Page 145 of It Happened on a Sunday
Sloane asked me to hold it to keep it safe, and instead I delivered it to Vivian on a fucking silver platter. And then I gave itbackto Sloane.
“She tried to kill her,” I whisper as the guilt and anger fuse into something else deep inside me, something hot and molten and wrong, like lava bubbling through my ribs and burying my insides in ash and shame.
“I let her in, and she—”
“She took advantage of you, and she took advantage of the trust you placed in her,” my abuela tells me firmly. “That makes her the bad guy, Mateo, not you. This isn’t your fault.”
It feels like my fault, and I can’t stand here any longer and listen to abuela Ximena tell me otherwise. I just can’t. Not when I’m currently reliving my greatest failure anew.
I start to head back into the ICU area, to Sloane’s room, but before I get to the door, the damn elevator dings again.
I turn just in time to watch Sloane’s team—her family—pile into the waiting room.
Chapter 63
Sly
As her tour manager’s gaze meets mine, I can see on Jace’s face that Marco’s already told him about Vivian.
“Where is she?” demands the woman by his side. She’s petite, with light-brown skin and black hair and the kind of polish you only ever see on people high up in show business.
Add in the teal suit and the dark circles under her eyes, and I hazard a guess. “Bianca?”
Her eyes narrow. “Sly.”
“She hasn’t woken up,” I tell her as the guilt somehow burns even hotter and brighter inside me. “But I’ll take you back. They’re only letting two people in the room at a time, and Pauline’s still with her.”
“That’s okay,” a guy I don’t recognize tells me. “We’ll rotate out. But we’re setting up shop in here. Do you know the wifi?”
“I don’t,” I tell him. Scrolling hasn’t been a priority for me over the last twelve hours.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find it.” He holds out a hand to me. “Bryan. I’m Sloane’s in-house publicist. I assume with what we’ve just found out about your team, you don’t have anyone you need us to coordinate with?”
“Coordinate?” I ask blankly, shaking his hand on instinct.
“The messaging. There’s a lot being said in the press right now, and we’ve been holding back until we knew for sure what happened. Now that we do, we’re going to get the truth out there. Sloane willnotgo down for your agent’s mistakes.” He practically spits the words at me. Well deserved.
“Of course not.” I look back at Sloane’s manager. “You want meto take you there now?”
She starts forward. “I can find it on my own, thanks.”
“One more thing.” Bryan sighs, and there’s a sincerity in his eyes that surprises me. “You really should have someone you trust working on this right now. People are already freaking out that you weren’t on that plane to San Diego.”
“The woman I love is lying in the ICU unresponsive. Someone Itrusteddid that to her.” My voice breaks, but I don’t even care. “I promise you, Bryan, what people on the fucking internet think about me right now isn’t even on my radar.”
I turn back to Bianca, shocked to see a grudging respect in her eyes that definitely wasn’t there before. “You sure you don’t want me to take you to her?”
“Actually, I’d appreciate it. Thank you.”
“Wait.” Olivia, the woman who first introduced me to Sloane all those months ago, steps forward, a guitar case in her hand. “We brought one of Sloane’s favorite guitars. Can you take it back with you?”
“Sure, but I don’t think she’ll know it’s there.”
“Yeah, but you said Pauline’s in there, right?” Jace asks.
“She is.”
He nods. “Medicine might not be able to reach Sloane where she is, but music might. Most of her life, it’s all she’s ever had to hold on to. Maybe she can reach for it one more time.”
