Chapter Three

THE MORNING AFTER

The next thing I knew, I was sitting up in bed, coughing.

Heavy smoke spread thickly throughout our room, choking me. The smell of burning rubber assaulted my nose.

Fire!

I flung out my hand to wake Jax—but my hand only brushed an empty spot. He was gone!

Panic raced through my body. Where was he? I knew he wouldn't leave me in danger unless . . . he was too hurt to help me.

I jolted out of bed, tortured by visions of Jax hurt and trapped by the fire that raged somewhere down below. He could be worse than hurt, he could be dead. My heart seized with terror. I had to find him, had to get to him somehow, no matter what. Even if that meant going into the fire myself.

I opened the door, and a heart-stopping BOOM twisted up from below. A heavy hot gust of air hit my face. I was falling . . . Jax!

My eyes shot open. I stared at the tapestry-lined ceiling of Jax's bedroom, panting. Sunlight poured into the room.

My heart thumped in my chest, and I took a moment to catch my breath.

It had just been a nightmare. The most horrible kind—the kind that felt real.

I'd thought the Reapers had come and torched the bus and that the worst had happened.

I thought I'd lost Jax.

I rested the back of my hand against my damp forehead and slowly closed my eyes again, allowing a smooth stream of air to escape from my lips. We weren't in danger. We were safe. No Reapers had come looking for us in the night. How could they? They didn't know where we were; they'd been too busy dealing with the fire on their bikes to follow us.

I reached over, searching for the comfort of Jax's body, but my hand brushed a cool emptiness on the mattress where his body should have been.

"Jax?" I turned over to find him gone. Confused, I sat up and clutched the sheet to my breast.

Scenes from my nightmare flashed before my eyes, and a terrible sense of foreboding swept through me. I was suddenly haunted by the thought of losing Jax, for real this time. Where is he?

I grabbed a pair of jeans off the floor and hopped into them, cursing loudly when I banged my shin against the open closet door. I shrugged a t-shirt over my head, paused to consider putting on shoes, decided against it, and flew out the door.

Out on the landing, I hesitated. Should I check upstairs first?

A harsh clang burst from below.

I started, then raced down the stairs, skipping the last few steps and landing with an impact that sent tremors through the bus's steel floor. Four heads snapped up to look at me.

Jax.

He was sitting on the couch next to Sky and Kev, while Chewie crouched on the floor, paused in the middle of wiping up a wet puddle with a rag. The awful-smelling liquid came from a two foot tall bong that glistened damply from being knocked over.

I heaved a sigh of relief at the unexpected normalcy. The flat screen TV was on, showing footage from what looked like the concert last night. A half empty pizza box lay on the table, surrounded by random piles of scribbled-up note paper.

The strong sunlight filtering through the windows meant it was at least noon already. I slept ten hours? It was little wonder: after the terrors of last night, I'd been exhausted. From the state of the living area, it looked like the rest of the band had been up for a while.

"Whoa," Chewie said, "You got here fast. It's like ringing a bell." He picked up the bong and righted it. "Give me a minute and I'll get this warmed up for you."

"Uh, no, thanks," I replied, feeling a little awkward about my grand entrance over what was apparently just some weed smoke.

Sky bounded up from her seat and grabbed my hands, pulling me down on the couch between her and Jax.

She touched my scraped cheek gently, her brown eyes wide. "Hey, Jax wasn't kidding. You did save him."

My heart skipped at her words. Had Jax told them what happened last night? My eyes darted over to him. He was holding an ice pack to the side of his face, but the bruising around his eyes was now minimal. His olive skin was a little paler than usual, but overall he looked far better than he did last night. A half smile even played across his lips.

"Man," Kev said with a laugh, "And I thought the party we crashed last night was wild."

I blinked, then mentally kicked myself for being so stupid. Of course he hadn't told them, or at least not the whole truth. But that left me unsure about what to say until I found out exactly what he had said.

The faces around me were eager for my response. I hesitated, then said, "Ours wasn't much of a party."

"Yeah, Jax told us," Sky said. "It's happened a couple times before. He beats a lot of people at pool."

Chewie smirked. "Not all of them take it so well."

I snapped my head up and peered at Jax. So that was his story.

Sky looked at me sympathetically. All I could think was, you don't know the half of it.

"You should've seen Riley whipping her cue around, Bruce Lee style." Jax shook his head. "I never saw anything like it." He leaned over and kissed my unbruised cheek. "My baby is such a badass."

I feigned a smile, confused and slightly embarrassed that Jax's made-up story was beginning to border on parody. But judging from the band's bored expressions, they'd heard crazier.

"Too bad you guys didn't come with us," Sky said, a huge grin suddenly streaking across her face as she changed the subject. "We partied at Lizzie Boham's house! It was so wild."

If they'd gone to Lizzie Boham's house, then they must have been hanging with the A-list Hollywood crowd. And I'd read stories about the excessive, booze- and drug-fueled parties at Boham's Beverly Hills mansion. "Really?" I asked, glad to be changing the topic. "Did you crash it?"

Kev shook his head emphatically. "She was at the gig and dropped us invites. I think she was disappointed Jax didn't show." He made a wry face. "Figures."

Chewie laughed. "No, man, she got over it. Once I rolled her a tasty blunt, she forgot about him real good."

Jax reached over, wincing a little, and poked Chewie's shoulder playfully. "Watch out—if you keep hanging with her you might make the tabloids."

The more Jax acted like nothing had happened, the more concerned I felt about him. Burning down your childhood home wasn't the kind of thing you could walk away from without some permanent scarring.

"Nah," Chewie said before taking a giant rip of the bong. He exhaled a skunky cloud of smoke towards the ceiling. "I can do that by myself. But if she wants to tag along, I won't stop her."

Everyone laughed, and I snuck another look at Jax. Just a glance at his handsome,bruised face made my heart beat a little faster. He was smiling along with the rest of the band, laughing like it was any other day.

His lightheartedness, bordering almost on cheerful, struck me as unusual. Then again, I remembered how I'd laughed right after we'd gotten back. Maybe Jax was just now having the same rush of excited relief I'd had before.

Jax's hand darted out with lightning-quick reflexes as he grabbed the remote from Kev and turned up the volume on the TV. "This stuff came out really good." The camera panned around the stage, stopping momentarily to highlight each of the band members, then zoomed in close to Jax's face. The Jax on TV held the microphone close to his lips, his eyes squeezed shut, with his voice rising in passionate abandon.