Shit. “How old did you tell them you were?”
She paused. “Eighteen.”
Fuck. “You arenotsupposed to be here.”
“I know. I just want to go home.”
“Do you need to go to a hospital?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? This would be the time to go if you’re going to go.” I felt awful throwing Simon and Liam under the bus. Where was Desmond and why wasn’t he handling this?
“I’m sure. I’m okay. I just need to go home.”
I sighed. “Okay, I’m going to call you an Uber.”
“Thank you,” she said, looking up at me, her brown eyes smeared with mascara. Like a baby panda. What the hell had they done to her?
“You look really familiar to me,” she added then. “Do you have a kid at Windwood?”
My heart stopped. Fuck. “What’s your name, honey?”
She told me.
“Where do you live?”
“Brentwood.”
“I’m going to go inside for a second. Stay here. Don’t move. Okay?”
Hayes was lying in bed, texting like a demon when I returned to the bedroom.
“How is she doing?” he asked.
“She fucking goes to school with Isabelle.”
“Holy shit.”
“Ya think?” I’d located my purse and was tearing through my wallet. “I’m giving her cash for a cab. I can’t have an Uber car on my account taking a sixteen-year-old girl back to Brentwood. How the hell did I end up here? I did not sign up for this. This is not cool, Hayes.”
He sighed deeply, placing down his phone. “I called the front desk. They’re sending someone up to make sure she’s okay, and they’re going to put her in a courtesy car and take her home.”
I spun to look at him. “Did you really do that?”
“I really did that.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded. “You’re welcome. Will you come back to bed now?”
In the morning, things were not pretty. My head ached, my body ached, I was no longer twenty-four. Hell, I wasn’t even thirty-five.
We showered and ordered up room service, and then got back in bed. The shared realization that we were running out of time. That he was leaving. That things would not be the same. I was starting to get a feel of what life on tour might be like for him. And I did not like it.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he said. His voice was craggy, his eyes red, but he was still beautiful to me.
“She was young.”
