Page 38 of His Hot Mess

“Well, shit,” Chris breathed from underneath me.

CHRIS

It was the smell of bacon that brought me to consciousness the next morning. I groaned, fumbling around beside the bed for the water I usually kept there.

“Look who’s alive!”

I opened my eyes to slits, cringed at the incoming daylight, and closed them again.

“How you feeling little guy?” Graydon called in a sing-song voice. It made me want to swing out a fist. Except I had no idea where he was and my head was pounding too hard to think about moving.

Plus it was still too bright.Waytoo bright. I lay my forearm over my eyes.

“Little guy?” I mumbled after I’d registered his actual words. Graydon and I were very close to the same size. But that didn't matter now, not in the least. My back felt like someone had jammed an elbow into it sometime in the night, and my head refused to stop throbbing, as if I were beating it against a wall.

A wall.

I had a vision of backing up against a wall, a woman, my cock aching it was so hard.

The arm not covering my face came to life, my hand sliding down my front on autopilot, until some last surviving brain cell remembered Graydon was somewhere nearby. I froze. Why the hell was Graydon in my room? Or, the way he was yelling, maybe down the hall. Reluctantly, I lowered my arm from my face and forced myself to open my eyes and keep them open.

"Don't listen to him," came a woman's voice as I let the daylight in. Daylight that was a little stabby to my vision for my taste. Lucy came into view, a glass of water in one hand and two orange-coated pills in the other.

Painkillers.

“You're an angel,” I mumbled, taking the pills and the water and lifting my head up just enough to down them both. I looked around as the pieces from last night began slotting themselves back into my memory.

I wasn’t home. I was at Graydon's house; no, Lucy and Graydon’s house now. Gray had a barbecue last night and I crashed here. I drank too much, which wasn't like me at all.

Then I remembered.

"Sadie," I whispered, as the reason I’d overdone it hit me in the gut like a pile of bricks.

Lucy, taking my empty glass, grinned. "Thereyou go."

She headed back to the kitchen, while I fell back down on the couch, groaning as last night came back to me in jagged pieces.

The pink cocktails. The teasing. The running into each other in the hallway.

That hallway right there.

My stomach bobbed as I shifted to try to get up. Pain zinged up my side, cutting through the nausea surging from the sudden movement. I twisted my body, pulling my shirt up to see a long purple bruise stretching the length of my torso.

I groaned as I prodded it with my fingers, each touch sending electric pain radiating across my ribs.

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

Then I remembered the end of the night. The bathroom. We’d fallen into the tub together. Graydon had busted through the door, his face rolling through reactions, from concern at first to shock at the shower curtain rod ripped off the wall, and finally to stifled laughter as he took in the two of us wrapped up in the shower curtain in the tub.

Mortification bubbled up in my stomach, bringing the nausea back even as I scowled at the memory of Graydon trying not to laugh at us.

"Think you're up for breakfast?" Lucy said, coming back from the kitchen.

Lucy. She'd been right there beside Graydon last night, a hand clapped over her mouth. She'd gone in to help Sadie up. Had Sadie been limping? Or was it the way my head was lying sideways in the tub that made me unable to properly see her?

Lucy reached a hand out to help me up.

“Is Sadie okay?” I asked as I took it. She couldn’t hold my weight but at least helped keep me steady. I prayed I wouldn’t puke on her.

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