“C’mon, Avery. We were just going to have a little fun with him.” Nikko winked.
“What’d he do anyway?” Milton asked, settling beside me.
All four men circled me with questioning eyes, but the nausea and dizziness had arrived and—
I ran to the railing and threw up into the bushes below, hearing a roar of disgust coming from behind me. I craned my head back at them.
“Tic, go help her.” Nikko nodded, taking a step back.
“Why me?” he asked in a hushed tone. “I’m not good with puke.”
Danny frowned at him. “You throw up before every show.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m okay with being puked on!”
I knelt down and grabbed hold of the wooden spokes of the railing, trying to stop the world around me from crushing my skull.
Liam leaned toward Danny. “What do you think is wrong with her?”
“Stomach bug?” Milton guessed.
I groaned at their stupidity. “I’m right here. I can hear you.”
“Dude. What if she’s pregnant?” Nikko’s eyes widened with anoh shitlook on his face.
I caught Danny looking at me intensely. A kind of look I would suspect a father would give his daughter for getting knocked up underage. Or the way my mom would look at me now, as a grown adult, if I were actually pregnant.
“You’d better not be,” Danny said, eyeing the spot where Zayn had been parked.
His warning made my lips crack into a smile. “Okay,Mom.”
Danny snarled and stormed inside, throwing, “Bitch,” over his shoulder.
Liam and I were the only ones left on the porch a few moments later.
“How come you didn’t join them?” I nodded toward the driveway.
Liam lifted a brow. “Do you want him dead?”
I squinted up at him.
“Didn’t think so. Come on.” His fingers interlocked with mine, and he slowly helped me to my feet.
“I’m not pregnant, for the record,” I said, pausing. Though I imagined the contractions women went through for childbirth were pretty close to the pain in my head. One of my hands covered my eyes, and the other squeezed the life out of his forearm.
Shit.Tears. Not in front of him.
He stared down at me, making lazy, dark locks fall over his brows. “My mom used to get migraines when I was growing up. They were never as bad as this though. She never got sick or cried.” His full lips didn’t curve into a smirk, like I’d thought they would. He wasn’t belittling what I was feeling because he thought I wasn’t strong enough. “I mean, she cried a lot, but I don’t think it was ever from the headaches.”
His mom was a strong woman, surviving being married to Liam’s dad and all. After the pain she had gone through, I was sure a migraine felt like a mosquito bite to her.
I quickly wiped my cheek with the back of my hand. “They come and go. I just need to lie down for a little while.”
I could hear a guitar tuning beneath us as we made our way into the house.
Lexie trotted down the stairs, fixing a short red wig into place. “Morning, baby doll. You look like hell,” she said, looking between me and Liam. “You didn’t have anything to do with these black streaks down her face, did you, Liam?”
“Fuck off, Lex. Go get ready. I’ll be down in a minute.”
