Nick woke up after a two-hour nap to find it a little easier to open his eyes, but that the pain still filled his body. The sun was setting and the light that remained fell across the bed. Glancing to his side, he panicked.
Curled in a chair with her arm and head on his bed was Angel, soaked in blood and dead.
�Oh no, Brian lied to me. She's dead. She�s left me. A.J. didn't throw her off the balcony. She died by my bedside while I was wasting time with Brian�
With much effort, he raised one of his arms and touched Angel's face. The blood was a mixture of old and new, and when he drew his hand back, it was red. Both her eyes were surrounded by swollen purple flesh and her bottom lip was busted open. He gently shook her in what he believed was a hopeless effort.
Tears came to his eyes as he tried to scream, but nothing came out. Getting his voice to work took effort, but finally he managed to choke out, "Brian, don't take Angel from me. You promised you wouldn�t take her without me."
*
Pulled out of her sleep, Angel swore she heard her name. She assumed it was Kevin after she felt the shaking of her shoulders, but when had she fallen asleep?
She tried without success to open her eyes, but the pain that ran through her face reminded her of the punches she'd taken the night before.
The voice saying her name continued to speak, and under closer inspection, it sounded much like Nick's. As a feeling of relief flooded her body, she cautiously opened her eyes the small bit she could only to see him, his blue eyes scared and his face pale.
"Nick?" she whispered.
His features relaxed as he heard her voice. "Angel?"
"You're alive!" they both exclaimed simultaneously.
Nick tried to sit up but Angel stopped him.
"Nick, you have to stay still. You probably have a concussion so you shouldn't move around." She gently pushed him back against the pillows.
"What about you? You look like you should be in bed with me," Nick whispered.
She glanced towards a mirror and caught her reflection for the first time. She looked horrible, but it didn't faze her. Nick was the important one. She could wait.
She moved to caress his face, but stopped as she noticed the blood that covered her hands.
"Go clean yourself up Angel. I'm okay now. I won't disappear while you're gone," he whispered.
She nodded before heading towards her bags in the other room, stumbling over Nick's backpack on her way out.
Turning back, she smiled at Nick. "Aren't we a pair? Neither of us can see through these damn swollen eyes."
As she left, Nick smiled. Angel was alive and so was he, so things had to get better.
~
Kevin woke up to see his clock showing the time to be 9:32 p.m. Deciding to check up on Nick and relieve Angel of her duties, he changed clothes and walked to Nick's room. He used the spare key to let himself into the dark silent hotel suite.
"Doesn't this girl know about lights?" he whispered to himself.
He walked into the bedroom to see, not one, but two people illuminated by the moonlight. Angel's face was clean and patched up, and both she and Nick had slight smiles on their faces as they slept.
�So they're okay�
But something made him hesitate as he felt another presence in the room. He looked around to find nothing but shadows.
"You're losing it Richardson," he whispered in the dark.
He walked into the adjoining room to watch some TV after he made sure both Nick and Angel were sleeping. He had a long night of watching out for them ahead.
*
Nick groaned as the sunlight hit his eyes and a pain shot through his head. He tried to move in hopes of making the pain lessen, but the sensation of movement only exacerbated his condition. He turned slightly to see Angel curled up beside him. Her face was a mixture of bruises and cuts that showed the extent of pain he had put her through. He slowly, as not to wake her up or to cause himself any more pain than necessary, brushed his fingers across her swollen cheek.
�I see you�ve decided to wake up.�
Nick looked up to see Kevin standing in the doorway. His faced showed that he had had a troublesome night that lacked both sleep and shaving.
�Kevin,� Nick managed to croak out, �how long has it been?�
�A day and a half. How are you feeling?�
�Like I got hit by our tour bus going 180,� Nick responded flatly.
Kevin smiled in spite of himself, relieved to find that Nick had already regained his sarcastic wit. At that moment, both men�s stomachs growled.
�I was just about to ask you about that. I�ve never known you to be able to go a day without food,� Kevin laughed.
Nick tried to smile back, but the cuts on his face prevented him from much conscious facial expression. Instead, he turned to gaze at Angel.
�What about her?�
�Let her sleep. She�s had a hard past few days and she needs the rest. I�ll order something for all of us just in case.�
He walked out of the room, leaving Nick with his thoughts.
�Man, this is all my fault. If I hadn�t panicked and hadn�t called Howie then none of this would have happened. A.J. wouldn�t have known where Angel was and she would be safe and sound. But noooo, I had to jump to conclusions and act irrationally, and now both of us feel like we�ve been hit by a Mack truck and she almost died!�
He glanced down at Angel with sadness.
�I�m sorry,� he whispered through dry lips. �I should have protected you.�
She stirred against him, causing bolts of mind-numbing pain to shoot through his limbs; he withstood it with little more than a groan until she stilled.
�I deserved that�
As he cut his eyes across the room to the sunlit window and the clouds, his dream came back in full force. Could it have really been true? Was Brian really just above all those clouds? Did he know what was going on? Could he be causing it?
He winced at the pain that shot through his head as the fog began to fight against his thoughts. When sleep crept over him, Brian�s voice echoed in his head, �At the end of my life, she was my world, and now she�s about to become yours�.�
~
A.J. groaned as he stood up for the first time in 36 hours. He hadn�t been nearly as injured as his two victims, but the pain in his back and the monstrous hangover gave him more than enough reason to have stayed in bed for so long. His memory refused to recollect fragments of the previous night�s events into any logical sequence, so he was left wondering why his back was in tatters.
�A bar fight? It looks like glass shards made them�
�Gaaah�� he groaned as a flashback of murderous rage, Nick in a pool of his own blood, and a faceless girl being pushed off a balcony overtook him. �What the hell?�
He studied himself in the mirror as he heard Howie enter the room, confused by the bruises on his face.
�I had a wicked dream,� A.J. rasped.
�Really?� Howie responded coldly.
Not picking up the tone of his friend�s voice, he began to explain.
�Yea. I was in this room and Brian started talking to me, but I couldn�t see him. He kept saying things like, �You worthless bastard. You took it too far. They belong together, but maybe this is all for the best. Thanks.� Shit like that. None of it made sense. That I shouldn�t be mad at Kevin; he was only trying to protect me. Things would be all right. Then I saw this girl fall off a balcony, like she jumped or something; I had to hold Nick because he was going to jump after her. I told him that she wasn�t worth it. He yelled at me, �She�s worth everything,� and looked me square in the face. His eyes were red! The colored part - not bloodshot. He pushed me off of him and jumped over the railing. I turned around and Brian was standing there with that girl� smiling. Told me it was right - meant to be.�
�Shut up A.J.�
A.J. turned from the mirror to look straight at Howie.
�What?�
�I said shut up. Don�t think that because you had a dream where you really tried to save Nick and Brian said everything was all right, you�ll get off for what you did. They�re still both unconscious. Nick hasn�t even woken up once since it all happened.�
�Wait� what are you talking about? What happened to Nick? Is he okay?�
Howie looked at him with ice in his eyes.
�I can�t believe this! You can�t even remember what you did? You were that drunk? Or just that stupid?�
When A.J.�s only response was a blank stare, Howie groaned.
�You tried to kill Angel. And Nick.�
A.J.�s eyes grew wide with disbelief. He refused to believe it. Howie was just playing a cruel joke on him, right? He wracked his brain in hopes to pull some recollection of what Howie was talking about. It wasn�t until he began the entire horrific story that it all began to come back to A.J.
�You ran into Angel�s hotel room and began beating her, but Nick got in your way when he tried to protect her. So you beat him. Until he was unconscious and lying in a pool of his own blood. Then you went back to Angel; you beat her face to a pulp before hanging her off of her own balcony. The only thing that stopped you was Kevin throwing you through the glass door - thus your back.�
A.J. couldn�t breathe. He felt the air wrenched out of his lungs. Gasping for breath, he fell to his knees and shook his head in denial. �You�re lying. It was a bar fight. It had to be,� he whispered.
Howie glanced at A.J.�s hands.
�Well, then why are your rings covered in Angel and Nick�s blood and skin? Why is one of your supposed best friends suffering from a concussion and a busted skull in his hotel room?�
A.J. heard everything Howie said, and no matter how badly he wanted it not to be, the words brought back true memories of the fight in Angel�s hotel room. Everything came flooding back like a rip tide. Shaking, he ripped his rings off his hands and let them fall, one by one, onto the carpet. Tears ran down his face as he fell onto his knees, begging for someone�s, anyone�s, forgiveness. He couldn�t even remember why he hadn�t liked Angel.
�Please Howie, take me to them. I have to see them both.�
Howie nodded and walked out of the room in silence, leaving A.J. to pull himself up from the floor.
*
When the food arrived, Kevin brought it into the bedroom and sat it next to the bed. He smiled as Nick stirred from his sleep.
�Food�� he moaned.
�Forget smelling salts. All you need is food,� Kevin said, feeling a little bit of relief for the first time in two weeks. �Think you can eat without moving you or Angel that much?�
Nick glanced at Angel before carefully rearranging himself around her, biting his lip to hide the pain. Kevin rushed to his side to help him sit up.
�You might have some broken ribs, Nick. We really need to get you to a hospital.�
�I�ll be fine once I get some food in me,� he replied, fighting off a wave of nausea as the pain swept over him.
Kevin nodded and brought the food to him. As he walked back around the bed, his breath caught in his throat.
�What?� Nick asked, worried as he followed Kevin�s eyes to where they rested on Angel.
�She didn�t realize she walked through the glass,� he said to himself. Looking up to Nick, he replied, �Her feet. They�re coated in glass shards from where I threw A.J. through the glass doors.�
As he rushed out of the room to get the first aid kit, Kevin didn�t hear the door open, and so he was unprepared to find that A.J. and Howie had come to see his patients.