But if I dwell on those things too much, and Brooks leaves this world, I’ll never forgive myself.
He’s not perfect, and neither am I.
And now is not the time for judgment.
I flip my pillow to a fresh, cool side and pull the covers up to my chin. I’m artificially safe like this, all warm and burrowed. I’m getting drunker by the minute. With each passing second, my mind quiets and my body feels lighter. It’s temporary, but I’ll take it.
My lids weigh down as I struggle to stay awake to catch the last five minutes of some handsome, late night comedian interviewing celebrities, but it’s an uphill battle. Everything darkens around me, wrapping me up in a world void of everything that could possibly hurt.
Ding-dong.
The ricochet of my heart into my throat brings me back to life. No one rings my door this late at night.
Brooks.
I know it. I feel it. Someone’s come to tell me he passed. My stomach sinks.
Knock, knock, knock.
I grab a robe off the bathroom door and hold onto the wall as I stumble toward the stairs. The ground beneath my feet sways and undulates. Everything around me spins. It’s a miracle I make it to the front door without throwing up all over the rug.
This is what I get for drinking on an empty stomach.
With one hand on the doorknob, I take a deep breath and prepare myself for what’s about to happen next. My body is braced for a hurricane, every muscle tensing until it aches. I can prepare my outside for the delivery of bad news, but I have no idea how to prepare the inside.
Only all the cheap liquor in the world can’t prepare me for what I see on the other side.
The contents of my stomach swirl, and this time, it’s not the alcohol.
“Royal.” I say his name, out loud, for the first time in years.
He clears his throat, his familiar stormy eyes narrowing. “Demi.”
I’m hallucinating.
This isn’t real.
The alcohol is fucking with me, and I’m having some trippy dream.
Lightheadedness threatens to knock me off my feet. I lean into the doorway, folding my arms to resist the instinctive urge to fix the messy strands of unwashed hair that hang into my face.
I hate how good he looks. His shoulders are broader than they used to be. The hint of stubble on his chiseled face. The hollows of his cheekbones, deeper than ever. Full head of thick, dark hair, cut tight on the sides and long on top. It’s messy, but in a sexy way. And his face has enough of a five o’clock shadow to tell me either he doesn’t care, or he’s a man with other priorities. I don’t know if I want to know what those are.
Royal’s hands are jammed into the front pockets of his pants, but he doesn’t look nervous. If his heart is beating in his chest as hard as mine is, he doesn’t show it.
“What are you doing here?” My voice is breathy. I suck in air. “How’d you know where I live?”
I realize my second question is moronic in this day and age, but I can hardly think when he’s standing there, looking at me like that. He keeps his cool. I unravel before his very eyes.
A cool sweat glazes my palms before lacing across my forehead. I need to fan myself, but I’m paralyzed. How can he just stand there, acting like we just saw each other yesterday?
It hits me as my eyes lock in his. I clearly missed him more than he missed me. Seeing me doesn’t faze him or excite him or get him worked up.
“Can I come in?” He looks past my right shoulder. If he’s done his research, he’ll know this house is solely in Brooks’s name. I don’t own it. Maybe he’s looking for Brooks. He has to know that Brooks lives here too.
Doesn’t matter. He’s not coming in.
Royal Lockhart doesn’t get to abandon me and then show up like we’re suddenly old friends.
Not now, not ever.
“Nope.” I step back, my hand on the door, ready to slam it in his face. He places his hand out to stop it, but it only serves to piss me off even more. He’s lucky I don’t tell him exactly what I think of him.
And I would.
If my mind wasn’t going a thousand miles per hour. I can’t make sense of any of my thoughts. They’re going this way. And that way. And this way. And back. They’re racing in circles, some lapping others.
I want to slap him.
I want to kiss him.
I want to kick him and punch him, and then I want him to wrap his big, strong, full-grown man arms around me and let him squeeze me tight until I calm down. I want to feel the stubble on his chin scratch my forehead as he kisses it, and I want to feel the heat of his breath on the top of my head, because I’m convinced it’s the only thing that could prove he’s really, truly standing before me.
Maybe it’s the adrenaline mixing with the alcohol, but my course of action becomes clear, and I place a death grip on the doorknob, ready to slam this thing in his face with all my might.
I catch a glimpse of his face in the milliseconds before the door slams. He studies me, his chest rising and falling, and his lips straight, almost sympathetic. A whiff of his cologne floats through the doorway, and I don’t recognize it. It’s unfamiliar, and I’m irrationally pissed at him for it. I bet some ex-girlfriend picked it out.
And she was probably pretty, because guys who look like Royal can have any woman they want. I bet she wears Lululemon yoga pants and her topknots are always perfect, and I bet she holds his hand when he takes her shopping at the mall, and she smiles because she’s accessorizing her perfect little outfit with the kind of man most other women could only ever dream of.
Next time I’m at Neiman’s, I am not walking down the cologne aisle and spritzing my wrist with his old cologne for the hundredth time. Like a crazy person.
He doesn’t look the same, doesn’t smell the same. Despite his obnoxiously effortless good looks, he doesn’t fit the image of the young man I fell in love with as a hopeless teenager. He’s harder. His face wears experience. His eyes are wiser, crinkly at the corners.
Sadder.
Or maybe he’s reacting to how utterly pathetic I look right now, barely able to stand and refusing to brush the hair from my eyes.
“I don’t know you.” I grit my words. “You’re a stranger to me.”
The door slams hard. Harder than I intended. I lock the deadbolt and twist the lock button on the handle before pressing my ear against the wood, waiting. Listening for footsteps crunching in the snow-covered front steps.
Seven years has led to this.
A door in a face.
A thousand times I’d imagined this moment. It was grander. More self-assured. I looked good. He looked awful. I walked away satiated. He stood, tail tucked. There was closure involved. A realization that I was finally over him. In my daydreams, I moved on with my life once and for all, never giving Royal Lockhart a second thought.
I slink down the door and crumble to a defeated pile on the ground, burying my face in my hands.
But I don’t cry. I’m too exhausted.
“Demi.” The voice of a man penetrates the wooden door. He doesn’t even sound the same.
I guess I shouldn’t expect a twenty-six-year-old to sound like a nineteen-year-old, but I wasn’t prepared for that.
“Go. Away.”
“I need to talk to you.”
I huff, throwing my hands in the air to an invisible audience.
“What do you want now? After all this time?” I call out. My hands fall against the front of my thighs.
It kills me that I want to know what he came here for.
Now.
After seven years of radio silence.
He doesn’t deserve a minute of my time, but I deserve answers.
“Let me in,” he says. “You need me right now. Whether you want to or not.”
My eyes roll to the back of my head. He doesn’t know shit about what I need. And how dare he demand I let him in.
“We’re strangers. You don’t know me anymore.” Being mean
to him makes me unreasonably happy. I peel myself off the cold floor. “And you sure as hell don’t know a damn thing about what I need.”
“I heard about Brooks.”
I stumble backward two steps then lunge for the door.
How. The. Hell?
Without hesitation, I yank the door open, my left hand flying to my hip. “What, you stalking me these days?”
He shrugs. “Not really. Read about it on the news. Your name was mentioned.”
I slap the fakest grin I can muster across my mouth and smack my hand against the doorway. “Look. I’m honored that you came all the way here from wherever the hell you’ve been hiding to come and save the day, but really, your services aren’t needed. I survived the last seven years without you. I’m sure as hell going to survive the next.”
I want to slam the door in his face again, but I feel like it might lose its effect. Instead I lift my brows, rise on my toes, and glance at the vintage Challenger parked across the street—windows tinted so dark you can’t see through them, all black with two white racing stripes, and desperately in need of a paint job, yet still tragically sexy.
I recognize that car.
You don’t miss something like that in a neighborhood like this. Brooks always commented on it, saying it made our street look trashy. He wanted to call the neighborhood association about it, but I talked him out of it. We always thought it belonged to the college-aged son of the neighbor in the Tuscan McMansion across the street.
“That yours?” I ask.
He turns to glance at the Dodge; the only street-parked car on the block right now, and glances back at me.
“You have been stalking me,” I say.
His hand rakes along a smile he’s trying to hide, as if my accusation humors him. “No. Not stalking . . .”
Tiny tremors consume my body. Little beads of buried emotions all rupturing to the surface at once. I couldn’t stop them if I tried.
All these years, I’ve been mourning him, missing him, loving him, hating him. Giving anything to know what happened to him.
And he’s been fucking following me.
Royal’s been a silent part of my life, and I hadn’t the slightest idea.
“I hate you.” I say the words under my breath. They come from a deeper, darker part of me. But judging by the way his expression falls, he hears my conviction loud and clear. My lips tingle. My face is numb. It’s thirty degrees outside, and I’m standing in the doorway in little more than a paper-thin robe.
There’s a violent stir in my belly.
Something’s building. Rising. Desperately searching for a release. A molten burn enters my esophagus, and by the time I realize what’s going on, I lose the contents of my stomach with a single . . . liquid . . . retch.
On his shoes.
Watery orange juice and vodka glaze his gray sneakers.
Chapter Four
Royal
“Royal . . .” Her mouth hangs open, her fingers grazing her sticky lips. All color drains from her pretty face as she backs up.
Considering every shitty thing I’ve been through in my twenty-six years, vomit on my shoes doesn’t rank near the top of the list.
Not even close.
“It’s . . . fine.” I lift one shoe, and a hunk of orange goop slides off the toe.
Demi widens the door and motions for me to come in, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her sheer, peach robe.
“Let me grab a towel.” She stumbles down a hallway and returns with a fluffy white towel that smells like a fabric softener teddy bear and looks expensively soft. Falling to her knees, she dabs my shoes, ruining the pure white with splotches of carrot-colored puke.
Demi’s hand flies to her mouth once more and she retches, her shoulders hunching tight.
“Demi.” I reach for her arm to try to get her to stand. She rises, hand covering her mouth and crystalline blue eyes round as saucers. I’m two seconds from asking where the bathroom is so I can escort her there, when she loses it again.
Third time’s a charm.
The scent of ripe vomit floods the small space of her foyer before landing on the tile with a sickening splash.
“How much did you drink tonight?” I step out of it and breathe through my mouth. With strategic moves, I maneuver myself out of my ruined sneakers and hook my hand into her elbow. “Where’s your bathroom?”
Demi covers her mouth and points down the hall, where a white door is ajar. I lead her there, and we make it just in time.
“Jesus.” I hold her dark hair back, gathering it into a ponytail in my hand as she hugs the pristine, white bowl. A jar of fresh potpourri sits on the back of the toilet, and the mirror above the sink lacks a single streak. This house is as perfect on the inside as it looks on the outside.
She rises, moving to the sink and hunching over to rinse her mouth with cool water.
“You don’t have to take care of me.” Her tongue smacks as she speaks, and her expression sours.
“Of course I do.”
Demi scoffs, pushing past me and stumbling into the hallway. I follow, placing my hand on the small of her back as she tries to climb the stairs. These slick, wooden, polished steps are an accident waiting to happen.
Her body reacts to my touch with a jolt, and her neck careens around. A mess of dark hair sticks to her face. She smells like death, which I’m learning is a lot like bile and sour oranges, and she’s giving me a look that would make the Devil tremble in his hooves.
All this, and all I can think about is how fucking beautiful she is.
And how surreal it is to be this close to her again.
How wrong this is.
How I shouldn’t be here on so many levels, and how I can’t stay away.
I pretend not to know which room is hers. When she pushes the double doors to the master suite, she makes a beeline for the dresser. Pulling drawers and rifling through clothes, she yanks out an armful of t-shirts and dumps them on the floor like only a drunk person would.
Pulling in a slow, frustrated breath, she stares at the mound of fabric and releases a defeated sigh.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I can’t decide what t-shirt to change into.”
Ah, drunk people problems.
I lean down and swipe a blue one from the top of the pile. “Here.”
Demi takes it, spreads it across her lap, and shakes her head. “This one is Brooks’s. I can’t.”
I swipe a gray one from the bottom of the pile. “This one.”
She lays it on top of the blue one. The faded Rixton Falls High School logo is clear as day, even in the dim light of her bedroom. The words “varsity football” are screen-printed across the back.
“Can’t,” she says. “This one used to be yours.”
My stomach flips. She still has my old t-shirt. That’s got to mean something.
Demi shoves the shirts off her lap and scoots back until she finds something to lean against. Her head falls back, hitting a cream-painted wall with a painful thud, and her eyes flutter shut. Two seconds later, a light snore leaves her sticky lips.
“Demi.” I take her hand and give it a gentle shake.
She’s out cold.
Covered in puke.
It doesn’t feel right to dress her in her unconscious state, but I’m not putting her to bed covered in orange slop.
Peeling the robe from her shoulders, I tug her t-shirt over her head. She doesn’t wake. I ready the gray, RFHS shirt—the very one I gave to her my senior year, after outgrowing it my last season of football—pop it over her messy hair, and guide her arms through the sleeves. Her cotton shorts appear to have miraculously avoided any splash back.
Slipping one arm under hers and my other beneath her thighs, I scoop her up and carry her to bed. I’m not sure which side is hers, so I place her in the middle. Don’t want her rolling off. I’ve never seen Demi drunk until tonight, and I’ve never spent the night with her to know if she’s a wild slee
per.
There’s a lot I don’t know about her. And maybe she’s right. We’re just a couple of strangers now.
Strangers who once loved each other more than two people probably should.
When she’s tucked in and covered up, I peel my vomit-covered jeans and socks off and toss them in the trash in her bathroom. A quick check in a top dresser drawer, and I find Brooks’s stash of pajamas.
They’re folded nice and neat. Coordinating tops and bottoms. Red. Black. Baby blue. All satin with white piping. Monogrammed. Pretentious as fuck. I opt for a pair of black pants and head downstairs. I’ll take the couch, though it’s not like I’ll be sleeping tonight.
Insomnia’s a bitch, and I need to be able to hear in case Demi wakes up tonight and decides to do something moronic. After seven years, it seems like her stubborn streak is still alive and well.
I settle in downstairs, ears tuned in in case she gets up in the middle of the night and needs rescuing once again.
And that’s kind of why I’m here.
To rescue her.
Chapter Five
Royal
Creaking wooden steps at seven the next morning tell me she’s up. Demi tiptoes to the doorway of the living room, and I sit up, resting my elbows on my knees.
“Morning,” I break the silence after a thirty-second staring contest.
She massages her temples. “You stayed.”
“Yeah. You were in bad shape last night.”
Her eyes linger on mine from across the room until she clears her throat and glances out the window. She squints at the sunrise.
“You should eat something.” I rise and make my way toward the kitchen.
“Are those Brooks’s pants?” She follows, keeping a careful distance.
“Yeah. You kind of ruined mine.” I pull the door of her refrigerator open, like I own the damn thing, and retrieve a half-empty carton of orange juice. I step on the pedal of a nearby stainless steel trashcan. The mechanized lid lifts automatically, and I drop it in. “Guessing you’re not going to want OJ for a while.”
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