I roll my eyes. “Calm down. I need to ask you something.”
Carl looks around as if Zane might materialize through the walls.
Smart man.
“About what happened the other day,” I whisper. “The umm…meltdown. The way he snapped out of it when I?—”
“Hummed,” Carl finishes, nodding like he’s talking about a bomb they just successfully defused.
I swallow. “Yeah. That. Has that happened before?”
Carl exhales sharply and his eyes dart around like marbles on a pinball machine. “Uhhh, yeah,” he whispers back. But there’s no official diagnosis if that’s what you’re asking. No doctor wants to label the front man of Riot Saints as clinically anything. So we just call it ‘episodes.’ The mania. The tension spikes. The break in… regulation. He eventually snaps out of it.”
Regulation.
Of course Zane’s emotions need regulation. I’ve met toddlers with fewer mood swings. “When did it start?” I ask.
Carl hesitates. “Years ago. And when it was bad? Mama Draven was the only one who could calm him down.”
“Mama Draven?”
He nods. “His mom. Sometimes she’d show up on tour just to… tune him.”
Tunehim? Good lord.
“But it’s gotten better,” he says quickly. “Fewer episodes. Lighter. Until this last one, it’d been months.”
I chew on my bottom lip as my heart sinks a little. “And you think I…” My voice tightens. “You think I made it worse?”
“Worse?” Carl sputters, eyes going wide. “Ruby, please. That was the fastest andbestway I’ve seen him snap out of one. Ever. He didn’t break anything serious besides a few guitars and speakers, no one got shoved, he didn’t walk out and disappear for a week. And—bonus—no lawsuits.”
I wince. “Carl, that’s not as reassuring as?—”
“He’s obsessed with your humming,” he says, backing away nervously. “Like you’re the diseaseandthe antidote. Please, Ruby. Don’t do anything to change—” He freezes, eyes flicking over my shoulder. “Oh God,” he whispers. “Incoming.”
And then he bolts.
I turn.
Zane is striding toward me like a storm.
He’s all wet hair and smudged eyeliner and a chest rising too fast under an unbuttoned shirt. He looks hungry and frustrated and completely out of patience.
“There you are,” he rasps, grabbing my hip like he’s anchoring himself. “Why’d you walk away?”
“I needed a minute.”
“I need every fucking minute,” he fires back.
Hoists me up. Tosses me over his shoulder.
Oh fucking hell. Here we go.
He setsme down in his private dressing room.
The door slams.
Lock clicks.
