"Where the hell do you think you are going? We have a show to play." Aiden shouted behind me.

I stumbled blindly down the same path Riley used to run away from me. My feet were full of lead and covered with cement bricks. I couldn't fight against the quicksand to move them fast enough to get back to her.

"Seriously, Ezra, are you really just going to leave us hanging tonight? You need to pull yourself together and get back inside." Aiden berated me.

"I'm not going on," I grumbled back at him.

"What are we supposed to do? You know I never learned to play your songs and we can't cancel the show." Aiden whined.

"I don't give one fuck what you do. I'm out."

I hit the end of the alley and attempted to turn right towards the parking lot. My shoulder slammed into the brick wall surrounding the pathway when I misjudged the distance to the corner. This was fantastic— now even inanimate objects were attacking me to prevent me from getting to my girl.

The whole world was against the two of us.

I punched the obstacle in order to get it to move out of my way. No matter how hard I smashed my fist into it, it wouldn't move. The only thing I succeeded in doing was ripping open the skin on my knuckles. I looked down at my hand as I flexed it open and closed. I couldn't feel any pain from the open wounds, so I decided it wasn't worth the wasted time to stop my mission to evaluate the damage.

My eyes darted back and forth as I snuck around the corner before the wall could stop me again. It stayed cemented in place, even when I flipped it a celebratory middle finger to mock the red brick.

The parking lot behind Bannon's was only about three-quarters full. It was small and the empty spots made it easier to survey. I began walking up and down the rows of dark cars, looking in the windows for any sign of Riley or even Brynn. This was one of those situations where I felt fortunate to be grossly tall. Peering over and around SUVs wasn't much of an issue for someone as oversized as I was.

Being shitfaced was an unfortunate hinderance, but I still managed to push on.

I was hedging my bets that my girl was still out here someplace. I expected to find the upset blond sitting in a running car, waiting for me to make it better. Riley was a crier and overly emotional. That alone would have slowed her down. Her enormous green eyes would be shining with tears while she boohooed to Brynn over what just happened. I would wrap myself around her and all would be forgotten.

When I didn't find Riley on the first pass, I went around the loop again to double-check. She had to be out here hiding from me. She wanted to make me suffer just a little bit more before we made up. I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and pressed her number to call her. Her cell phone ring would give her location away.

The line was already like a blaring siren when I placed it against my ear. I spun my head in every direction to listen for a phone going off around me. The parking lot was almost silent, except for some bum coughing up a lung down the street. Riley wasn't anywhere near where I was or I would have heard her. I started to sweat a little with fear and panic.

What would I do tonight if Riley didn't come back?

The generic voicemail message rang out over the speaker. I was disappointed to hear it wasn't Riley's delicate voice reciting the standard, "I'm busy, leave a message" spiel.

"It's me. Where are you?" I asked the voicemail lady after the beep. I sat for a few seconds with the recording going, waiting for the preprogrammed electronic voice to give me a response and point me to Riley's location. She wasn't any help at all. She sat there quietly and stuck her nose up at me while I breathed heavily into the receiver.

I hung up the phone and dialed to try Riley again. She couldn't ignore me forever.

Her phone went to voicemail again after a few extra long seconds ticked by.

I cursed as many obscenities as I could come up with at the electronic-voiced female. She was really starting to piss me off. If she stopped answering the phone before Riley could, then I could talk to my girl. It wouldn't take very much to convince Riley to come back inside the bar with me for a few more drinks before we headed back to my bed to finish the night off.

"Hey, Riley. Pick up the phone... please." I added, lifting my voice up at the end. I sounded like an unsure kid asking his mom for a cookie. It wasn't my intention to sound so weak, but I was starting to feel the despair creeping in the longer she was away from me.

I waited for ten whole seconds for Riley to call me back before my finger hovered over the call button again. I started to smash my thumb against it when a notification pinged on my phone. I let out a relieved sigh and my shoulders relaxed. I knew Riley would regret leaving me like this. My girl was ready to apologize for her behavior and we could move on. My nerves were splintering like shards of glass as I navigated away from the phone screen to my unread messages.

The words on my phone were swirling around in a circle as I tried to string them together. I was still too trashed to get my mind to concentrate enough to understand them. I pushed my hair back from my face and squinted my eyes to get the screen to stay still. The tiny blue dot for unread messages wasn't lined up where I expected it to be. It was next to Mark's name.

The message wasn't from her.

Mark: Where are you? You're missing all the fun.

Below the message was another one with a video of Mia sitting on a barstool. She was holding a wad of red napkins over her face. One of her friends was standing in front of her, waving a tampon in front of her eyes. She was attempting to convince Mia to shove the tampon up her nose. Mia pulled the saturated paper from her face to scream at her friend . With the paper out of the way, she revealed her new nose job. It was slightly misplaced at an odd angle and hugely fat. Her nose ring was buried so deep inside the swelling that it looked like it was in a slingshot, ready to pop out.

Riley did some severe damage to Mia's face. Her nose was definitely broken. It made her look like one of those cartoonish paintings of a troll guarding a bridge. I would have been congratulating my girl right now on a job well done if she wasn't being so stubborn.

I left Riley a few more angry voicemails, trying to shame her into calling me back. Then, finally, I switched over and began playing the guilt card when that appeared it wasn't going to work. I tried every approach I could think of to get her to respond and nothing worked.

There was no way the calls were getting through to her. She should have answered me by now.

I switched over to texting Riley just in case.

Me- We need to talk.

Me- Pick up your phone.

Me- Riley, call me.

Me- Please answer me.

Me- Answer your fucking phone.

I was growing more and more impatient as each message was sent. Riley had to be seeing these and was choosing to ignore me.

Me- You know what? Fine, don't answer me. Fuck you.

I regretted that one as soon as my finger hit the send button. That wasn't a message I actually intended to send to her. There had to be a way to recall a text message you accidentally sent. I frantically started searching online for ways to take a message back.

There weren't any. I was screwed.

A horn sounded in front of me, snapping me out of my relentless pursuit to force Riley to answer me. Nothing I was trying was working. There had to be something else I could do.

"Hey, you gonna move or what?" A guy screamed out at me from a car window. The horn sounded again and I finally looked up and realized where I was. I was standing in the middle of the parking lot, blocking an empty parking spot.

I waved the guy off and started towards my car to plan my next move.

I climbed in and took a deep breath as I stared down at my silent phone. There had to be some way to get through to her.

I hit the call button again and brought the phone back up to my ear. My head slumped over against my steering wheel as the ringing was cut off by the voicemail greeting for the millionth time.

When the phone beeped again, I took a deep breath. I didn't want to do what I was about to do, but I was out of options. I had to get Riley to come back.

"Hey, it's me. Please just call me back so we can talk. I'm sorry about anything I said, I didn't mean any of it.  Please just give me another chance."

I slumped down in the seat of my car as I started to come down from the fight. My body was crashing and my brain began cannibalizing itself with regret when it began to catch itself up with everything that happened.

As I replayed the whole scene in my head, Riley's words in the alley finally sunk in. Something clicked inside and finally registered. She had said it was my fault and at the time, I didn't understand why.

But then I remembered the look on her face as she walked up to me in the bar. I was only focused on how sexy she looked. I didn't see the hurt written all over her face.

Shit.

I knew now why she did what she did and I couldn't believe how I could have let it happen. I would have done the same thing she did if I walked in on her with some guy she had been with, wrapped around her.

Riley thought I was pushing her aside for Mia. My intentions came from a good place, but the execution was extremely flawed. I made such a fucking mess tonight.

I pulled my keys out of my pocket and stuck them in the ignition. My epiphany from the disastrous night had me suddenly feeling completely sober. I wanted to fall down into the blackness that had always protected me when I needed it the most.

I placed my car into reverse and backed out of the spot to return to the house. A small part of me held out a tiny sliver of hope that Riley would have gone back there like I told her to.

I had to set my ego aside and apologize to her.

It was the only way I would be able to undo the damage that was done tonight.