This One Moment (Pushing Limits, #1)(3)

“Don’t worry. We’ll be ready.”

“Perfect. Make sure that you are.”

I waited for him to say something more, maybe give me a reason why he wanted to talk to only me instead of the entire band. But after a few seconds it became clear I’d been dismissed.

Relieved to escape the chilly regard of everyone in the room and get ready to do what I lived for, I headed for the door.

“And before I forget,” Remar said in the tone of someone who was incapable of forgetting, “there’s a reporter here from Rock News. I granted her a brief interview with you and the band for after your show. Please don’t disappoint her.”

“No, sir.” I hoped she didn’t mind interviewing five guys coming down from an adrenaline high. Five guys who tended to forget their filters while coming down from the high, Mason being the worst of us.

And since when did Remar book our interviews? Our publicist was responsible for that, the same way she was responsible for making sure the world knew me only as Tyler Erickson. Although that wasn’t an especially tough job, even with social media. Thank you, Mom, for being so gung-ho to home-school me.

Pushing the thought of Remar from my head, because there was no point in trying to figure out anything to do with the man, I left the room. I respected his decisions. So far they hadn’t been wrong. But next time I saw him, I’d make sure he understood I wasn’t the boss of the band. It was a democracy. The band and the music weren’t just mine. They belonged to all of us, each adding his own vision to the mix.

No sooner had I shut the door behind me than my phone played a classical tune. What the hell? I pulled it from my pocket, mentally kicking myself for letting Aaron borrow the phone. Only he would have reprogrammed it to play classical music.

I checked the screen. Brandon. Again. He knew I had a show tonight, so for him to be this desperate to talk to me meant that whatever he had to tell me was damn important.

“What’s up?” I asked, half wondering if it would’ve been better to ignore the call the way I had ignored his texts.

“Shit, Nolan. I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”

“Yeah, got that. Sorry. Had to meet the president of the label for a little powwow.” I pressed the elevator down button. “What’s such a big deal it couldn’t keep?”

“It’s Hailey.”

My heart slammed against my rib cage at the urgent sound of his voice. What about Hailey?

“She’s in a coma.”





Chapter 2


Nolan


FIVE YEARS AGO

When it came to the law of best friends, the unwritten rule stated that if you fell in love with her, you should never ever tell her the truth. To do so would only f*ck things up. If you violated that rule, and she didn’t feel the same way, you would’ve lost the one person who meant the world to you. And if she did feel the same way and things didn’t work out in the end, where would that leave you?

Royally screwed, that’s where.

I flopped down next to Hailey on her parents’ couch and pretended her scent didn’t affect me. Good luck with that. I didn’t know where it came from—maybe her shampoo, or maybe the spray stuff girls loved dousing on their bodies. All I knew was it reminded me of my mom’s sugar cookies. And I loved Mom’s sugar cookies.

“How was soccer practice?” I asked, attempting to distract her from what had happened today. The TV was on, but it was obvious Hailey wasn’t seeing anything on the screen. Not unless she’d suddenly developed an interest in spiders after years of freaking out whenever she saw one.

My best friend, the girl I’d secretly been in love with for the past two years, shrugged. “It was okay, I guess.” The rough sound of her voice made my heart sink. Hailey lived for soccer practices and games.

“I talked to my boss and managed to switch the Saturday schedule around, so I can see your game.”

That got a small smile out of her. To get him to say yes, I’d had to agree to take the closing shift at the music store every Friday night for the next month. And there might have been something about teaching his fourteen-year-old niece to play the guitar.

“Do you want to see a movie tonight?” I knew Hailey was free. Kayla, her other best friend, had a date. Tonight Hailey was all mine.

She shrugged again. I took that as a yes.

“Wanna see Firewall?” The new gangster movie sounded good but wasn’t her thing.

She gave me the look, the one that said I knew exactly what her opinion of the movie would be.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Winner picks the movie. Deal?”

One corner of her lips curled up. It wasn’t the beautiful smile that always warmed my heart, but it would do. It meant my plan was working. I was about to distract her big-time. “Deal.”

I jumped up from the couch and pulled her to her feet, her soft hand in my callused one. I clicked the TV off and followed her downstairs to the game room. The foosball table, which her parents had owned for like a hundred years (because they didn’t believe in video games), sat in the middle of the hardwood floor, waiting for her to whip my ass. Even off the field, Hailey was a soccer superstar.

“You can pick the color,” she said.

I snorted. As if the color of my team would make a difference. “Blue.”