Hate Me Today (Save Me #3) (22 page)

Vanessa

My phone starts ringing from my back pocket. I reach for it, knowing it’s my brother since it’s ringing, not vibrating. My hands are still shaking. As much as I had hoped it was just a nightmare, I know it’s not. Swiping at my screen, I hear him rambling before I even have a chance to get the phone to my ear.

“Vincent. Vincent, calm, down. It’s
all right, I’m all right.” I keep talking, trying to calm him down.

“Nessa,” he cries over and over. I can picture him in the corner of the room, knees pulled into his chest, rocking back and forth.

I can’t get his attention and his crying is starting to break me down. I know the nurses at the facility are going to have to sedate him and even though I hate drugging him up, I know he’s going to need it.

I roll off the couch, noticing for the first time that I’m at Abby and Jameson’s. I head to where the voices are coming from.AJ notices me first, tilting his head toward me. Jason spins and walks over to me, wrapping his arms around me while I’m still trying to calm Vincent down. I reach into Jason’s pocket, pulling his phone out and dialing the number to the nurses station.

“Springpoint, this is Mary.”

I clear my throat. “Hey Mary, it’s Vanessa Knox.”

“Oh, baby. We’ve been so worried. I don’t think Vincent knows though, we’ve kept him away from the televisions all day.”

“He knows,” I cut in. “I have him on the other line. He’s freaking out and I can’t calm him down.”

She starts talking over me before I’m even done, giving people orders and I hear them rush into Vincent’s room. I have to hang up before they get to him because I can’t stand to hear him when they sedate him. It breaks my heart to have to do it to him too.

I hand Jason back his phone and bury my face in his shirt, breathing him in. He lets me stand there for a few minutes just holding me before he steps back to his chair, pulling me down into his lap.

The large table is surrounded by Abby who is sitting on Jameson’s lap, Payton, Rene, AJ, Paul, Mandi, Tuesday and Evan. Abby speaks up and I can tell by the look on her face that I won’t like what she has to say.

“Everything is going to come out
, Vanessa. I know how much you don’t want that. I get it, really I do, I get how you want to keep your personal life personal. Frankly, I’m astonished that it hasn’t come out already, especially after you passed out in the hotel. But now that everyone is going to know you weren’t on the plane, they’re all going to start digging to find out why.”

Jason squeezes my hip, I lean down so I can rest my head against his shoulder. I knew sooner or later this would happen.

“So, where do we go from here?”

“If you jump on this first thing in the morning, I think you’ll be
OK,” Rene says. “Everyone is shocked that this even happened but we have to let people know before it gets out of hand. We’ve been informed that everyone has been notified so we’re good to go. I’ve contacted families and let them know we will take care of the press and offered security if it got out of hand. Also, we’re paying for funerals, they just need to figure out what they want to do. I figure if you’re there while we break the news at the press conference, we can get everything done in one shot.”

“I’ll have to stand up there and answer questions by myself won’t I?”

“Yes,” Rene starts to say but everyone speaks up at the same time.

“No,” they all say.

“We stay united,” Jason growls. “We show up together, stand together, leave together. If they want to ask you questions, we’ll be right there holding your hand. There will not be an alone option in this situation.”

I nod and begin to talk again but Paul jumps in.

“Security will be full force for the press conference and none of you,” he points at me, Jason and Mandi, “will go anywhere without security from here on out until I say it’s OK. We don’t know how people are going to react to this, so until we do we treat it this way.”

“I know you guys probably all want to go home and sleep in your own beds, but I would appreciate you sticking close,” Jameson says, scraping his hands over his face. “We’ve all lost a lot today, we’re all family and I would like to keep my family close for now.”

Abby signs something to Payton, Payton shakes her head. “No, I can’t,” she says, her voice throaty and rough as she speaks. “I need to get home and be close to my girls right now. I will be back first thing in the morning before anyone gets ready to leave.”

Tuesday drops her head into her hands, fully gaining my attention with the new addition.

I smack my hand against the table. “Hold the damn phone,” I snap forward. “I realize that a lot of shit has gone down today and we’re all sad as hell but,” I grab Tuesday’s hand and pull it toward me, “when the hell were you going to tell us about this?”

Everyone starts talking at once until Tuesday whistles and we all settle down.

“I had planned on telling everyone last night but… we got distracted. So I was going to tell you all today but then this happened and it wasn’t the right time. I got my finalized divorce papers yesterday and I guess Evan had been waiting for them because he asked me a few hours later. I’m sorry you guys had to learn about it this way.”

"
Congratulations" come out of everyone before we all start filtering our way to where we’ll be sleeping. Payton and Rene leave, promising to be back first thing with more details about what’s going to happen.

We hit the landing in the barn and Tuesday pulls Jason into her arms while Evan does the same to me. He kisses the top of my head and switches places with Tuesday. I turn, catching Mandi out of the corner of my eye and notice she’s headed into AJ’s place with him. I rush over, wrapping myself around her and tell her how much I love her, because today has shown me that you never know if you’ll get another chance to.

Not long after, Jason pulls me into his arms, settling me against his chest in bed and everything starts to hit me. The tears leak out onto his chest.

“I’m so glad you didn’t listen to me this morning,” I whisper into the dark.

Vanessa

I reach for the sunglasses on my face, pushing them back up the ridge of my nose so no one will be able to see my puffy eyes. It didn’t matter how much makeup I caked onto my face this morning, nothing was hiding them.

Heels click against the floor behind me, a hand slides into mine. I don’t bother looking, I know it’s Mandi. We haven’t been more than ten feet apart since we left the house this morning. Now we stand in the back of one of the conference rooms while they set everything up for the press in the lobby.

Everything is already a nightmare; press and paparazzi have been everywhere we turn this morning. I’m grateful that Paul insisted on extra security because they were already swarming Jason’s house when we went back this morning for clean clothes. Flashbulbs in my face is not the best way to wake up.

Valerie, Carson Taylor's wife
, keeps looking at me like she wants to say something but can’t come up with the words. Can’t fault her there, I’m having a hard time even breathing around the lump in my throat.

Every single person that was on that plane yesterday has someone here to represent them. Either their parents, siblings, spouse or children, there’s someone for everyone. My heart aches when I look around at everyone in this room waiting to show the world a piece of their lives that should be able to stay private; but we know in this business, nothing is private.

Rene steps into the room, standing still with her clipboard in hand until everyone is looking at her.

Abby steps up next to her and clears her throat. “We’re ready to begin. Please don’t let them get to you. We all know that the press will dig until they find something they want to cling to. We are a family, all of us, and I know that every person we have lost would want us to stay that way. No one is alone in this situation. If they ask you a question that you aren’t comfortable answering please pass it over to Rene or myself.”

“We pretty much know how this is going to go,” Rene starts. “We discussed most of the details last night. The only people they are going to probably harp on hardcore today are Mandi, Jason and Vanessa because they want to know why they weren’t on the plane as well.”

Jason walks toward me from where he was talking to AJ and wraps his arm around my waist, kissing my temple. He nods toward Rene and Abby, they step back pulling the double doors with them and let us all pass through.

Lining up behind the podium, I keep Mandi’s hand in mine, grabbing ahold of Jason’s with my other hand. We stand like the united front that we need to be, each one of us holding onto the person next to us. I turn my head, noticing for the first time that there is a photo of every person we’ve lost hung on the wall.

Question after question gets thrown out and fielded until the one question we’ve all been waiting for pops up.

“If the airplane was carrying the entire band, why were these three not on board?” The question comes from the left of us somewhere but I can’t find exactly where in the masses of people.

Abby glances at me, Jason squeezes my hand, and I know it’s time but my feet won’t move. Leaning over, Tuesday tells me that everything will be fine. I trust her, I’ve seen what she’s been going through and know that if she didn’t really believe it, she wouldn’t say it.

I step up to the podium on shaky legs, noticing the whole line of people moves with me, not just Jason and Mandi.

Emotion clogs my throat when I try to speak. “In order to answer that question
, there are a few other things I should address first because it will clear up some other things as well.” I raise my head, looking out into the cameras instead of at my hands like I really want to. “When I was sixteen I was diagnosed with Hypoplastic Myelodysplastic Syndrome. When I was seventeen I received a bone marrow transplant, it was at that time that I met Abby and Alex Irons. The rumors going around about me having an eating disorder are false, I’ve never been to rehab and no, I’m not pregnant. Yesterday afternoon I had an appointment for a spinal tap and a few other tests because there is a chance my body is rejecting the transplant. That is why I was not on board with everyone else.”

More questions are thrown my way but I bow out allowing Jason and Mandi to field the rest of the questions. I know that this is just the beginning of what we’re going to go through and I know that now that everything is out in the open, things are going to get crazy. I can just see the headlines now.

All I want to do is go home and go to bed and that’s what I plan on doing the second we finish. I step out of line when we’re done even though people are still yelling out questions and run straight into Valerie.

My hands start sweating so I wipe them on the back of my pants and shove them into my pockets. I don’t know what to say or if she’s mad at me for what happened so I don’t say anything until she rushes up to me, wrapping her arms around my neck.

“I’m so sorry,” I sob.

She shakes her head, pulling back so she can look at my face. “Car
son loved working with you on tour. I swear every time he called me, he had something good to tell me about you. I can tell by the look on your face that you’re blaming yourself for something but honey, you can’t do that. You had no control over what happened with that plane. Just like I had no control over him getting on it.”

“It’s not fair. He lost kids, he lost you. It should have been me on that plane instead of him. He should be standing here holding your hands, not me.”

Valerie reaches up and wipes the tears off her face. “Vanessa, he would have been on that plane even if you were. That stubborn ass would have been on it even if he had orders not to, he wasn’t going to miss a show. And I think you might have someone miss you just as much as I miss Carson if you were on that plane.”

She kisses my cheek and turns to walk away just as Jason walks up to me, pulling me tightly against him. “Everything
all right?” he whispers into my neck.

I nod against him, asking him to take me home and the second he tells Abby that we’re leaving, he pulls me outside with Tyrone and a few other guys and loads me into the car, pulling me onto his lap.

We end up at Abby and Jameson’s, deciding against going home for right now. Jason’s hand settles on my thigh while we talk to everyone.

“I know nobody really wants to talk about it,” Abby says, her head bowing, “but we should start talking about what needs to happen.

Jason stands abruptly and walks out the door without saying anything. I’m halfway to him after he walks out the door when my phone rings. Normally I’d just ignore it and chase after him because I don’t want him, or me to be alone right now, but when I look at the caller ID, it’s the hospital.

I sink to the porch and answer the call.

“Hey, baby love,” Nicole chimes and for the first time in days I feel like smiling because she sounds hopeful.

“Please tell me you have something good to tell me because I’m not sure I can handle any more bad news.” I drop my head into my hands since I can’t see Jason anymore.

“Well, your tap came back clear so that’s good. Dr. Close just thinks that you’re wearing yourself too thin so she wants you to slow down a bit and see if that helps.”

She keeps talking, telling me a bunch of stuff I already know but it doesn’t matter because all I care about is the fact that I don’t need another transplant right now and all I want to do is go find Jason.