Page 48 of Winter Ends
If I had known that was all it would take to piss him off, I would’ve taken it all back. If I’d learned anything since meeting Daniel, it was that he was fiercely independent. Even when his parents had come to visit, I’d been able to sense that he was reluctant to let them do anything. And I’d gone and fucking inserted myself.
“With me, now.”
Fuck. Just what I needed.
Chase grabbed my elbow and dragged me back down the hall, Daniel glaring after us. Funny how he didn’t want me to help him, but he had no problem with Chase stepping in?
Fuck that noise. When Chase tried to pull me into a room, I refused. “The hell, Dawson. Don’t play guard dog. Daniel’s a big boy who can fight his own battles. I didn’t do shit.”
When Chase raised his hands in surrender, I wanted to push past him and go back to everyone else. Go back to having fun. Shit, this was supposed to be a party, and until ten minutes ago, it was a blast. Now it seemed like it was all falling apart.
I leaned in, lowering my voice so that only Chase could hear me. “I’m not going to yank him around. I know about what happened, and it’s fucked. No one should have ever made him feel that way. I want him happy just as much as you do.”
Like a weight lifted off his shoulders, Chase relaxed, giving me a nod. “I know. It was just hard to see him go through all of that. We were all each other had for the longest time...”
I held my hands out to my sides. “I get it. The last thing I want is to come between your friendship. He’s lucky to have you. I don’t know what happened. We were talking, and he shut down.”
Another nod. “Yeah, he’s...” Chase looked down the hall. No one seemed to pay attention to us. “He’s better. The fact he let you in at all is progress. Nathan still doesn’t know all the details outside of the arrests. The rest of the guys don’t even know that much. It took forever for him to tell me.”
I patted Chase on the shoulder, and we went back to our friends. Now that I knew he wasn’t going to rip my head off. Things seemed back to normal if you didn’t count Daniel sitting at the kitchen counter tossing back another shot of that whiskey. Damn, he was going to hurt later.
I wasn’t his keeper. Daniel made it loud and clear that there were some things he didn’t need my help with. The problem with having been hot and heavy so quickly was that there were still a lot of kinks we needed to iron out.
Chapter 31
Daniel
The room spun.
I couldn’t focus on anything except for the feel of the cold glass in my hand. Shit, maybe Shawn had been right about taking it easy on this stuff. But fuck, I needed to not think about Art and Tilly any more today. First, I had Chase drilling me about it, and then to have Shawn asking me about therapy? What a damn joke. I didn’t need a stranger to listen to my problems. I’d been doing just peachy on my own, thank you very much.
When I tried to stand and immediately ass-planted back onto the stool, doubts crept in that maybe I didn’t have things together as much as I thought. Someone showing concern shouldn’t have me burying my problems in a bottle of expensive booze.
Yeah, I knew this stuff. There were several bottles of it in the back room at Margaret’s. There was always one on Mr. Stevens’ desk, and it was what he used for entertaining special guests. If I had to guess, it was a favorite of his. Maybe I should have felta little more guilty shooting back so much of my boss’s favorite liquor, but I was too drunk to care at the moment.
Not when I was feeling nice and numb.
Numb.
I didn’t want to be numb.
I lifted my head from the counter, trying to remember when I’d put the bottle down. My friends were scattered around the living room. Chase was in Nathan’s lap and they were making out like no one else was around. Andrew and Brandon were talking to Aiden while Joe stood in the corner with his arms crossed, watching them while he visited with Shawn.
My heart did this weird fluttery thing. God, I shouldn’t feel so fucked up over the guy. I’d hated his guts before we got here. Maybe I still did, but now I knew what it was like to have him fuck me. That didn’t mean we had a developing love story. Did it? I had told him more than I’d told anyone else. There wasn’t a need to if I wanted to get dicked down and nothing more.
Cool fingers landed on my neck. There I was, spacing out again. Except, my head was back on the counter again.
“Are you okay?”
I wanted to turn and melt into Shawn, and clutch at the clean-smelling t-shirt he wore.
When I didn’t answer, I wasn’t given a choice. Shawn hauled me into his chest before lifting me into a princess carry. Prince carry? Shit. Why did it even fucking matter? The whole fucking room was spinning, anyway.
My stomach rolled, the little I’d eaten during the day threatening to make a reappearance, as he carried me across the room and laid me on the couch. Chase and Nathan moved out of the way, finally realizing they weren’t the only two people in the room.
“Can someone get me some water?” Shawn sounded panicked. I couldn’t see his face. Were my eyes closed? The couch wassoft, and I wanted to roll over and sleep, but the hands on my shoulders prevented me.
“You smell... good,” I said, feeling like my mouth was full of cotton, and the next thing I knew, someone shifted me into a sitting position. A glass was pressed to my lips and tipped back. I nearly choked when the cool water hit my tongue, but I swallowed instinctually. Drink or drown and I wasn’t going to die from a cup of ice water. That would be the stupidest way to go.
