“I’m not following.”
“Of course you’re not.” Dante laughed and slipped the cigarette between his lips again to take a drag. “You’re fondue, darlin’, and Frankie-boy likes fondue.”
Satisfied with his brilliant conclusion, Dante leaned back and pushed the smoke out. I noted a flash of a grin. The man was deranged.
“Are you seriously comparing me to melted cheese while your best friend is on the way to the hospital in an ambulance?”
Dante tilted his head and gave me the side-eye. “I’m trying to tell you a fucking story, short stuff. About your man, whose mother left him to fucking die. Good thing she’s gone. She was a shitty mother anyway. At least my mother cared enough to hit me.”
My stomach roiled. Everyone had a broken childhood. Not just Ashton and I. And in a sick way, it made me feel better.
“He’s not the best judge of character,” Dante went on. “Someone had to look out for him when he moved to L.A.”
“Let me guess. You were that someone?” I sifted through my mental notes. Hall Affinity was no different than any other band who’d hit the jackpot. One day they were playing opening sets in the clubs, the next, their songs were all over Billboard. A lot of money. Booze. Women. Drugs. I wasn’t sure these guys were in any condition to look after each other, but I knew Frank had always been the smart one. He stayed out of trouble.
“I did my best.” Dante nodded. “I told him not to marry the Playboy Bunny. He did it anyway.”
“Why?”
“Why’d he marry her?” Dante gave me a one-shoulder shrug, tossed the cigarette butt out and grabbed another. “The fuck I know.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Why didn’t you want him to marry Heidi Fox?”
“Because she was fucking around behind his back. Sooner or later, he was going to find out.”
My throat tightened. I swallowed hard and broke our eye contact. The flick of a lighter snapped in my ear. “You’re a shitty friend, Dante.”
In my peripheral, there was a cloud of smoke.
“I’d rather he found out his wife was a cunt the way he did than via the newspapers, darlin’. She wasn’t exactly keeping her affairs under the radar.”
“So you seduced her?”
Dante snorted out a laugh. His chest shook along with his cigarette. “Have you met me, Cassy Evans? I don’t need to seduce anyone.”
I wanted to kick him in the shins. “I always knew you were an asshole, but this is a new level of low.” The wicked drum of my pulse against my temples was deafening. Acid rose up my throat and coated my tongue.
“It’s only low when you do it for your own benefit. I did it for Frankie-boy. Quick extraction. The world doesn’t need to know what really happened.”
I had no words. My anger simmered beneath the surface, hot, deep, and acutely confounded.
The hospital was cold.
By the time Dante and I arrived there, Frank had been taken to surgery. The only thing I could pull out of Janet was that he had several fractures that needed immediate attention. There were no other updates. Not for hours.
Dante was on edge. Trying to get him to tell me exactly what happened during the set was like trying to make a toddler sit still for five minutes. My sweet-talking techniques didn’t even work on him for some reason. Desperate for some information, I hid in the restroom to check YouTube for footage. Frankie Blade Stage Accident was trending. The entire feed was littered with uploads from the show.
Different angles. Different quality. Same headlines.
The world was thoroughly disappointed.
Back against the tiled wall, I drew a breath through my teeth and skimmed through the links. My fingers felt clammy and the phone shook in my palm. I hit play. On screen, an image of Frank came up. Hair wild, eyes sparkling, he rocked out in the middle of the platform, unaware he’d be on the floor moments later. I wanted to dive in badly. To tell him to get off the damn thing. A sea of hands clapped beneath him. He moved to the beat and traced the edges of the structure carefully. Stage fog was everywhere and the image became unfocused and shaky for a brief second but quickly returned to Frank. The first blast of pyro went off. He shifted over to the truss in the corner, reached out with his right hand, and grabbed it to leverage himself while leaning over the edge.
That was the moment his arm gave out. His legs slipped and he went down.
One hand clamped over my mouth, heart thundering, I set the phone on the counter and replayed the last five seconds of the recording.
Why would he do that?
The door cracked. I heard footsteps. My mind was still spinning and I knew I needed to turn off the recording or at least lower the sound because the chances were high that the person who’d just occupied one of the stalls was a reporter or an overly enthusiastic fan. But shock hit me hard. My feet were rooted to the floor and I couldn’t move a single muscle.
Frank knew he wasn’t supposed to put any pressure on his right shoulder. Trying to hold up the weight of his entire body was stupid. And reckless.
I didn’t understand why he’d done it.
Another set of footsteps dragged me out of my stupor. The light in my brain switched on. I exited YouTube, slipped the phone into my purse, and returned to the waiting area, where Brooklyn, Corey, Dante, and Carter had teamed up for a meeting. Johnny was slumped in a chair two rows over, face off-color, eyes on the floor. Security lined the hallway. I settled across from Billy and Janet and pulled at
