He’s studying me like he can read my thoughts. He’d be disappointed. It’s a swamp inside my head, murky and dangerous, filled with monsters.
&nb
sp; “Hey, Nate,” Sydney says softly, crouching in front of me, and her face is the sweetest damn thing I’ve ever rested my eyes on. It sure beats my cracked ceiling. “Next time, you let us know, yeah?”
“Okay.” I can’t refuse whatever she asks of me. No wonder she got Weston to come to the party.
And when she leans in and kisses my cheek, her lips soft and warm, I shiver—with reaction, with pleasure, with want, with fucking gratitude. “I’m right next door. Just text me if you feel it coming on.”
Maybe. Why not? She can put a compress to my neck and draw the curtains. Her kiss still burns on my cheek, a ghostly touch.
As for the really bad stuff? She knows none it, and no one ever will, if I have any say in it. There’s nothing she or anyone else can do.
Long ago, I tried telling people and nobody believed me. Now it’s too fucking late to undo it all. The rock hanging around my neck is getting heavier. I’ve sunk so low I’m not sure anyone could pull me up before I suffocate.
“Now fess up, Syd,” West says, yanking me back from the chasm my thoughts were tumbling into. “Did you two set us up at the party?”
“It was Kash’s idea, actually,” she says, and I glance at him, though my eyes are closing again.
Man, I’m so damn exhausted, but I manage a frown. “You serious?”
“Well, you kissed and made up, right?” Kash says, lifting his chin, scowling at me from under his fringe. “So my work here is done.”
He offered to help West and me make up? Ignoring the kissing bit, of course. Why would he? He doesn’t really know us, and I got the impression that he didn’t… really care. Didn’t want to get involved.
In this messy triangle.
Unless he’s trying to impress Syd. Fuck, if that’s what this is all about…
“Cool your jets, dude,” he says, as if he can read my thoughts. “I’m not going to stick around here for much longer. What you guys have…is special.” He shakes his blond head. “Just don’t fuck it up again when I’m not around to fix it.”
Chapter Thirteen
Sydney
Well, this night went both right and wrong. I had no idea Nate gets migraines. West said he thought they’d stopped. Obviously, he was wrong.
He sent me home, promising to call me when Nate wakes up again. I couldn’t sleep, though, even if Nate didn’t throw up again and looked better when I left his side. He was fast asleep, and his face had finally relaxed.
It eased some of the fear churning inside me. When West texted me at the party that Nate wasn’t well, I thought I’d die trying to find them in that maze of a house. When I saw Nate on the bathroom floor, white as a sheet, a hand over his eyes, I swear my heart had stopped.
That boy worries me.
West worries me, too.
What am I going to do with these boys? Why can’t I pull back and pretend I don’t care? Why can’t I pause these feelings, and focus more on my own problems?
My own sorrow and fear.
At least I’d located Kash, and he’s the one who helped Weston carry Nate to the cab he found for us, and then up to the apartment. He was a solid presence through it all, practical and focused, bringing a bucket by the bed in case Nate had to throw up, finding painkillers and anti-nausea pills.
Kash seems to be in control—the only one of us who wasn’t in a panic.
So why do I feel as if I should be worried about him, too?
Force of habit, maybe, I think, and open the balcony door to get some fresh air, the apartment too stifling.
Speaking of the devil… A figure is leaning on the balcony rail of Nate’s apartment, the end of his cigarette glowing red, smoke curling up into the gray, early dawn.