“Who’s that man, Mummy?”

“What man, my love?”

“The one with long, brown hair.”

My Mum smooths the duvet over my chest, my star-shaped lamp lighting up her pretty face in the partial dark of my bedroom. “Did you see a man with long, brown hair, darling?”

I nod. “The one last night.”

“Where did you see him?”

“I got up to get some water.”

Mum’s eyebrows scrunch up like caterpillars. “Last night?”

“Yeah… I saw him walk into your room. Drucilla Gibson’s father.”

“I don’t think you saw Drucilla Gibson’s father, dear. Not here.”

I nod. “I know it was Drucilla’s father. Every time I see him, he gives me a yucky look.”

My mother’s mouth is tightly shut, so I can see her frown dimples. “Ronald Gibson is a family friend, Liam. He’s one of your father’s best friends. He wasn’t here last night.”

I pull the covers over my head. I don’t want to see my Mum’s face when she looks upset like that…

“I know I saw him.”

“Saw who?”

“Saw the man. The man with long brown hair.” I feel a cool hand on my forehead, feel her fingers stroking. “Where is he? They let her in… Supposed to be…my party.”

“It’s your party. It’s okay.” I think I smell her: Lucy. I feel her lips against my cheek, and it feels so good. Almost quells the fear pinching my chest. I reach up for her, but my shoulder screams in pain. It makes me gasp.

“Remember what the doctor said?” she whispers. “Try not to move your shoulder, okay? That’s why he’s got it like this, wrapped up. Remember how he said you dislocated it?”

I squint up at her. “I saw the man.”

I smell her. I can smell how good she smells. Vanilla.

“I know you did,” she whispers. She’s got soft hands, too. I feel them in my hair. Why is it so long, I wonder.

“Lucy?”

“I’m here.”

A groan I don’t expect pours from my lips—because it hurts so bad. “My head hurts,” I pant. “Can you…cut my hair?”

“Cut your hair—right now?”

I try to sit up, grunting from the pain in my shoulder. I brace myself against her shoulder—Lucy’s lying against me—and look around. The room is dark. Confusing.

“Cut my hair,” I tell her. Every word, my every move, hurts so damn much. “I just want…no more long hair.”

“Liam, are you sure?”

“Please, Lucy… Cut it, please.”

I feel her hand against my cheek. “Dr. Burns will be back soon with some medicine for you. Remember what he said?”

I try to open my eyes, despite the awful pulsing in my head. “I don’t look like him. It was his. That one was his, that baby was…” My eyes are closing, but I see her worried face. My mother’s face is white and dead. My Lucy’s face is puzzled.

“I don’t know the baby,” I try to tell her in my cracked voice. I never met my mother’s baby, my sister, because she died.

I’m going to die, too. I can feel it.

“Lucy… Will you hug me?”

“Sure. Of course. Poor Liam.” We’re lying down again, and Lucy’s holding me. “My headache—it hurts…really bad.”

“He said it’s because your blood pressure is high. The doctor gave you something for it. Do you remember? It’s been almost an hour since you took it. He gave you a shot of pain meds too. So the headache would ease up.”

“Not eased,” I mutter. Her hand strokes my hair. “That, though…” What she’s doing makes me feel better. My Lucy.

“He’s coming back with something to help you detox.”

“Detox…”

“He said you have to take it for a little bit, maybe a few days, and then you could taper off. Don’t worry. It’ll help you feel better. Come here…” She wraps herself around me, urging me to rest my cheek against the softness of her neck.

* * *

Seeing Liam like this—shaking, gripping his head, murmuring nonsense—is so much harder, so much stranger, than I ever would have known. It’s not as if I’ve known him for a long time, but in the time I have known him, I guess I’ve gotten used to his easy smile, the careful way he held himself apart from me the first day I was here, before we gradually tugged together like a pair of magnets.

Before the doctor left the first time, he chastised Liam, saying, “You might have tapered off.”

Liam, whose eyes were shut, clenched his jaw and shook his head—and I know why. I know why he quit drinking cold turkey.

“I’m prescribing Librium. For a few days, if not longer. We’ll see how you do,” Dr. Burns told him.

Then the doctor left, saying he’d be back soon. As soon as the door shut, Liam whispered, “You should go, Lucy.”

But he’s still holding onto me. He seems to like to press his face against my throat and hide in my hair.

Right now, he’s murmuring something about paying someone off. I stroke his hair back. “It’s okay…”

Dr. Burns is back a short time later, rolling an IV pole that makes my stomach flip-flop when I see it. “I want to give the first dose of Librium this way, along with I some electrolytes and vitamins. Things he’d get if he was at a center.”

Shit. A center.

I hold Liam close as the doctor cleans the inside of his elbow with an alcohol swab. When the needle goes in, he stiffens just a little. When the doctor starts the IV bag, I feel him shiver.

I know the doctor’s here to help, but I’m glad when he leaves. He tells us he’ll be back in two hours and gives me instructions to call him if any number of things happen. When the door shuts, I draw poor, still Liam closer to me.

“Is your headache any better?”

He doesn’t answer, so I play with his hair. “You’re okay. You’re going to feel better soon. Is there anything that I can do for you right now?”

“Worried,” he whispers.

“About what?”

“About…you.”

“I’m okay.”

“The baby,” he rasps.

“The baby is okay, too. Promise.”

He shakes his head, his eyes rolling just slightly.

For the next few hours, I hold him while he sweats and trembles. I hold a cold rag to his forehead and his throat, and stroke his hair. Finally, whatever’s in the IV seems to reach him. I feel it when his body relaxes. He goes still, and falls asleep with his arm around me.

He murmurs and whispers all night. He talks about his mom. He talks about the baby. He kisses me and once, tells me to go—to keep the baby away from him.

“You’re fine. So is the baby.”

I hold him. It’s all I can do. At one point mid-morning, he wakes up and blinks slowly around the room. He looks puzzled. Unhappy.

“You okay?” I stroke his forehead. “Feeling bad?”

He shuts his eyes. “Embarrassed,” he says hoarsely.

“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s okay.”

He shakes his head.

“We’re friends—and lovers, too, remember?” I tease.

“I don’t…want…to be this way for you.” He rests his arm over his face.

“You don’t have to be any way for me.”

“I didn’t know…I couldn’t stop.”

“No—of course not. I know, baby. Don’t worry. Everything will be okay. Just go to sleep.”

* * *

“People found out I’m pregnant somehow. Like, the paps found out. Some of them think it’s yours, but no one really does. That’s just some unreliable, unsourced side story on one of the raggier rags.”

Lucy rolls her eyes, her hand over her still-flat stomach. She looks gorgeous in a pink and white paisley gown, her hair flowing around her shoulders.

“I’m going to go get you some chicken and dumplings,” she says; it sounds like “dumplins” in her soft accent. “I just want you to have a few bites.”

Before she goes, Lucy leans over the bed and grabs a pillow. I look up at her face as she props it behind me. I look down at myself, and that’s when I feel it—

“My hair…”

She bites her lip. “You wanted me to cut it. Is that okay?”

I nod. I watch as Lucy tucks my sheets and duvet around me. I lean my head back on the pillow, shut my eyes. I feel heavy. I don’t like it.

“Dr. Burns said you can drop back on the Librium today. The IV’s gone.”

I look down. There was an IV? Christ—I’m such a fuckup.

I rub my eyes. “Clary. I…need…to go to Clary.” Now that I’m not drowning everything in scotch and whiskey—now that Lucy’s in the picture—I can’t let this shit go on.

“What about tomorrow? I don’t think Dr. Burns wants you to drive today.”

I nod. Too much trouble to explain I wouldn’t drive myself. Too much trouble to do anything but lie in bed and watch the light behind the curtains.

When I wake up on some other morning, my mind foggy with the haze of Lucy in the bed with me—her lips against her cheek, her laughter near my ear—I find her sitting cross-legged in a window seat, reading from a hardback book and sipping something from a brown glass bottle. I see her lips curve in a tiny smile. I notice Grey winding himself around her bare feet.

My eyes trail up from her ankles, over her bare calves, up her creamy, curvy thighs, which I realize are bare because she’s in a robe. With her knees crisscrossed, it’s ridden up a little.

Jesus Christ, she’s gorgeous. What is she still doing here?

I guess she feels my gaze on her, because her eyes flit over to me. When they find my face, they widen; her mouth breaks into a big grin.

“Hi there! You’re awake.”

“Seems so.” I push myself up on one of my elbows, squeezing my dry eyes shut for a second before I look around the room. It looks…normal I guess. There’s some flowers on a table in one of the corners. Red tulips.

I note an unfamiliar Macbook on another little table. And some lip balm on my nightstand.

“You’ve been a little out of it for the last two days.”

I blink at her, feeling dumb as fuck. A little? I don’t even remember day turning to night.

I swallow, sit up further, roll my—

“Fuck.”

“Your shoulder, yeah… How does it feel?”

I test it with a smaller movement, finding, “It’s okay.”

“Good.” She walks over to the bed, sticking her hands in her robe’s deep pockets. “Dr. Burns said it should be getting better.”

I nod.

There’s this moment when we’re staring at each other. Lucy looks a little shy. I feel like the best thing I can do is run. Goddamn, I’m so fucking embarrassed. I cover my eyes with one hand, hoping she’ll think the bright light from the open windows is hurting my head.

I feel her body indent the mattress. Followed by her arms around my shoulders, then her mouth against my temple. “Please don’t act weird with me. Don’t be shy and stuff. You’ve been a perfect gentleman and totally sexy lying around in only boxer-briefs. I’ve seen a lot of the crown jewels.”

I feel her cheek curve up, pressing against mine. She pulls slightly away, and I can see her smile is sincere. She wiggles her eyebrows, looking beautiful and teasing.

My eyes close. I don’t mean to, but they act on their own. I can’t fucking look at her.

“You can go at any time,” I hear myself say in a gruff voice. “I’ll be okay.”

Lucy hits my shoulder. I crack my eyes open. “Liam Clary. I can’t believe that you would pull that shit on me.”

“What? That I’ll be fine?” My temper breaks like a fucking ocean wave. I find I’m gritting my teeth, my pulse pounding in my temples. “I am fine.”

“I know you are. Do you think I’m here because I thought you’d die without me? I realize you’re a prince, Liam. There are people lined up out the hallway to take care of you and help. People who you know and trust. People who have signed their NDAs, so don’t worry. I haven’t let any of them in here because I wanted to be with you.”

“Making sure I stick around for baby?”

Lucy’s face darkens. Her mouth flattens, then she chews her lip. I wait for her to speak—or leave.