His sudden rush to see his mom had to mean that he hadn’t known anything about her current state. “Of course.”
“Let’s get you something to eat first.” He twisted around so he could back the car out of the spot.
“No, it’s okay. You need to see your mother. I can take an Uber back to your house or something.” But I dreaded that option. Not only did I not want to spend the money on a ride, but I’d still have to get home from his house. By the time I got home, I would’ve probably fainted from hunger. I really didn’t want to skip a meal and be twice as queasy later.
He braked and faced me. “I’m going to feed you. Then I’m going get you back to your car. No arguments.”
Five minutes in traffic on our way to The Bass, I couldn’t hold back my curiosity. “How long since you’ve seen your parents?”
His breath rushed out. “Over three years.”
I mulled over that new information. “You had no idea your dad passed away? No one told you?”
Sebastian’s long fingers stretched out, then tightened around the steering wheel as he stared straight ahead. “No. My parents kept to themselves and never mentioned other family. They burned a lot of bridges with friends, and even if their neighbors knew, they probably assumed I found out through someone else.”
I let the silence engulf us the rest of the way to the restaurant, thinking he probably needed some time to digest the fact that his dad died. Did he feel guilty for not being there for his dad? He must’ve had a falling out with his parents for them to be estranged. And now his mom was in a coma. My chest tightened for Sebastian and everything he had to be feeling.
After parking at the curb right in front of The Bass, Sebastian dropped his keys in the palm of the valet, took the ticket and we made our way to the restaurant entrance. He opened the door for me and his fingertips found my lower back as I brushed past him. A tiny chill shimmied up my spine.
Once seated, he studied his menu a few heartbeats, then set it down and leaned over the table, his voice low. “Why wouldn’t the hospital or someone contact me when my mother was admitted?”
I tilted my head and pursed my lips as I contemplated the answer. Taking the hint that he didn’t want our conversation overhead, I rested my elbows on the table and huddled with him. “Wouldn’t your parents have final say on who is notified, and what information is released to whom, if anything happened to one of them?”
“Dumb question. I don’t know why I asked.”
“I take it that you and your parents parted on bad terms.” I hoped he’d volunteer to fill in the blanks for me.
“After a huge fight, they vowed I was dead to them.” He hung his head, hands fisting. “Then things got uglier. They wouldn’t even let me see my sister. By the time I got the paperwork started to get custody of India, it was too late. She’d disappeared.”
“I’m so sorry.” I almost reached out for his hand to comfort him, but then remembered I didn’t like him.
A flash lit up our corner and I glanced toward the light. Paparazzi. Which was exactly what I’d been hoping for. Except that Sebastian and I looked like we were having an intimate conversation. Plus, this was a very personal moment for Sebastian, which shouldn’t have been intruded on.
“Like you said, people love to speculate.” He straightened, moving away from me.“They’ll have fun with that photo.”
“Yep.” The photographer would probably try to follow Sebastian to the hospital, get all up in his business. Under normal circumstances, paparazzi wouldn’t bother me. But Sebastian had just learned his dad had passed and his mom was in a coma. He didn’t need the media prying right now, not into his family life. I leaned toward Sebastian and whispered, “Why don’t I go to the hospital with you? Maybe I could deflect some of that BS while you do what you need to do. If we run into any paparazzi, I could say that I have a doctor’s appointment or something.”
He nodded slowly, his eyes narrowed as though he were deep in thought. “I hate to do that to you, but you’d probably be saving my ass.”
And sacrificing my own. Working was one thing. Helping him deal with his parents would only soften me up toward him and increase the chances of me getting sucked in by that pretty face. After tonight, I’d keep it strictly business. If he needed help, too bad. He was on his own.
Chapter Five
Sebastian
I’d lost the paparazzi miles before reaching the hospital, but I didn’t tell Violet. Guilt crept up on me for dragging her along when she could have been working on something else. But I wanted company for this mission and, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, I wanted that company to be Violet. Her of all people, what the hell? I had no business associating with her for things not related to my career or my image.
I crossed my mental fingers that my parents hadn’t moved and switched doctors. If they had, I’d have to do some footwork to find her. Maybe I’d get lucky and my mom would be at the first hospital I checked, and less of Violet’s time would be wasted.
We waited at the counter on the first floor while three nurses bustled on the other side, all of them appearing too busy to assist us. Seconds stretched and I tapped the counter impatiently. A brunette who looked barely legal darted a glance my way, then did a double take. She blinked and almost lost her grasp on a stack of files. Well, good. If she recognized me, maybe I’d get faster service. I wasn’t above using my fame for my own purposes for something important, like quickly finding my comatose mother.
“Hi.” I flashed her a smile, one I hoped would dazzle her into being my slave. “I’m looking for my mother, Valentina Trevino. Can you tell me what room she’s in?”
“Uhm.” Her face still frozen, she set the files on a cabinet nearby and punched a few buttons on a keyboard. It didn’t escape my notice that she didn’t ask how to spell my last name. She already knew. She studied the monitor, then peered over at me. “She’s upstairs in Neurology, sixth floor.”
“Thanks so much.” I jerked my head toward the elevator and Violet followed me. Just a few floors up and I’d see my mom. But did I actually want to be in the same room with her? God, what if she woke up while I was there? The elevator doors swished shut and the floor beneath us moved. I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans.
Violet’s sympathetic eyes regarded me. “Are you okay?”
I offered her a small smile. “Haven’t decided yet.”
“Do you want me to leave?” she asked in a gentle voice. “No signs of paparazzi. You’re probably safe.”
Hell, no, I didn’t want her to go. Not when she looked at me like that, all sweet and soft. I had this urge to stop the elevator and trap her in there with me for at least twenty-four hours. How could I get her to stay? “Uh…”
“It’s okay.” The elevator dinged and her eyes darted to the door. “Let’s find your mom.”
Gratitude filled me. Along with something else, not unlike affection. The doors opened and I extended an arm to urge her out. She paused in front of the elevator, not sure which way to go and I used that excuse to touch her, my fingertips lightly grazing her hip. I let them skim along her body and land on her elbow. Making contact with her arm was far less obvious than her lower back, but I still got to satisfy my curiosity while not looking like a total pervert.
But curiosity and physical attraction were a far cry from real affection. I wasn’t too worried about becoming attached to Violet. Sooner or later, she’d say something rude or insensitive and obliterate any affinity I may have developed for her. For now, I just needed her to help me through the next few minutes.
We stopped at the nurses’ station, a long low counter protected by glass that separated us from them. The male nurse in front of me glanced up. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for my mother, Valentina Trevino. Can you tell me what room she’s in?”
He flipped through a binder, his index finger following the line of the column. He stopped at room 607 and there was my mother’s name. “And you are?”
> “SebastianTrevino. She’s my mother.” I’d already said that. Duh.
“Room 607. Around the corner and all the way down at the end. Be sure to check in with the nurses there to double check. Sometimes they get transferred or released and we don’t find out right away.”
I’d already begun walking, feeling adrenaline roar through me when I heard Violet answer, “Thank you.” I could feel her close behind me, but anything outside the hammering in my ears faded away. We passed room 602 and I knew my mom’s room was coming soon. The closer I grew to her, the narrower the corridor walls seemed. Images of her screaming swam before me. My skin remembered the sting of a paddle for coming into the kitchen.
I froze. Did I really want to see my mom? Would she bring me anything but pain?
“Excuse me, sir? Can I help you?”
I stared at the number 607, unable to move my feet.
“Sir?” the tiny, faraway voice asked.
“We’re looking for Mrs. Trevino.” Violet looped her arm through mine and I still didn’t move. “But I think we’ll need a moment before our visit with her.”
“That won’t be necessary. She was released this morning,” a woman’s voice replied. My emotions were still ping-ponging between relief that I wouldn’t be seeing her today and disappointment that she still had the power to hurt me.
I sucked in air, filling my lungs to capacity, then let it out. I didn’t like hospitals. They smelled weird. Cold and sterile. I itched to flee. But I needed to see this through.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Violet asked. I owed her big time.
“I’m afraid not. I can’t release information without the patient’s permission.”
I dragged my gaze from the white walls to see a heavy woman wearing black-rimmed glasses and baby blue scrubs. “I need to know what happened to my mother and if she’s okay.”
Her eyes narrowed as if she was contemplating what to tell me. “Let me see if there’s any information I can give you. Wait here.” She shuffled around the nurse’s station and disappeared through another door.
Violet released my arm and turned to face me. “How are you doing?”
“Not great. We’ll stay for whatever she can give us, but then I’m calling it a day.”
She tugged on my arm, pulling me toward the wall as an older man wearing a hospital gown approached. “We should get out of the way.”
Of course we should. But my brain had begun to retard as soon as I’d stepped out of the elevator. I leaned against the cold wall, staring straight ahead while my brain cells came back to life, one by one.
Several minutes later, the female nurse returned and I snapped to attention. She opened the file and studied it a beat, her voice lowering to a whisper. “She was brought in for a drug overdose. Apparently, your mother had fallen and hit her head, which caused the brain to swell. She was given Propofol until the risk of further injury was reduced.” She squinted her eyes at the paper.“Four days later, drugs were slowly decreased until she regained consciousness. Early this morning, she became verbally abusive and demanded to be released. Against doctor’s recommendations, of course.”
“Okay, so…” Violet looked like she was mulling over the information and I waited to see what she was going to say. Clearly, I wasn’t going to do a damn thing. “Basically, she was probably going through withdrawals and being here wasn’t getting her any closer to her next fix. You think that sums it up?”
She sighed, shaking her head. “Unfortunately, that’s usually the way it goes.”
“Thank you so much for your help.” Violet smiled at the nurse and jerked her head in the opposite direction. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“Great, my mom’s no longer a heavy drinker like my dad was. She graduated to hard drugs dangerous enough to send her to a hospital.” Now I wanted even less to do with her.
Violet tugged on my hand and I realized I’d been only inching along. I picked up my pace and entered the elevator with her.
“She chose that path, Sebastian. Every decision she made has led her to this place in life.”
I nodded numbly, struggling to snap out of the brain fog I’d plummeted into. When we arrived at my car, I took the passenger side and let Violet drive the Bugatti, knowing I was too disturbed and still mentally wasted from the last couple of hours.
Violet exited the parking structure and turned onto the road toward my house. I stared out the window.
The little boy in me wished my mother could be saved. If I had stuck around, could I have prevented this? If I had reconnected with them once I’d become successful, could I have arranged help for them or somehow gotten them into rehab? If I had, would my dad be alive now?
Once the car was tucked away in my garage, Violet got out of the Bugatti and tossed me the keys. I unlocked the door that led to my house and walked straight to the living room. In my peripheral vision, Violet moved like a shadow as she crept toward the front door.
“Thanks for today. For everything. You didn’t have to do all that.”
She shrugged. “Write a song live on Facebook tonight. It’ll make up for not being seen more today.”
And back to business. She must have hated being forced to take care of me. Probably relieved to get away. I walked her to the front door and watched from the porch to ensure she got safely into the Lexus. She drove past the gate and I made sure it closed behind her, then I dialed my private investigator. He’d find out my dad’s cause of death and he could probably locate my mom. Even if I didn’t speak to her, I wanted to know where she was.
My PI’s phone rang twice and I hit the end button, growling as I tossed my phone on the sofa. Maybe I didn’t want to know what my mom was up to. She’d only reel me in again and I couldn’t afford to let that kind of poison back into my life. I’d call the investigator again at some point, after I was part of Full Throttle again and back to normal. In the meantime, I needed something distracting to get me through the next few weeks. Which did not involve thinking of my parents. I switched on the TV and flipped through the channels. When I came across a rerun of The Shawshank Redemption, I set down the remote, leaned into the back of the couch and escaped into a different world. When my lids drifted shut, I wasn’t thinking about my dad or mom, or even my missing sister. I thought of long red locks and sparkling green eyes.
Chapter Six
Violet
After a fitful night’s sleep imagining Sebastian’s hard biceps wrapped around me and his firm abdomen against mine, I rolled over and switched off my alarm clock. I mentally added another item to my Things to Avoid with Sebastian list. In addition to keeping his clothes on, he needed not to touch me. Or vice versa. Ever.
When that kind of crazy sexy comes into contact with any part of my body, my brain short circuits. I barely held it together at the hospital when I had to make skin contact with him to get his attention or make him move. Feeling those rock-hard biceps just about undid me. Being the recipient of his touches had been even worse.
Clearly, two months was far too long without some kind of physical release. Otherwise, how on earth could I be attracted to a guy like that? A guy whose career was in the toilet and who obviously had some serious unresolved family issues that I wanted to steer clear of. But apparently, my body didn’t care which male the physical contact came from, so long as it arrived. From now on I’d keep my distance, far enough away that he couldn’t stretch out his arm and get his fingertips anywhere near my lower back. Or any other part of me.
I sat up and bile rose up in my throat. I rocketed to the bathroom, grateful my hair was already tied back from when I’d been barfing last night. This vomiting thing was getting ridiculous. Maybe I’d see a doctor today.
Yeah, I’d squeeze that in between Sebastian’s lunch with my dad, then the meeting with the record producer and, lastly, showing up at the restaurant grand opening for an acquaintance of his—the last two being perfectly good media opportunities I couldn’t let Sebastian pass up.
I grabbed onto the edge of the sink and pulled myself up. Just as I reached for my toothbrush to de-grossify, my cell chimed. I darted back to my bedside to read Sebastian’s text.
Couldn’t do any songwriting last night. Wasn’t feeling very creative. I was able to open the Facebook app tho and already have a few thousand followers. Don’t know what I’m doing there and don’t want to screw up live stream. Come and help?
He had so many followers because I’d set up his profile and had been managing his posts—which were really my posts. I checked the time on my cell. Only eight o’clock, which gave us four hours before we had to meet with my dad for lunch. See you in an hour, I texted back.
I cruised up his street right on time, punched in the code to get through the gate, and sprinted to the front porch. I knocked three times before the door swung open.
Sebastian stood there in a pair of faded jeans, naked from the waist up and his skin damp. “Sorry, just got out of the shower. Hang on and I’ll finish getting dressed.”
As much as it pained me to say… “You’re about to go live. Girls will be watching, lots of them. They’ll stick around longer if they get to see this.” I wagged a finger to encompass the length of him. Squeezing past him, I tried to unknow he was about to spend the next hour, at least, without a shirt. Do not look at his happy trail.
“Here.” He tossed his phone at me and I glanced up just in time to catch it as I claimed a section of his sofa. “Crash course,” he said, flopping down right next to me, his weight lowering the cushion and tilting me toward him. I gritted my teeth, determined to ignore the feel of his leg against mine.
The Baby and the Rock Star (Rock Star Kisses Book 2) Page 4
