It’s been a long time since I got so out of control, and everything in my body rebels against it.

But not until it’s way too late—not until I’ve been at Pendant for God knows how long, putting back drink after drink with Chris O’Connor, in the middle of the week.

When I wake up the next morning, my mouth is so dry I can barely swallow, and all my memories from last night are swimming in a thick haze of alcohol. Snippets from a conversation we had keep surfacing, but it seems so absurd that I can’t believe I actually said any of those things, that Chris even answered.

“It’s her, man.” My tongue feels thick in my mouth, and drunk as I am I can still register, barely, how slurred the words are. “There’s nobody else.”

Chris splits into copies of himself in front of me, the both of them pushing a glass of water toward me across the table. “Have a drink, Dominic. No!” He laughs as I reach for a glass of champagne. Whose idea was it to order champagne? That’s a drink for celebrations, not whatever the hell this is. “Water.” He gets up, melding back into one person, and comes around the table to put the glass of ice water in my hand.

I sip at it. It’s bitterly cold against the heat of my throat. “Tastes good. This is good water.”

Chris sits down in a seat next to me. “You’re not like this, buddy.” His voice is soft, coaxing. “Let me take you home?”

“To what?” I slam the glass down on the surface of the table, too hard, and water sloshes over the rim. “There’s nothing to go there for. My apartment is empty, damn it.”

“Look.” He seems like he’s swaying, but I can’t tell if it’s me or him who’s doing it. “You’ve got a shot with her. You can fix things. Tonight she was having a bad night. She’ll get over it.”

“Yeah, right. Yeah, right!” I shout the last word at the top of my lungs, and a strained smile plays over Chris’s face. “People like Vivienne Davis don’t get over anything. They never let anything go. That’s what kind of woman she is. That’s what kind, Chris.”

His eyes have gone wide, but I have no idea why. “Vivienne Davis, huh?”

“You know her?” I reach for a drink and miss. “You know her, man?”

He presses his lips together like he’s thinking hard. “It’s not a name I’ve heard before.”

“If you knew her—” I lean toward him and almost fall forward off my chair. Chris puts out a hand and steadies me. “If you knew her, you wouldn’t forget her, and now I’ll live the rest of my life trying to forget her.”

God.

I roll over and press my face back into my pillow. The room rocks around me, and it takes every bit of effort to reach over and silence the alarm that’s like a jackhammer in my brain.

Get up and go to work.

My body ignores the command, slipping back into a still-drunk, half-hungover sleep.

It’s not any better when I wake up the second time, but I have no choice except to get out of bed, because I’m not going to hurl on my sheets. I’m only willing to sink to a certain level.

After I empty my stomach, I stagger back to the bedroom and sit on the edge of my bed.

What a disaster.

My phone alerts me to the fact that it’s nearing two o’clock in the afternoon, and that’s the only thing that makes me stand up, trying to get my feet under me, trying to feel like I’m not still drunk. I’m not—there’s no way I could be—but the world seems to sway gently around me.

A shower.

I need a hot shower.

Back in the bathroom, I turn on the water full blast and stand leaning against the wall, letting it run down over the back of my neck, for a long time. Then I reach for a bottle of shampoo.

Getting dressed and ready to go takes most of an hour. By the end of it, I’m feeling slightly less like I’m on the verge of death, but the thought of food is an abomination. Still, I go into the kitchen and force myself to drink half a bottle of water and choke down some buttered toast. I’ll call someone in to cook tonight. I shouldn’t go the entire day without eating, but standing at the counter makes me bone-tired.

When was the last time I did anything this stupid? It’s been years, and the memory of it—especially in light of what I had to drink last night—isn’t clear. Something in college, probably, because it wasn’t long after that that Wilder Enterprises hit rock bottom and I dug it out with my bare hands.

Craig is waiting for me by the curb when I get downstairs. The eight steps from the door of the building to the car in the damp heat are torture, but I put one foot in front of the other until I’m situated in the back of the car, the air conditioning blasting down on the back of my neck.

When I look up, we still haven’t moved, and Craig is staring at me in the rearview mirror.

“You sure you want to go to the office?” The question is as neutral as it can be. There’s not the slightest hint of judgment in his tone. There’s concern, nothing else, and it reminds me why I hired him in the first place.

“Yes. I’m getting a late start.” The laugh that bubbles up from my throat is a horrible parody, and Craig looks at me for another long moment before he nods his head, going back to focusing on the traffic in the side mirrors.

What is happening to me?

As soon as the car begins to move, I’m overcome by a wave of what feels like the nastiest vertigo ever to have existed in a human body. I put my hand out against the front seat and brace myself against the door to try to make it stop.

It doesn’t work.

I’m falling apart, and it’s because I gave up on Vivienne.

It’s so crystal clear that the realization is blinding. I can’t look at it head-on—not right now. I can’t decide if it’s true or another hangover delusion. What I do know is that I can’t go to work today.

“No,” I rasp. “I can’t—I need to go back inside.”

We’re barely three spots down from where we started, and Craig pulls smoothly back to the curb, then gets out and comes around to the passenger side door.

“Yeah, that’s a good call. I’m going to take you back upstairs, okay?”

The only thing I have strength to do is to nod in agreement.