“No! I’m fuckin’ pissed that he has a picture of my wife taped next to where he lays his head! It’s fuckin’ fucked up!”

“What horseshit.” Flipper snorted. “They’ve only known each other all their lives, X. Why does it bother you so much now?”

Both gingers flushed clashing reds.

Holy shit. Why does it bother X so much?

Connor had a sweet spot for Alys. I’d seen it when Alys had run off with X and gotten hitched. But Connor never showed any other signs that he was hung up over her, and he never let his feelings get in the way of the band. Hell, the motherfucker had groupies lining up to fuck his brains out in every stop we’d made. He would take advantage of them, too.

Sheri glanced down the hall from the front of the bus. “Is everything okay?”

“No!” shouted X. “I want this motherfucker off the bus! Now!”

“What?” the motherfucker gasped.

“Seriously, man, what have you taken?” asked Flipper, pawing through X’s bunk, looking for wrappers or baggies or the substance itself.

X reached out and slapped Flipper’s hands out of his shit. “Knock it off! I ain’t on nothin’! I just want this asshole off our bus—”

“It’s his bus, too,” I said, getting pissed.

X was being flat-out irrational. “Fuck that shit! Either he goes, or I go—”

“You shut the fuck up!” shouted Jason, pointing an angry finger under X’s nose. “Connor ain’t some pissant piece of douchery! He’s one of us!”

“It’s fine,” said Connor quietly.

My heart went out to my brother. He hadn’t done a damn thing wrong. This was all in X’s head, and he knew it. But those words…those fuckers cut deep.

“Have Mack pull over. I’ll stay on the roadie bus.”

“No,” I said.

This whole situation was being blown out of proportion.

“It’s okay,” said Connor, reaching into his bunk and grabbing his stuff. “It’ll be better if I go.”

X shoved his way past all of us and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

Jason poked his head in Connor’s bunk. “It’s just a picture of her on the last tour, the one where we stopped at the Redwood Park place. What’s his deal?”

Straightening up, Connor shrugged, saying nothing.

“You don’t have to go, man,” I told him.

His eyes looked into mine, and I got so homesick for my Baby Girl. It was like being kicked in the nuts.

Seven hours. Just seven hours before I get to hold her again.

“No, it’s probably best I go. Have Mack pull over, yeah? It’s no big deal.”

“Sure it is,” Flipper said, getting all feisty. “He has no reason to talk to you like that. You’re our brother.”

Connor nodded, but he took his shit and made his way to the front of the bus all the same. The rest of us didn’t want him to go, so he was taking matters into his own hands. He had Mack radio the roadie bus to pull over at the next rest stop.

“Man, what are we supposed to tell your sister when we get her from the airport?” I asked him as Mack slowly maneuvered off the highway.

He shrugged. “The truth. She’ll understand.”

“She’ll have my balls on a plate!”

Connor smiled sadly. “She already does, man.”

Mack opened the door, and Connor hopped out.

“Poor kid,” said Mack. “I liked that one.”

“He ain’t goin’ nowhere,” I snapped.

Full of angry thunder and raw nerves, I stalked back to the bathroom, ready to kick the door in when X opened it. His eyes were watery and red, and he couldn’t look me in the face.

“What was that shit you just pulled?” I demanded. “That kid is the best thing that ever happened to NOLA’s, and you just shat all over him ’cause of a photo of a woman he considers family.”

“I know.”

Jason came up behind me. “You have some seriously fucked up—”

“Can it, Jace. You ain’t helpin’,” I barked.

Jason huffed and stormed off.

“I just…I needed him away from us.”

“Why?”

X shrugged, and my irritation skyrocketed.

“Fuck, man! It’s the middle of a Canadian winter, and you fuckin’ needed to throw the poor man off the bus? What’s your fuckin’ excuse for that shit? We don’t treat our brothers like that!”

X finally turned his electric-blue eyes on me, and what I saw in them chilled me to my soul. An overwhelming sadness, a look of resignation, and a shit-ton of pain flashed in them. It knocked the breath from me.

“What is it?” I whispered.

Whatever was in him was infecting me. Fear sank its fangs into my heart and pumped it through my veins.

“I don’t know. I just know he needed to get out.”

“You ain’t makin’ a lick of sense—”

“I know!” he cried.

“Was Flipper onto somethin’? You takin’ some shit?”

He shook his head. “I’m fuckin’ tired, man. I just need some sleep. Maybe…it’ll be better after.”

“He deserves an apology,” I growled. “We’re pickin’ the girls up in a few fuckin’ hours. They ain’t gonna be happy, knowin’ Connor’s on the fuckin’ roadie bus. Kenna’s gonna be pissed, knowin’ you ran her little brother outta here.”

X nodded. “All right. Just…let me get some sleep. I haven’t been sleepin’ well lately.”

I knew the feeling. It sucked, not having Kenna with me. I couldn’t sleep in The Attic without her. It didn’t feel right. Flipper, Viv, Jason, and Sheri had all been taking turns with it. I’d been sleeping in the bunk I used when Kenna and I had that shit going down with Brigid and Devon.

I missed my Baby Girl something fierce.

I’d spoken to Devon right before we’d left Montreal. For a while, he’d been talking about some sort of spiritual pilgrimage, and he’d said he would be leaving for Tibet. Where he was going, there would be almost no way to keep in touch, so we’d spoken until his flight got called from Heathrow Airport. He’d seemed to be in a good place in his head and mentioned collaborating when he got back in a few months.

The idea had music tripping around in my head. I could well imagine something amazing coming out of that. Devon was beyond brilliant, and away from Cornered Cannibal, he had the room to grow and express that.

Back on the road, the way to Saskatoon was icy, and there was a snowstorm brewing, turning the sky a steel gray. Our next show was tomorrow night, and we’d decided to get a hotel. Nothing over-the-top, but I was dying to have my Baby Girl all to myself.

When I’d last spoken to Kenna, she’d sounded off—stressed, tired, even sad. She’d told me it was nothing, that she was just overworked and was hoping she was doing the right thing by leaving medicine. She and Alys had been at the airport, heading to New York.

X crawled into his bunk and slid the door shut.

What in the hell is up with him?

Sleep deprived or not, he’d never treated anyone like that—well, except for Jason, but Jason could be an insufferable douche at times. X was always lighthearted, always cracking jokes, and the fact was that Connor hadn’t done anything wrong.

Sighing, I took the seat next to Mack and watched the sky turn darker and more ominous.

“Looks bad,” the man grunted. “Weather report said heavy snow for the next few hours.”

As time went on, the world around us blurred. Mack took the speed down almost to a crawl, considering the whiteout we were driving through. We could hardly see three feet in front of the bus.

“Should we pull over?” I asked, feeling anxious.

The sun was long gone, and the headlights reflecting off the snow with the black backdrop was freaking me out.

Mack had driven us through worse conditions though while on chewed-up European mountain roads. “Nah. We’ll just take it slow,” he replied, looking unfazed.

In the back of the bus, a slide panel shifted, and I glanced over my shoulder to see X pulling himself out of his bunk. He looked like absolute hell, pale and shiny with a greasy sweat. Maybe he was coming down with something, like the flu.