by Stacey Lynn
Or she’d get even drunker, but I’d hold her head while she puked if she needed it.
“Not tonight, son,” Sam said. He wasn’t drinking, but he was sitting in a wheelchair. His hands were steady and his eyes were clear. “Let her do what she has to do.”
My jaw went tight. “Sam—”
His eyes told me he understood. Maybe not what I had to say, but that things were more serious than we’d thought.
I didn’t doubt Jaxon hadn’t heard what we found at the garage, but he obviously hadn’t said anything.
“She might be your girl, but she’s mine, too. And tonight, give her this. You can smack her with reality first thing tomorrow, but she needs this.”
“Come on,” Paige slurred, pushing back from me. “Sit and play a hand with us.”
“You can have mine,” Jaxon said, already pushing back from the table. “I got calls to make anyway.”
I stood from the table and brushed Paige’s hair off her cheek. She wasn’t wearing the clip in her hair like she usually did and her bangs covered one of her eyes, flopping back after I tucked it behind her ear. “You need another drink?”
“Absolutely.”
“All right, then. Let’s play some bullshit.”
We did. For two more hours.
And the night ended with me doing exactly what I knew I would. Me holding Paige’s hair back while she puked into the toilet.
But when she climbed into her bed next to me, rolled to her side, and clung to me, I didn’t care I’d just held her hair while she puked.
She curled into me even though being with me put her in the line of fire of a psycho. Right before she passed out, her mouth at my throat, she whispered, “I love you.”
And all of it, every fucking second of my shitastic day, was completely worth it to hear it, even if she wouldn’t remember saying it.
***
Paige stirred in my arms and groaned. My hand was on the back of her head, holding her to my chest. I’d woken up but stayed in bed, wanting to be there for her when she woke up. She’d tossed and turned during the night, kicked off covers and moaned more than once, a pained sound that when she woke me, it didn’t sound like it had anything to do with her alcohol intake the previous day, but her fear from earlier.
Every time she woke me up, I tucked her tight against me and she settled.
I waited to see if she’d fall back asleep but her body tensed.
“You okay?” I murmured.
She groaned again. “Stop shouting.”
My chest shook while I tried to quell my laughter.
“Ugh,” she groaned again and pushed off me. I let her go slowly as she rolled to her back and then her left side. “Shoot me and take my pain away.”
After I’d brought her into the bedroom last night, she’d stripped out of her clothes and fell into bed, naked, passing out as soon as she curled into me. Now, her bare back was exposed to me and I reached out, tracing a fingertip down the length of her spine. She shivered, and curled into her pillow, hugging it to her side while I ran my finger up and down her back, goose bumps pebbling in my wake.
“Need me to get you some water and Advil?”
“Swallowing anything might make me throw up again.”
“You tied one on pretty hard.”
“I had a lot I wanted to forget.” She moaned again and squeezed her eyes closed, turning her head before opening them. “I’m glad you came back. I thought you’d left.”
“Never,” I said and rested my hand on her back at the base of her spine. “I don’t want to ever walk away from you.”
Her lips lifted into a hint of a grin and then she turned a pale shade of green.
“Ugh.” She groaned and covered her mouth. Before I could move, she jumped out of the bed and ran down the hallway. I hurried after her, grabbing a robe at the back of her door on my way.
Poor thing either didn’t realize she was naked or didn’t care. She would if her dad or Jaxon saw her. Although, he was most likely crashing in his SUV outside like he’d said he was going to do last night.
I didn’t bother knocking on the bathroom door and I walked in as she was flushing the toilet, still leaning over it, and holding her hair with one hand at her shoulder.
“Better?”
I spent enough mornings in college to know that once you puked the next day, things typically improved.
“No,” she croaked.
“I brought you your robe.” I held it out to her and she took it, leaning back to her knees and looking down. “Oh crap. My dad—”
“Is sleeping downstairs. And I sent Melanie home last night so no one else is here or awake.”
“Thank God.” She sighed and tugged on her robe. “Why does drinking so much make your bones hurt?”
I doubted she really wanted a lesson in dehydration so I kept my mouth shut. “Take your time getting ready. I’m going to go downstairs and get coffee ready. Want me to bring you that Advil?”
“Yeah. In a minute. I might take a shower first.”
“Okay.” I kissed the top of her head and stood up. “We do have stuff to talk about today, though.”
“Awesome,” she muttered and closed her eyes, resting her head in her hands.
“Come on.” I held out my hand and waited for her to take it. Gently, I pulled Paige to her feet and then tugged her into my arms. “It’ll all be okay, I swear it. Neither Jaxon or his team or I will let anything happen to you or anyone else. I promise.”
“Thanks, Beaux.”
I held her, and slowly, she wrapped her arms around my back, holding on to me with the strength of a gnat. Chuckling, I let her go and reached into the shower and turned it on. “Let that warm up some,” I said.
I needed to get out of there before she got naked again. I didn’t care that she was hung over and feeling like shit, her body pressed to mine woke my dick up. If I didn’t get out of there, her dad would receive a very loud wake-up call in the form of his daughter screaming my name.
Probably not the best thing.
“In you go,” I said, pulling back the shower curtain. She dropped her robe and hobbled inside. I ignored the quick pulse of desire at seeing her naked body and when she was steady on her feet, I left the bathroom.
Sam was still sleeping in his recliner when I reached downstairs, but who could blame the guy? We’d all been up hours later than normal last night and the drunker his daughter became, the more concerned he grew.
Couldn’t blame the guy for that, either.
I went to the kitchen and pulled out sausage and ingredients for gravy and biscuits and started cooking. After I heard the water running for a few minutes, I grabbed a glass of water and took some medicine up to Paige.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
PAIGE
I rarely got drunk. I didn’t enjoy the out of control feeling alcohol sent through my system. I wasn’t a giggler by nature or someone who could toss inhibitions to the floor and dance on the tabletops or jump on stage and belt out a karaoke tune.
The fact I’d used alcohol to wash away my fears last night wasn’t the worse thing I could do, but I still felt guilt on top of fear on top of an unceasing pounding inside my skull while I climbed into the shower.
I dropped my head in the shower spray, the water pounded against my neck and down my back. I closed my eyes against the onslaught of watery needles sluicing down my sensitive skin.
Last night’s memories flickered through my brain like a slideshow. That horrible moment when you try to piece together missing bits of information, jamming wrong puzzle pieces into leftover holes.
Drinking wine with Melanie in my room.
Pulled downstairs when pizza that Mike ordered was delivered.
Waiting on pins and needles for Beaux to return so we could talk.
Melanie’s ridiculous idea of playing the card game Bullshit. Jaxon’s glare as we shoved him into a chair.
Laughing. The constant, crazy cackling as Melanie and I wiped the floor wi
th Mike and my dad, and then later Beaux. Although as I replayed the memories, the looks Beaux and my dad gave each other, I pounded the shower wall with my fist.
Those freaking men didn’t lose to us.
They threw the game to us, something I most likely would have noticed if I hadn’t been seeing three of Beaux by the time the game ended.
“That little turd,” I muttered and turned my back to the shower. Squeezing the shampoo into my hand, I worked up a lather and went at my hair, scrubbing my scalp and rubbing my temples as the memories continued.
Beaux carrying me upstairs.
Puking.
Good Lord the amount of liquid I expelled into the toilet was obscene.
A warm washcloth on my forehead and my neck. Water.
More puking. And through all of it, Beaux was there, my silent protector and supporter and encourager and comforter.
I finished my hair, washed my body, and picked up a razor, the memories dimming, but still coming.
Helping me brush my teeth, leaving me alone, stripping out of my clothes like a newly born giraffe, all long-leg and wobbly as I stumbled to the bed and then in it.
“Oh shit!” I cried out as I cut my knee. Blood rivulets formed immediately. I stared at it, blinked away the last memory of the night.
“I didn’t,” I whispered the phrase repeatedly, watching my knee bleed from a poor shave and set down the razor.
I didn’t need a razor.
I needed a time machine.
“I did,” I whispered. I swayed in the shower, threw out a hand to the wall to stop me from falling and closed my eyes.
“Go to bed drunk girl. I got you.”
I curled into him, inhaled his cologne. God, how did he smell so good, cuddle me so hard when I probably reeked of vomit.
“Beaux—”
“We’ll talk in the morning.”
“K.” I yawned, shoved my body to his, aligning us from shoulder to hip and threw a leg over his. “I love you.”
“Ah, hell.”
I did.
I totally told Beaux I loved him.
And worse?
I couldn’t remember if he said it back.
“Damn it,” I cursed again, slapped off the water and grabbed a towel I’d draped over the shower curtain. “He didn’t say anything,” I told the cloudy mirror as I dried off. “He didn’t say a thing and he didn’t bring it up this morning.”
How utterly, horrifically embarrassing.
I could take it back. Blame it on being drunk, out of my mind, thinking of something else. Maybe someone else. Like my dad. Or Mike.
But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
Telling someone you love them wasn’t the most embarrassing thing I’d ever experienced, even if it took me awhile to remember I said it in the first place, but I wouldn’t take it back. I wouldn’t diminish how I felt in that way.
I swiped the mirror again until my hazy reflection stared back at me.
“I’ll just pretend it didn’t happen,” I told myself. Then I nodded, needing the agreement from the woman in the mirror. “Yup. Pretend it didn’t happen. Move on. Forget it.”
Yup.
Brave, independent girl, I was. That was totally my game plan.
I finished drying off, moisturizing the crap out of my dehydrated body, and it wasn’t until I was done I saw the Advil Beaux had dropped off on my small and cluttered vanity top.
Tossing them back, I pretended they were confidence pills. Forgetful pills. Time-rewind pills.
Those would be awesome.
But since I didn’t have magic beans or special little red pills or a time machine, I hurried to my bedroom, feeling slightly more human and less zombie like, threw on a pair of pale blue cut-off sweat shorts and gray Tarheel’s sweatshirt.
Then I headed downstairs. And saw a view that was eerily similar of last night.
Melanie, Beaux, and my dad were sitting around the table, but instead of playing cards in their hands, they were chowing down on eggs and toast … and was that biscuits and gravy?
My stomach grumbled.
Yes. Grease, grease, and more grease. It was exactly what the doctor ordered.
“Hey,” I mumbled to everyone. “Good morning.”
“No it isn’t,” Melanie mumbled. She looked almost as bad as me and I winked at her as I passed.
“Feeling better?” Beaux asked, pushing back from his chair.
I stopped him with a hand. “Yeah. Need coffee though. You stay, I can get it.”
He watched my every movement as I poured a cup of coffee, filled a plate with biscuits and gravy and halfway to the table, he reached out and took the plate from me.
“You’re still tremoring,” he said, grinning at me. “Let’s not have this gravy all over your floor.”
Not a bad idea. I took the seat next to him and dug into my breakfast fully aware everyone’s eyes were on me. Well, except for maybe Melanie. But the way she was eating with her head propped up on one hand I figured she was just trying to stay awake.
“God, this sucks.” She groaned and pushed away her food. “I’m so sick to my stomach, I can’t even finish this. Now I’ll never get to say I had Beaux Hale cook me breakfast.”
“I cooked it for Paige and Sam, not you.”
“Yeah, but I’m like family now, so I’m included.”
“No.” He grinned. “You’re not.”
“Says you,” she grumbled playfully and stuck out her tongue.
Melanie moved from the table and refilled her coffee mug before re-joining us.
As she returned, I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “You made this?” I asked Beaux. “It’s really good.”
He pointed at my dad. “I had a good instructor.”
“That Yankee wouldn’t have known what to do without my help.”
“I dunno,” Beaux said. “I think maybe I was meant to be a southerner in my bones. Good people, no snow, all this deep fried food and BBQ. I was made for this place.”
My dad laughed, and while they bickered about who was the Yankee and who could cook better, I focused on eating my food. Just enough to feel better, not too much my stomach would revolt again. It was always a tricky line and one I’d crossed in my early college days more than once.
Beaux refilled my coffee when it was empty and as he returned to the table, the front door opened and Jaxon appeared.
Once again, he was dressed in all black, his sunglasses tucked into the collar of his black T-shirt.
“Yum,” Melanie whispered.
She wasn’t talking about the food she was still trying to eat. I bumped her knee with mine and shushed her.
“Dear Lord, woman,” she whisper-hissed back. “If I can’t touch, at least let me look. Rambo Sexy Pants is the best cure for a hangover, even in visual form only.”
“We can all hear you,” Beaux said, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “You whisper as quietly as an elephant stomps.”
At the head of the table, Jaxon didn’t make any movement or give any indication he heard her. I was certain he was part robot.
Maybe more Terminator than Rambo.
Regardless, he arched a brow at Beaux. “You tell her yet?”
And…that was the sound of evading and pretending life wasn’t a shitstorm coming to an abrupt halt.
“What is it?”
“Finish your food,” Beaux said. “We’ll talk then.”
I wanted to argue, but I did what he said. What were a few more minutes to pretend we were just hanging out, enjoying a random morning of family and fun?
***
“We found cameras outside the garage of your work.”
That came from Jaxon. He was now standing in my living room and all of us assembled gave a freaky deja-vu feeling to yesterday.
Unlike yesterday, Beaux was sitting next to me on the couch. Melanie was on my other side. Mike had shown up after breakfast and he’d pulled a chair up next to my dad’s recliner.
Jaxon had taken the position a
t the front of the room like we were in some professional debriefing. I supposed we were.
Didn’t mean I liked it. Especially once he crossed his bulging arms, biceps and ink popping all over the place, looked directly at me, and gave me that beautiful nugget of information.
“Cameras?”
“No audio and they were basic. Not top of the line and not live-streamed.”
I’d had less than a day to process the fact someone was following me. Once Melanie and I started drinking, I’d done my best to avoid thinking about this at all.
But some woman had cameras on me? At our garage?
I shook my head as if to shake it free so what I’d heard would make sense. “Where else?”
“Nowhere we’ve found yet. But you need to know we left the cameras.”
“What?” I gasped.
“Listen,” Beaux said, holding me tight against him even as I tried to wiggle away. “Just listen.”
I scanned the room, and my blood turned cold. Everyone was watching me like a wounded animal, afraid I’d jump and flee.
Yet none of them seemed surprised. “You all knew?”
“Jaxon told us last night,” Dad said. “It’s why I told Beaux to back off when he suggested you stop drinking. Figured you earned it whether you knew it or not.”
“But, cameras…?”
“And we’re going to keep them,” Jaxon said.
My dad’s jaw popped and Beaux tightened his grip on me. Still, none of them were surprised. Their faces were masks of frustration and anger, but not shock.
“Excuse me?”
“They’re not streamed cameras. Means whoever put them up has to come collect them at some point. I’ve got two men on the building after hours. Don’t know when they last collected them, but if Beaux’s been getting a letter a week and that last photo she sent to him was a week ago, figure it’ll happen any day.”
“Unless she shows up and stalks me or the garage, and somehow she’s already seen you.”
Jaxon blinked twice. I was certain that was Rambo-man speak for “don’t think I’m stupid and didn’t think of that.”