Code Red by N.R. Walker

Chapter Seventeen

I saw nothing but Maddox,and the absolute panic—the sheer terror—in his eyes. I scooped my arm around his back, under his arm and hauled him off the stage and down the steps. Hardwick met me at the bottom with a can of oxygen and he put the mouthpiece directly on Maddox’s face.

We couldn’t stay here. The stage crew and the production team were all standing, staring at him.

“Let’s get him into the dressing room,” I said, still with my arm around his back, and I half-carried him. He was heavy, listless.

“Can we clear the room, please,” I yelled, and the few wardrobe people quickly disappeared.

I lowered Maddox onto the couch and he lay down, the doc still holding the oxygen to his mouth. A tear rolled toward his temple, his chest heaved.

Oh, baby.

I took his hand and squeezed. “It’s okay, Maddox. We’ve got you.”

There was a monitor showing a live feed of the stage, like there always was, and Jeremy’s voice rang out. “He’s okay!” I hadn’t even realized the music had stopped out there. “He’s had some voice issues on this tour and he really wanted to sing for you guys. He’s gonna be upset that he let you down, so I’m gonna need you guys to do Maddox a real big favor, okay? We’re gonna need you guys to sing all his lines, okay? Can you do that for him?”

The crowd roared, louder than any concert I’d heard. I could feel the rumble through the floor.

The music started and we could hear the crowd sing, singing for him. Maddox pushed the aerosol of oxygen away, he held his hands to his face, and he cried.

And he didn’t seem able to stop.

Every line the crowd sang, the more he cried.

Hardwick sagged beside me, his face drawn. He shook his head sadly, and I nodded.

This wasn’t good. This was all bad.

Me running out on stage and taking Maddox off would already be online, by eighty thousand different cameras. Maddox missing his lines, pulling at his shirt collar, that’d all be out there for the world to see.

And you know what? I didn’t care. None of that mattered.

The only thing I cared about, the only thing in the world that mattered to me was Maddox.

The doc had the good sense to turn the monitor off, though it didn’t matter much. We could hear the crowd belt out the chorus.

“I should be out there,” Maddox sobbed, his voice cracking. He still covered his face with his hands, but then they were fists and he became angry. “I should be out there!”

“Maddox, I want you to breathe for me,” Hardwick said gently.

Maddox pushed up to a half-sitting position, tears spilled down his cheeks. “How can I? I freaked out on stage, in front of everyone, the whole world watching and I couldn’t fucking breathe because I’m broken.”

“You’re not broken,” I said. “Maddox—”

He shot up off the couch and stepped past us. “I’m fucking broken,” he said, then picked up the monitor and threw it against the wall. Then when that wasn’t enough, he kicked a table, shoving it into another table, and when he turned to see what else he could smash, I wrapped him up in my arms.

He tried to pull away but I held him, but he struggled against me so I relented my hold. He broke free the second I let him go, and he swiped his arm through a row of full water bottles on a table, sending them flying. Then he kicked a chair over, and I went to go to him again but Hardwick’s hand on my arm stopped me.

Maddox screamed as he pulled at his hair. He upended another table, but then he lost his footing and he fell against the wall. With no fight left in him, he slid down, his head in his hands, and sobbed, gasping for air. He tried to speak but no sounds came out, his face a mask of pain and sadness.

Unsure of what else to do, I knelt in front of him and put my hands on his head, his jaw, his shoulders. “You’re not broken,” I whispered.

“I need to go out there, on stage, Roscoe,” he rasped. “But I can’t. I can’t.” He gulped back some air. “I can’t do this. This is all I know. This is all I am. I love it, but it’s killing me.” He sobbed again. “It’s killing me.”

I turned to Hardwick. “Can you get Steve for me?” He frowned, but he dashed out the door. I put my hand to Maddox’s cheek. “Maddox, baby, I’m gonna take you out of here, okay?”

He nodded with a fresh wave of tears, and I realized then that he was fisting the front of my shirt. “I’m not leaving you,” I told him. “I’m gonna take you somewhere, just you and me, somewhere you can breathe.”

He nodded, just as Hardwick and Steve came through the door. I looked up at them. “We need to leave,” I said. “Not just the stadium. We’re leaving New York City, and we’re leaving tonight. I need to get him out of here.”

I could see the doc had a dozen questions he wanted to ask, but Steve took one look at Maddox and nodded. “Come with me.”

An hour later, I had a rental car, our bags packed in the trunk, a sleeping Maddox in the front seat, and we were on I-87 headed north.