’d died of an overdose in my arms all those years ago, when I hadn’t known what the hell to do to save him because I’d been a naive, foolish kid who’d panicked when forced to choose between life or death.

Like this, with fatality knocking on his door, Cole looked just like Dale. Even their names sounded similar, making an icy chill creep down my spine until my arms turned numb, my actions useless.

Dale’s death-soaked face haunted me as I stared at Cole on the gurney.

Why did you have to look like him, man?

“Logan, we’re two minutes out from Cedars. They’re ready and waiting. What the hell is going on back there?” Jerry called. “Speak to me!”

I’d devoted the last decade of my life to ensuring this never happened again. Pulling off miracles was what I did.Lucky Logan, they called me. A goddamn magician who could drag a live rabbit out of a hat of death. I could keep anyone alive in the back of this ambulance for at least fifteen minutes, but now all of that had gone to hell. I’d frozen on the job for the first time in my life, caught up in long distant memories that had mixed with a reality that felt like a Hollywood horror show I couldn’t escape.

Cole’s lids were closed, littered with tiny spider veins that held a famous gaze behind them. I imagined him never singing another song. Never using the voice that had forced America into submission. I imagined the little girl he’d be leaving behind—the one who, when Cole was sober, he showed off every chance he got. I imagined his bandmates finding out we’d lost him. I imagined the fans, the reporters, and the horror that would tear through the music industry. I imagined his wife and how much rarer her already rare smiles would become.

Snap out of it, Logan!I thought I heard Dale cry.He’s not me!

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