CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
BEAUX
I walked back into Paige’s house expecting the eerie silence it’d been filled with when I left earlier.
Instead, laughter came from the dining room along with a manic shout of, “Bullshit!” A loud round of choruses echoed with Mike’s voice the loudest at, “Screw you, Paige!”
The hell?
I hurried around the corner and came to an abrupt stop. At the dining table sat Mike, Melanie, Sam, Paige, and Jaxon. All of them with their hands full of cards, Mike pouting while he scooped up the massive pile in the middle.
“What’s going on?” I asked, walking toward Paige like she was a wounded animal. When I left, she hadn’t wanted anything to do with me. Now her eyes were a bit glassy, her smile lazy.
“I’m drunk,” she drawled in her sweet Southern voice. “And we’re playing bullshit.”
“Bullshit?”
She wagged her finger at Jaxon. “It was his idea.”
He glared at me. His sunglasses were gone, but his eyes were just as black as them. His look told me this game was unequivocally, one hundred percent, not his idea.
Jaxon looked back at his cards and I moved to Paige’s back. “It was Jaxon’s idea?”
“No, that’s bullshit.” She giggled. Melanie joined her. “It was Melanie’s idea and he’s playing against his will because what else is he supposed to do?”
“Make sure you’re safe?” I asked, hating I had to say it. My glare matched Jaxon’s and he shook his head.
“I’m safe,” she said, looking up at me. Her eyes were droopy, barely open and she swayed toward me. “I have you.”
A bullet to the chest couldn’t have caused a more heated ache in my chest. Except this was the best kind of pain.
She trusted me. She wasn’t pushing me away and she wasn’t screaming at me. Perhaps that would happen after she sobered up. I squatted down at her side so we were at eye level. “Yeah?”
She leaned into me, head bumping into my shoulder and stayed there. “Yeah.”
“How drunk are you?”
She hiccupped. Trashed, obviously. Her brows furrowed and lips puckered while she took her time thinking. “My head is going to hurt in the morning but I won’t be puking.” She reached for a beer and I stopped her.
“How about we stay that way?”
She hiccupped again.
Melanie’s giggles grew louder.
“That’s probably a good idea,” Paige said, her words stretching out over a yawn and she covered her mouth. “It just felt so good earlier, I couldn’t stop.”
If it’d been off-season, I probably would have done the same.
“Okay then, drunk girl.” I pushed her chair back and pulled her cards from her hand. “How about we get upstairs. I’ve got more things to talk to you about.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No more talking. I’ve had enough talky-talk today and I’m done talking.”
“Then you can listen.”
“I don’t like doing that either today.”
I glanced at Sam for support. There was more shit to figure out and there wasn’t a lot of time. There was no damn way she was going to be working at the restaurant with the crowds it got until I knew she was safe. I hated to spoil it but if she were drunk when I told her I just paid her dad’s hospital expenses so she didn’t have to go back to waitressing, she’d take it better than sober.
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.