“Irina?” he asked her name.
“Knox, did you hear what I said?” Terri asked. “I’ll text you the address. They need her next of kin to get in touch right away. You should get here, too, she needs you.”
Next of kin…That was him. He was her husband. He had responsibilities they’d agreed to when they signed the marriage license.
Still he couldn’t move. “Irina?”
Hans barked at him to get his ass on stage, but even if he was considering going, which he wasn’t, his feet wouldn’t budge.
Hans started using cuss words, but Courtney cut him off. She slid the phone from Knox’s ear, and he still didn’t move. His hand dropped and everything turned to slow motion.
“Irina?” Courtney passed the baby to someone as she said, “No, this is Courtney… Who is this?… Oh God.”
“Irina?” he said her name again, but there was so much movement going on and none of it was him.
“Hey.” Bax was there, smacking Knox’s cheeks. “Wake the fuck up, bud.”
Linx showed up, too. “Somebody get him some water or something.”
Tanner and Mach maneuvered him to a chair, which was silly because he didn’t need to sit. He needed togo.
“Take a drink,” Linx lifted the bottle to his mouth. But he didn’t need water.
What he needed was to get his body to move so he could find an airline and get his butt to California to be with his wife. His wife, who was hurt.
“Man.” Bax shook him. “She’s going to be fine. Irina is going to be fine. Courtney’s got the information. She’s at the hospital, and she’s hurt. They need to talk to you.”
“They should call her parents,” he said, his feet coming unstuck. He stood. “She’ll want her parents. They’ll know what to do.”
“Hey.” Bax got right up in his face. “She needsyou. Concert’s off. We’ll re-ticket. Hans is getting us home.”
He nodded. “Yeah, she needs us.”
“No.” Bax shook his head, placing his hands on Knox’s shoulders. “She needsyou. She’s gonna be asking foryou. Can you get your head together enough so we can make this happen?”
He nodded. “Uh-huh.”
He didn’t. The things that happened after all happened to him, not because of him. He hated that. Despised himself for being a limp lump while everyone worked around him.
There’d been a fall. Her harness came loose on a climbing wall. She’d hit her head, wasn’t waking up. Something about Chris Hemsworth, but Knox wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything.
He didn’t sleep, even though the chartered flight was taking all night. Couldn’t sleep, because he worried when he woke up she wouldn’t be there anymore. So he stayed up. Drank a fuck-ton of coffee.
“Hey,” Bax said, sitting across from him. Linx, Tanner, and Mach all joined him. “What do you need from us?”
“Irina.” That’s what he needed.
“Yeah, we…got that,” Tanner said as Mach shoved him with his elbow.
“I’m not supposed to love her,” Knox said, finally looking up from the window into the faces of his friends.
“Look, if we got to pick who we fell in love with, do you really think I’d have picked Linx’s sister?” Bax asked. “No, but it wasn’t a choice. It happens. It happened to you, and now you know. The good news is she doesn’t hate you the way Courtney hated me. I…uh…think you’re ahead of the game.”
“Did she wake up yet?” he asked.
“No, man,” Linx said. “Courtney keeps calling. It’s all over social media. Her parents are at the hospital. Apparently, your parents are there too. They all know you’re coming. They’re worried about you.”
“They should worry about her, not me.”
