Westside Series Box Set

by Monica Alexander

  He nodded, and then he looked up at me, his green eyes intense. “Andi, I just want you to be safe, okay?”

  I nodded. “Okay. I get it. I remember how scared I was the day we got chased. I would hate for that to happen again.”

  “It might. If we keep seeing each other and word gets out, it could definitely happen. I want you to be protected if it does.”

  “I want that too.”

  “Okay, good,” he said as he took a small bite of his salad and chewed thoughtfully.

  “Thank you,” I told him.

  “For what?”

  “For keeping me safe. For caring so much.”

  He offered me a small smile. “You’re welcome. And you’re right, this dressing doesn’t taste like champagne at all. It’s good.”

  I returned his smile, hoping we were back on solid ground. It felt like we were teetering again, and I hated that feeling.

  After the salads, we had a soup course and a bread and cheese course. I was thinking that I didn’t have much room left for any more food, and we still had the main course and dessert to go, when Cam’s phone rang.

  “Shit,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “I forgot to silence this. I’m sorry.” He rolled his eyes as he ignored the call.

  “Who is it?” I asked, not sure I had the right to pry.

  “It’s Van,” he said in annoyance.

  “Do you need to call him back?”

  “No. He’s probably thinking he can convince me to come over later, but I told him I’d be busy until tomorrow.”

  The way he said that made me wonder if his bandmates knew he was out with me. We didn’t talk much about them, so I had no clue if they even knew about us. Maybe he hadn’t told them about me at all. Just thinking that formed a pit in my stomach that I wished I could ignore.

  A minute later, Cam scowled as he pulled his phone out yet again. “Four times he’s called,” he grumbled.

  “Maybe something’s wrong,” I suggested, since four times in a minute was kind of intense.

  “No, he’s just being obnoxious.”

  When his phone rang another time, Cam glared at it, but he swept his finger across the screen and lifted it to his ear. “What?” he barked.

  Then I watched his expression twist into concern before his face went white. “Shit,” he cursed. Then he threw his napkin on the table in front of him. “We’ll be right there . . . Andi and me . . . Andi, the girl I’m with . . . you don’t know – never mind. We’re on our way.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, as he ignored me in favor of punching in a number on his phone.

  I was bothered by the fact that one of his best friends didn’t know who I was, but I knew now wasn’t the time to bring that up. Something was definitely wrong.

  “Can you get back here?” he asked a few seconds later. “It’s an emergency. Yeah. Thanks.”

  Then he got to his feet. “We need to go.”

  “Cam, what’s wrong?” I asked him as I stood up.

  I looked around for my coat but then remembered the maître d’ had taken it. It was then that the waiter returned.

  “Is everything okay, monsieur?”

  “No, I’m afraid it’s not,” Cam said, as he ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry, but we need to leave. Please apologize to the chef for me, and he can bill my card for whatever expenses were incurred.” Then he pulled what looked like two hundred dollar bills from his wallet. “For your service this evening.”

  “Thank you, monsieur.”

  “Come on, Andi,” he said, taking my hand.

  “I need my coat, Cam,” I said, still not sure where we were going.

  “We’re only going two blocks. You’ll be fine,” he assured me as he tugged me down the hallway. “I’ll send Chris back for it.”

  “Mademoiselle,” the maître d’ suddenly said from behind us. He was walking toward us with my coat, which I was grateful for because it was twenty degrees outside. Bare shoulders and arms never boded well when it was that cold, even if it was just two blocks.

  “Thank you,” I told him, shrugging it on as Cam pushed open the door that led to the alley.

  I saw the SUV waiting for us, white exhaust billowing up from the back in the cold dark air. Cam yanked open the door and turned to help me inside. I still had no idea what was going on, but he wasn’t talking, and as soon as we were inside, Chris took off like a shot, slamming my body into the seat in front of me since I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.

  “Ow,” I said, rubbing my nose.

  Cam grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, but Cam, seriously, what the hell is going on?”

  He turned to me, and I saw pain in his eyes. “It’s Phillip.”

  “Phillip?”

  “Andi, he has a problem, and we thought it was fine, that he wasn’t using that much anymore, but when Van got to his apartment tonight there was essentially a pharmacy on the coffee table. He said Phillip and Nadia were completely out of it, and a few seconds ago, Phillip started acting all weird and was losing consciousness every few seconds. Van tried to get him to throw-up whatever he’d taken, but it didn't work, and Van’s panicking. He’s not good in situations like this.”

  “And you are?” I ventured.

  “Yes. I am.

  A few seconds later we pulled up to a beautiful apartment building, but I had little time to admire the outside, because Cam was yanking me out of the vehicle and pulling me by the hand toward the front door. The doorman opened the door for us.

  “I’m Camden Baylor. I’m on Phillip Lawton’s guest list,” Cam said as we tore past the front desk.

  “Sir, I’m going to need to see some ID,” the guy at the desk called after him.

  “Google my fucking name,” Cam called back. “I’m sure that will be sufficient.”

  He punched the button for the elevator, and it arrived almost immediately. Once we were inside, he ran his hand back through his hair and growled in frustration.

  “Cam, I don’t understand what’s happening,” I said, feeling helpless and confused all at once. He was obviously distraught, but I didn’t know how to help him.

  “He’s overdosing,” Cam barked at me. “That’s what’s happening.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, as panic gripped me.

  “I just do, okay? And we need to get up there soon. I’m not sure Van knows what to do, and Nadia will obviously be no help whatsoever. Stupid bitch.”

  I reeled a little at Cam’s harshness but tried to remember that he was concerned about his friend.

  “Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?” I asked him, wondering why that wasn’t the first thing anyone did.

  Cam reeled on me. “No, we can’t call an ambulance. If we do that, this shit goes public, and the last thing we need is for it to get out that a member of Westside has a drug addiction.”

  “So it’s better that your friend just dies?” I asked, not sure I had the right to go there, but it didn’t seem like a better alternative than some bad press.

  “He’s not going to die!” Cam barked at me. “He’s not.”

  “Okay. Okay, he’s not,” I agreed, nodding my head.

  The elevator stopped when we reached the top floor, and Cam took off for a door with a number ‘3’ on it. He didn’t bother knocking. He just pushed it open and stormed inside.

  “Van!” he called out.

  “In here,” I heard Van say as I walked into the massive loft. His voice sounded disconnected, like it was far away.

  Cam seemed to know where Van was since he darted to the right and disappeared in what I saw was a bathroom when I got close enough. Van was sitting on the floor with Phillip’s head in his lap, and tears were streaming down his face.

  He was looking up at Cam. “He stopped breathing a minute ago. What do we do?!”

  “Move,” Cam barked at him, and then I watched him yank Phillip to his feet. He drug him to the large garden
tub and jammed two fingers down his throat. Then he pulled them out and slammed his fist into Phillip’s stomach, making his whole body convulse before he stuck his fingers down Phillip’s throat again. “Fucking throw-up, you fucker!”

  A second later, Phillip coughed and a foamy white mixture spewed from his mouth and down his chin. I watched Cam lean him over the tub and push his fingers back down Phillip’s throat, gagging him again and again until his stomach emptied completely. Then he slumped down next to the tub, cradling his friend’s limp body in his arms.

  Phillip seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness but he was breathing. His breath was shallow and belabored, but air was going in and out of his lungs. Cam looked exhausted, his hair disheveled, his jacket sleeve covered in whatever had been in Phillip’s stomach.

  “I told you he’d be fine,” I heard from behind me in accented English and turned to see an emaciated woman wearing just panties, a vacant expression in her eyes and a bemused smile on her face.

  Cam looked up and glared at the woman. “Get her the fuck out of here,” he growled, and Van was suddenly on his feet.

  “Come on, Nadia. Let’s get you dressed.”

  “But we’re having people over.”

  “No, you’re not,” Van told her gently but firmly. “You need to leave. Chris will give you a ride.”

  He was a lot nicer with her than I imagined Cam would be. I’d never seen him this angry before as he continued to glare at her.

  “Oh, you’re a party pooper,” Nadia grumbled. “Who’s Chris?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Van told her as he ushered her into another part of the loft.

  “Do you need anything?” I asked Cam, not sure what I was supposed to be doing.

  He shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said from where he still sat on the floor with Phillip.

  A few minutes later, after Van had handed Nadia off to Chris, he reappeared in the bathroom. “Should we get him into bed?”

  Cam nodded. “Yeah. He can sleep it off. Do you know what he took?”

  Van shrugged. “Pills of some kind, I think. I’m not sure. There are about nine different kinds on the coffee table from what I can tell.”

  “I’m going to kill him,” Cam muttered.

  “He needs to go to rehab,” Van said, shaking his head.

  “I know. We’ll figure everything out. I’ll call Damon in a few minutes.”

  “He is going to be pissed if Phillip misses the show tomorrow.”

  Cam glared at his friend. “Yeah, well too bad. He’d have been more pissed if Phillip would have died tonight. He should just be grateful that didn’t happen.”

  Van faltered for a second, realizing the gravity of the situation. “Thank you for coming, Cam.”

  Cam nodded. “No sweat,” he said placidly, but I knew he was feeling so much more than he was letting on. “Help me get him up.”

  I stood out of the way as the two guys carried their friend to bed. When Cam returned twenty minutes later, he had his jacket draped over his arm.

  “Everything okay?” I asked, realizing too late that it was the wrong thing to say.

  “No, Andi. Everything is not okay,” he said, shaking his head. “I have to call our manager. I’ll be back.”

  Once again he left me standing in the middle of Phillip’s apartment and disappeared for another twenty minutes. I was debating whether to leave and hail a cab downstairs, because Cam obviously had things he needed to attend to, when he reappeared at my side.

  “Chris is going to give you a ride home,” he said with little to no emotion in his voice.

  I nodded. I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but I’d already made that mistake, and it had backfired on me, so I kept my mouth shut.

  When Chris came into the loft a few minutes later and stood at the door waiting for me, I turned to Cam. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his pants, and his gaze was locked onto a fixed point on the floor.

  I had a thousand things I wanted to say, but none of them seemed right, so I said nothing. I walked across the loft, met Chris at the door, and glanced back once at Cam. I had a feeling it was the last time I’d see him, and that made me sadder than I’d been in a long time.

  I willed him to look up and smile at me so I’d know he was going to be okay, that there was a chance we’d be okay, but he didn’t. He kept his gaze locked on the hardwood floor, thinking of things I couldn’t imagine.

  When he didn’t meet my gaze, I turned away from him and left the apartment, following Chris to the elevator. He didn’t say a word to me, which was fine, because the last thing I felt like doing was talking. My heart was a dead weight in my chest.

  When we got to my building, I thanked Chris for the ride, and he nodded.

  “Please tell Cam, I’m sorry,” I told him.

  “I will,” he said, but I didn’t know if I should believe him or not. I guess it didn’t really matter.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cam

  I sat on Phillip’s couch with my head in my hands, wearing a pair of his jeans and one of his hoodies. We were roughly the same size, and I’d been eager to change out of my clothes that had his vomit all over them. I figured he wouldn’t mind. I’d saved his life after all.

  Dillon and Van sat next to me, and Damon, our manager sat across from us. Katherine was on speakerphone, talking to us from California. It was late, but we hadn’t wanted to make plans until everyone could get there, and Dillon had just arrived thirty minutes earlier.

  Damon had called in a favor to a doctor friend of his who ran a rehab facility on Long Island. The doctor and two of the people he worked with had come to Phillip’s apartment an hour earlier to transport him to the facility. He was going into rehab whether he wanted to or not, and we now had to figure out how to keep it out of the media.

  The immediate plan was to say that Phillip was sick, which would explain why he’d miss our interview and performance the next day. Then he’d be ‘on vacation’ on some obscure tropical island for a few weeks, getting some much needed rest and relaxation. Our PR team would keep him active on social media every few days with fun updates from his vacation so no one would suspect anything.

  Our hope was that he’d be out of rehab and on the mend by the time our album dropped in mid-January. That was when the bulk of our appearances started, and he could continue outpatient treatment until we went on tour. Then it would be all about helping him stay clean.

  That would be the hard part, and we all knew it. Phillip liked to party. He always had, but it had gotten worse during our last tour, and after what happened tonight, we were all done. Almost losing someone you love will make your patience grow incredibly small, and I could see on my bandmate’s faces that they all felt the same way. Westside meant too much to us to let outside factors destroy it. Phillip meant too much to us. We’d help him through this.

  “Okay, I think we’re good,” Katherine said through the phone.

  “I agree,” Damon said gravely.

  None of us were taking this lightly, and Damon had been with us from the start. He cared about Phillip just as much as the rest of us.

  “Boys, get some rest,” Katherine told us. “Phillip is going to be fine, and you will all be great tomorrow. Everything is going to work out.”

  The three of us smiled weakly at the phone. “Thanks Kath,” Dillon said on our behalf.

  “Okay,” Damon said after he’d hung up the phone. “Tomorrow we’ll meet bright and early and figure out how to rework the songs. I’ll come by the hotel suite at nine. Cool?”

  The three of us nodded solemnly, none of us about to protest.

  “Great. See you boys then,” he said as he got to his feet. “Cam, can I talk to you?”

  “Sure,” I said as I stood up and walked over to him.

  Damon put his arm around me. “Thank you for what you did tonight. You saved Phillip’s life, but you also kept this whole situation out of the public eye. I appreciate that.”

 
I shrugged as I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “I remembered what you told us. What happens in the band stays in the band. I was thinking of our reputation.”

  Even as I said it, I felt like there was something wrong with what I’d done. I’d saved my friend’s life, sure, but what if I hadn’t gotten there in time? What if he’d died? Van could have called the paramedics, and they could have dealt with Phillip’s overdose. Instead I’d relied on blind faith and luck that I’d gotten the drugs out of his system and stopped him from choking on his own vomit. But everything could have gone so differently.

  “You’re welcome,” I told Damon, knowing it wasn’t the right time to bring up my ethical conundrum.

  It was late, I was exhausted, and everything about the night had taken a toll on me. I just wanted to go to sleep now that I knew Phillip was okay.

  “Good man,” Damon said, clapping me on the back. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “See you tomorrow,” I said wearily.

  I turned back to my bandmates. “You guys want to ride to the hotel together?”

  “Sure,” they said, getting up from the couch. They looked as exhausted as I felt.

  None of us said much as we rode toward our hotel in midtown that I realized absently was just a few blocks from Andi’s apartment.

  Andi. I couldn’t even remember saying goodbye to her, but I was sure I hadn’t left things on a good note. The whole night was a fucking debacle, from me trying to manhandle her in the car on the way to dinner, to the farce that dinner ended up being, to everything with Phillip. It was too much, and I’d failed each step of the way. It was like the better I’d tried to make things the worse they got. Maybe it was a sign that I should just stop trying.

  Or maybe I needed to try harder.

  “Can you turn here?” I asked Chris, speaking without thinking.

  He met my gaze in the rearview mirror. “Here?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. He knew where we were, and he knew me well-enough to know where my head was. A few minutes later, we stopped in front of Andi’s apartment building.

  “Where the hell are we?” Dillon asked, looking around Andi’s block.