There’s a little seed of worry threatening to break through the tumult of emotions in my chest. Paige would think that Levi and I left together for some alone time. Why would she be so eager to interrupt me? Even drunk, Paige is a proponent of the sisterhood code. I pause at the stairs. Levi has yet to enter the house—maybe he’ll sit in the damn limo all night. When the phone starts to ring for the fourth time, I press accept.
It takes me a minute to figure out what Paige is saying. She’s so hysterical and the noise from the club is so loud, I can only make out the word Levi.
Cold fear is coursing through me now. “Paige, what’s going on?”
“Is Levi with you?” she finally manages to say. I look up just as he steps through the front door. His eyes are locked on mine, filled with fear, like he somehow knew something terrible was about to happen.
“He’s here. Paige, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Lennon,” she says, crying again. “There’s been an accident.”
Chapter Twenty
Levi
I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my entire life. To her immense credit, Karen rides to the hospital with me, holding my hand the entire way, in spite of the things I said to her less than fifteen minutes ago. God, the things I said to her…
“Karen.” It’s the first word I’ve spoken since we got back in the limo. Karen is the one who explained to the driver what happened and where we needed to go—thank God he hadn’t left to return to the club yet.
When I say her name, my voice sounds scratchy, like it’s been silenced for much longer than fifteen minutes. I try to clear my throat, desperate to dislodge the lump there. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t even think about that now,” she says, her voice firm. She’s still wearing her party dress, and she looks every bit as beautiful as before, even if slightly bedraggled. “We’ll worry about it after.”
After. After we get to the hospital and find out what’s going on. Paige had been very brief. There was some kind of accident, and Lennon was at the hospital. The rest of the guys were on their way, including Cash, who apparently hadn’t been with him at the time, in spite of their leaving the club together.
He was alone. I squeeze my eyes shut, terrified of the idea of what Lennon might have done without anyone there to see.
“It’s going to be okay,” Karen says, squeezing my hand tighter. But Paige had been so hysterical. Everyone else was clearly worried, rushing to get to him.
“I’m going to be sick,” I mutter. Karen reaches over and hits the button next to me, and my window slides down several inches, bathing the interior of the limo with fresh air. I take deep breaths, trying to get my shit together. Trying not to think about the time he had OD’d.
When we get to the hospital, I’m out of the limo and running inside before I even stop to think about Karen. A glance over my shoulder tells me she’s right behind me, and I feel marginally better, a feeling that disappears the second I see Dan standing in the center of the ER waiting room.
“He’s okay,” he says quickly as I skid to a stop in front of him. “He’s awake. They’re all upstairs.”
My head is spinning so fast I can barely keep track of what he’s saying. Thank God for Karen, who takes my arm and pulls me to the elevator. “Third floor,” she tells me, pressing the button.
Once we reach the third floor, she guides me down to what I assume is the room Dan mentioned, but pauses outside the door. “I don’t think I should go in,” she says, looking worried. “This is a family thing. I’ll go try to find Paige.”
I don’t want her to let go of my hand. I don’t want to go into that room, to look into Lennon’s face and try to decide if I believe his story or not. Because no matter what Dan said about his condition, I have a feeling we’re far, far from okay.
“Go on,” she urges. “He needs you.”
So I nod, letting go of her hand, and push open the door.
Cash, Reed, and Will are all inside. The boys are standing around Lennon’s bed, Will in a chair near the wall. Cash is laughing at something, and they all look up when I enter.
“Levi!” Cash says. “Can you believe this kid?”
Reed is smiling, too, both of them clearly relieved. Will alone looks somber. And Lennon won’t meet my eyes.
“What happened?”
Cash shakes his head. “Mr. Rock Star here got his hands on a motorcycle. Who in the hell does that? At twelve thirty at night.”
“A motorcycle?”
Cash punches Lennon’s arm. “Guess he thought he’d try to be the tough guy, huh? Too bad the tree had other ideas.”
“The tree?”
Reed snorts. “Crashed what I’m assuming was a pretty sweet bike right into a tree. Can you believe that?”
I feel sick to my stomach. He went joyriding on a motorcycle in the middle of the night and crashed into a tree.
“Good thing you only broke your leg,” Cash is saying. “I bet Reed here wouldn’t be laughing so much if you fucked up your playing hands and we had to cancel shows.”
Lennon laughs, but it sounds fake in my ears. I realize that Will still hasn’t spoken.
“Where’d you get a bike?” I ask.
“Borrowed it,” Lennon says, still not looking at me. “One of the roadies…”
Cash laughs again. “I have to hand it to you, man. You act like the quiet, innocent one so often, you had us all fooled. Who knew you had it in you?”
“Where’s Daltrey?” I ask, desperate to keep myself from unleashing the scream I want to direct at Lennon.
“He took Daisy down to get some food,” Reed says. “She was pretty upset. And with the baby and all…”
I nod absently, staring at Len. The mention of Daisy being upset has his shoulders hunched.
Suddenly, Will stands and speaks for the first time since I entered the room. “We should go down and find them,” he says. “Give Lennon a minute with Levi.” His eyes meet mine, and I really feel like I’m going to throw up. He knows, I think. This was more than an innocent little accident. And Will knows it.
Reed and Cash look confused, but they follow their father to the door, slapping Len’s shoulder as they leave his bedside. “Try to keep from trashing the room, okay, little brother?” Cash says. “Since you’re apparently all into the rock-and-roll lifestyle these days.”
Silence falls on the room as soon as they leave. Lennon is staring down at his knees, apparently determined to pretend I’m not there. There are cuts and bruises on his face; a few have already been stitched up. He looks like shit.
“Lennon.”
“It was an accident,” he says immediately, and I make a scathing noise in the back of my throat. Finally, he looks up at me, but his eyes still don’t quite meet mine. “It was. I was going too fast. I thought I knew what I was doing but—”
“Just shut up,” I say, my voice shaking. “I’m not going to listen to you lie to me.”
“I’m not,” he says, way too quickly. “It was an accident.”
“Are you seriously going to do this?” I ask, taking a step closer to the bed. “Are you seriously going to make up some bullshit story? With me?”
“I’m not.” He sounds frustrated, defensive. And that’s when the fear doubles in my chest. Every other time he got to this point, to the point where he actively hurt himself, he told me about it. He came to me for help, admitted what was going on. It was like what Karen said back in New York—that’s how I knew he wanted help.
If he wasn’t doing that anymore, if he was flat-out lying to my face, what did that mean?
“Lennon.” My voice is shaking with fear, and I see him pull in a ragged breath of air at the sound. “Tell me what happened.”
He finally meets my gaze. His eyes are blank. I can’t read a single thing in their depth. “I already did. I went too fast, tried to make a turn, and I hit a tree.”
His lies are like a punch to the gut. “I don’t believe you.”
“Levi�
��”
“You’re lying to me!”
“I am not.”
“What in the hell am I even doing here then?” I cry. “If you’re not even going to admit that you need my help—”
“I don’t need your help,” he yells back. “I’m so fucking tired of you and my dad acting like I’m a stupid little kid.”
“You’re not a little kid.” I’m trying to keep my emotions in check, but I know I’m dangerously close to losing my shit. I’ve been afraid of something like this for weeks. But I never thought he would lie about it, not to me. “But you do need help.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are not fine.” I take a step closer to his bed, wanting to shake his shoulders. “You crashed that bike on purpose, Lennon, and we both know it. Your dad knows it. Now tell me what in the hell is going on.”
“Nothing. I think you should go, man. Find Karen and—”
“Damn it, Lennon!”
“What’s going on?” Daltrey asks from the behind me, and I spin around to see him standing in the doorway. He’s holding two cups of coffee and looking from me to Lennon, clearly confused. “What do you mean he crashed on purpose?”
I turn back to Lennon in time to see the panic come to his eyes. “Levi doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he says.
Daltrey directs his words to me. “What’d you mean about Dad knowing? Knowing what?”
Through the doorway, I see Cash and Reed coming in behind Daltrey. I turn back to Lennon. He’s staring at me, his eyes pleading me to shut up, to cover it up, to help him tell his lies. Like I’ve been doing for years.
“I won’t,” I whisper. “I’m done lying about this. If you aren’t going to take my help, then they need to know.”
“Levi,” he says, the single word filled with desperation.
“Tell me what in the hell is going on!” Daltrey’s voice is raised, and I can hear the fear there, barely under control. Cash pushes past him into the room and walks up to Lennon’s bed.
“Dude,” he says, bewildered. “What is Levi talking about? What lies?”
“It’s nothing.” But now Lennon isn’t looking at him, either. His eyes are glued to a corner of the room.
“It is not nothing,” I snap.
“Levi,” Reed barks. “Tell us.”
Before I can open my mouth, Lennon interrupts. “There’s nothing to tell.”
Daltrey throws up his hands. “Obviously, that’s not true, or I wouldn’t have walked in on you guys shouting.”
Cash is looking between his brother and me. “Someone better start fucking talking.”
“Boys.” Their heads all snap to the door to where their father is standing. He looks the way he did back at the house in Ohio, tired and worried and about ten years older. “I think your brother needs to tell you some things.”
I breathe out a gust of air, so relieved, my knees feel weak. I sink into the chair farthest from the bed. Apparently, Will is done with the lies too.
“What?” Cash yells, staring at Lennon. When he doesn’t speak, Cash turns to me. “Levi—”
“I think,” Will continues, “that Levi is concerned this wasn’t an accident.”
“Dad,” Lennon rasps, and my heart twists in my chest. He sounds terrified, pleading. I’ve never heard Lennon like that.
“It’s time for this to stop, son,” Will says, his voice heavy. Then he turns to the rest of the boys. “Your brother has been dealing with some pretty serious depression issues for some time now.”
Reed turns from his dad to stare at Lennon, who is concentrating again on his knees.
“What are you talking about?” Cash asks, voice shaking.
“Lennon’s not depressed,” Daltrey says, turning to his brother. “Moody sometimes, but you’re not depressed.” He pauses, and when speaks again, his tone is uncertain. “Are you?”
But Will doesn’t stop to answer questions. He just continues in that same quiet, heavy voice. “There have been a few times when Lennon has dealt with these issues by…hurting himself.”
“Dad,” Lennon says again, but this time it’s a whisper. Hopeless. Like he knows there’s no going back from this moment. My head drops to my chest, and I cover my eyes with a shaking hand, not able to watch him anymore.
“What does that mean?” Cash asks. He sounds pissed, which is so Cash. To respond to fear with anger. “Hurt himself how?”
“There were drugs, once.”
Cash swears and Reed drops into the chair by the bed.
“And…self-injury before that.”
“You’re doing drugs?” Daltrey asks Lennon. He sounds terrified and disbelieving.
“No,” Lennon says quickly. “It was just for a while, a long time—”
“How did we not know this?” Reed asks, eyes on his father. “Did you get him help?”
“He was in a hospital for a month, after the…self-injuries,” Will says.
“You keep saying that,” Daltrey says. “What does it mean? Like, cutting?” When no one responds, Daltrey tries again. “What kind of hospital? Like the kind of place…Daisy was in?”
Will nods, looking away.
“The hell?” Cash yells. He’s on the verge of breaking something, I can tell. I want to join him, break everything in this room. It’s all so fucked up.
“That summer he went to music camp…” Daltrey whispers. “I never understood why you only sent him.”
“And the drugs?” Cash yells. “When in the hell was that?”
“After the Grey Skies tour. We got him help for that too.” Will swallows. “He was in rehab and—”
“I don’t believe this,” Daltrey says. His eyes flicker between Will and Reed, the two men who raised him, as if he expects one of them to give him some kind of answer that makes sense. “How did all of this happen without us knowing?”
“I didn’t want you to know,” Lennon whispers. “I never wanted you to know. I thought I could…handle it myself.”
“Well, you obviously can’t!” Cash slams a hand into the wall, and Lennon winces at the sound. “This accident tonight—was this on purpose?”
Lennon doesn’t respond, and a deadly quiet falls over the room. Reed reacts first, grabbing his younger brother’s shoulders. “Did you crash the bike on purpose?”
“I don’t…I don’t know.”
“What does that mean?” I’ve heard these guys scream at each other a million times. Yelling is just as likely as talking when it comes to the Ransome brothers. But I’ve never heard any of them yell like this.
“I don’t… You don’t understand.” Lennon shakes Reed’s hands off. “It’s not black and white like that in the moment. When this… When this stuff happens, I’m just looking for a way to turn it off. In my head. I don’t set out to do something stupid. I just…I need to turn it off.”
“Holy shit,” Cash mutters, putting a hand to the wall to support himself. He looks like he’s going to be sick. “I can’t believe this has been happening for what—years? And you never told us? We’re your brothers!”
Reed is staring at their father like he’s never seen him before. “You kept this from us?”
“I thought it was for the best—”
“You thought it was the best for the band, you mean,” Reed says, his voice dangerous and low. I can tell it’s taking everything he has to keep from lunging at his dad. “You thought you could cover this up and pretend it wasn’t happening so we would keep playing.”
Will looks like he’s been punched in the gut. He actually bends forward, like he’s absorbing a blow. “That is not what happened.”
“You know what, Dad,” Reed sneers. “I’m having a hard time believing you for some reason.”
Will’s expression changes swiftly from aghast to anger. “I’m glad it all looks so easy from where you’re sitting, Reed. It was a little harder actually experiencing it. Trying to protect all of you boys. Trying to protect”—his voice breaks—“your brother.”
�
��I wouldn’t let him tell you,” Lennon says. “Put this on me, not Dad.”
“But you told him,” Daltrey mutters. I look up, and he’s staring at me. “You told Levi.”
The room quiets as they all turn to look at me. “That’s why you came back,” Cash says.
I nod, looking away.
“But you never told us.” Daltrey’s voice is strained, like he’s trying to keep from freaking out, and he turns toward me. “So, Levi, you never thought, in all these years, that we should know?”
“It wasn’t his secret to tell,” Lennon says.
“Bullshit.” Daltrey strides to my chair. “That’s bullshit and you know it.” I stand, and he gets right up in my face, his eyes burning. “He’s my brother, Levi! You kept this secret from me?”
“Dalt, I didn’t really have—”
His hands come out and push me, hard, in the chest. “And then you left?” he goes on. “You knew all this and you still left?”
“You didn’t give me a lot of choice, Daltrey!” I yell back. His face twists up in some mixture of guilt and anger. Apparently, the anger wins. Before I can blink, his fist is coming right at my face. He hits me just below the eye, the force of the punch enough to send me stumbling back.
“Hey!” Reed shouts. “This isn’t the time!” Will is yelling, too, but Daltrey’s voice cuts over all of them.
“You were our best friend!” he screams. “How did you not tell us?”
In all the fights I’ve broken up over the years, never once has one of them raised a hand to me. For a second, I’m too shocked to react. But then his words work their way into my spinning brain—how did you not tell us?—and the shock is replaced with my own rage.
I push him, hard, knocking him backward into Cash, who has come around the bed to break it up. “How did I not tell you? How did you not know?” I shout. “He’s been sick for years!” I gesture at the bed, at Lennon’s downturned face. He has his hands up by his ears, like he can somehow block this out.
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