The Spiral Down (The Fall Up #2)(20)

My breath caught in my chest, and my face fell to a practiced blank.

Oh God.

Shit.

Damn.

Fuck.

No more drinking for me. Ever.

He laughed loudly but said not another word before I heard the door click behind him.





One week later…



“ROBIN CALLED LAST night,” I told the window at the small private airport I’d been waiting at for the last fifteen minutes.

Levee gripped my hand and intertwined our fingers. “She’s probably running out of money.”

I nodded. That much I knew.

As much as it had broken my heart, I’d called the bank and had them cut her debit card off. It was a waste of time. Her account was already overdrawn.

“She wouldn’t tell me where she was, but she didn’t sound right.” I sighed. “I told her the apartment would always be there, but I wasn’t giving her any more money. I’m done, Lev.”

She tugged my arm around her shoulders. Her rounded stomach brushed against my hip as she looped an arm around my waist. “I think that’s smart. I know you love her. I love her too. But, honey, at some point, you have to show her some tough love. You can’t save everyone.”

Sam came strutting over with three Styrofoam cups of coffee squeezed between his large, callused hands. “Hey, that’s my line.” He tossed me a sexy smirk that probably could have impregnated me if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was married to my best friend.

Sam Rivers was gorgeous, and if he hadn’t met Levee first, I can guarantee he would have found himself on my radar. All of that smoldering, tattooed bad boy had practically been begging me to top him. However, if the way he looked at Levee was any indication, I wouldn’t have been successful.

I chuckled, taking a cup from the front of his caffeine pyramid. “Thanks.”

“Nope. That’s Levee’s decaf.” He flashed her a proud smile.

One she did not return. “I hate you,” she hissed at him before retrieving the cup from my hand.

He barked a laugh and raked his eyes over her pregnant stomach. “Your current condition says otherwise.”

“No. My current condition says that I liked you at one point in the not-so-distant past. It was probably before you banned soft cheese, sushi, and caffeine.”

“What can I say? I’m obviously an *.” He shrugged with a wide smile.

I went back to staring out the window as Sam moved around me and curled Levee into his side.

“Oh! Is that them?” she asked, pointing out the window to a plane coming down for what I hoped was a landing and not instant death.

“Probably,” I replied, quickly spinning away from the window and screwing my eyes shut. I couldn’t even watch without having a panic attack.

A few seconds later, Sam’s hand landed on my back.

“It’s all good now. You want to go out? They’re taxiing up.”

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. I needed to get my shit together. I had a concert in a few hours. Not to mention a man to seduce.

With just the thought, my pulse slowed and my shoulders rolled back in confidence.

“No,” Sam whispered when I turned toward him.

Levee gave me a suspicious side-eye. “I thought you said there were two women on that plane? Why do you look like you’re on the hunt?”

“Did I forget to mention I hired a new pilot?” I winked. “I guess it slipped my mind.”

“This should be fun,” Sam mumbled, shaking his head.

Crossing my fingers, I lifted them in his direction as I backed out of the door. “Let’s hope.”

A member of Levee’s security team quickly fell into step behind me.

Carter had flown back to San Francisco after my show the night before. He’d informed me just before the bus had left that he had some emergency business to attend to. I’d had no clue what that could be, but he’d looked amazingly pissed as he’d marched away, so I hadn’t bothered asking. He’d been exceptionally cranky recently. I could only hope he’d flown back after discovering there was a robot woman who could give him a piece of ass. Or at least a blowie to take the edge off. She couldn’t have been very good though, because he’d called earlier to let me know he would be on Evan’s flight to Los Angeles.

Ground crews were busy moving around the plane when Levee sidled up beside me.

“Let me get this straight. I’m fat and pregnant. Stuck at home ninety percent of the time because my husband is so overcautious about me that, if it didn’t make me love him more, it would make me hate him. It took me two weeks to get him to agree to my joining you on stage for one damn song tonight.”

I smiled and glanced down to see she wasn’t kidding in the least. Her eyes were sparkling with tears.

“What the—” I started to ask, but she lifted a hand to silence me.

“My life is so incredibly boring right now. And you—my best friend—set your sights on a pilot and didn’t even think to call and tell me all about it?”

I sidestepped to get a better read on her face. “You’re kidding, right?”

Sam whispered from behind me, “She’s totally not.”

Waving a finger over her face, I asked, “Is this…a pregnancy thing?”