Chapter 4 #3
“No,” I say immediately. “Please don’t cry. Are you okay?”
“Am I okay?” he says incredulously. “What about you?”
I shrug. “I’m awake and verbal. Let’s call that a win.”
“I’m not sure that’s the correct way to describe the verbal bit.”
I laugh but his face loses its brief flash of humour and he grabs me into a hug again.
The door opening makes him pull back, and I shiver at the loss of his heat. Jonas, Dean, and Pip file back in.
“Okay?” Dean asks. He comes close and cups my face gently in his big hand. His eyes are impossibly gentle. “You gave us such a scare.”
“Sorry. What happened?” I say hoarsely.
“You don’t remember?” Pip says sharply.
I shake my head.
Pip glances at Reuben in what he probably thinks is an unobtrusive way, but Pip Simmonds is incapable of being understated.
“Nothing happened,” Jonas says. “It’s all fine.”
He means it to be comforting, but I can’t be doing with that bullshit. I ignore him and look to the one man whom I always trust. Reuben leans close again and pushes my hair back from my face, his eyes busily scanning my features.
He answers me like I knew he would. “We were at a club. Do you remember?”
I search my mind and get a flash of strobe lights and the heavy beat of music, but I’m not sure if that was now or a time before. I’m suddenly scared. “I can’t remember,” I say in a small voice, and he makes an abrupt gesture towards me that’s quickly cut off.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “The doctor says you’ll remember. You were dancing with Robbie.” Something darkens in his face, but his voice stays even.
I rack my brains and then gasp. “He gave me something. Slipped it in my mouth when he kissed me.” His hand tightens on my leg. “What was it?”
“MDMA,” he says. There’s a world of fury in his voice. “But it was spiked with something else.”
“He gave me Molly that was spiked? That fucker.”
“You didn’t ask for it.”
I stare at Reuben. “Well, of course I didn’t.” I look around the room. “You all know that, right?”
“I know,” Reuben says, his tone banked with barely suppressed anger.
Pip puts a hand on his arm.
Reuben continues more calmly. “He was staying in the hotel next to the club. He took you to his room.”
“Did he—?” I swallow hard, terrified by the images slamming through my aching head. “Did he—?”
“No, he fucking didn’t,” Reuben snaps.
Some of my fear eases its hold on my chest. I take a deep breath and ask, “What did you do?”
“What do you mean?” he says, eyes widening innocently.
I roll my eyes and immediately regret it when I feel an ice pick stab my brain. “Shit,” I gasp, pressing my hand to my eyes.
“Xavier?” Reuben’s voice has a note of horror, and I fumble for his hand. He squeezes it tightly.
I wait for the pain to ebb and then pull my hand away. “I’m okay,” I say to their anxious faces. I look at Reuben. “My memories might currently be a bit hazy, but I still know you did something to Robbie.”
“How?” Pip asks.
“I know Reuben. His personality alone is a lethal weapon.”
Reuben’s mouth twists at that statement. “I dealt with him,” he says calmly.
“Oh, dear. Is he sleeping with the fishes?” Everyone apart from Reuben looks slightly scandalised which makes me laugh and then I have to hold my head again. “Oh, come on,” I mutter. “That was funny.”
“You should take it on the road,” Reuben says, his hand gentle as he pushes my hair away from my face again. “Anyway, Robbie has been dealt with.”
“I notice that you didn’t answer my question.”
“That’s because it was one of your more ridiculous ones.”
“One of them? That makes it sound like I have many.”
“You do.”
Jonas steps forward and pats my hand. “Robbie is no longer connected to the agency. I’m afraid the police will want a statement from you.”
“Oh, tidings of great joy.”
“Later,” Reuben says. “They’re not getting in here until I say so.”
“Are you the chief of the Met Police in your spare time?” Pip asks.
I try not to laugh. “Okay,” I say. “So you’ve sacked Robbie, and I’m fine. Why all the long faces?”
“Because you might not have been,” Jonas says simply.
Reuben sighs and lowers himself into the bedside chair. He immediately takes my hand again and squeezes it.
“You haven’t been yourself for a while,” Jonas continues.
“What does that mean? Who else have I been? Ryan Reynolds?”
“How lovely that flippancy is making a return,” Reuben observes.
Jonas takes a deep breath. His eyes are kind, but he straightens his shoulders as if he’s steeling himself.
My heart sinks. “Are you sacking me too?” I whisper.
His face softens. “Of course not, but I am requesting that you take a leave of absence.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re off work.”
“For how long?” The question comes out too loudly, and Reuben squeezes my hand again.
“Long enough to get sorted,” Jonas says steadily.
“And what does that mean?”
Jonas glances at Pip, and Pip approaches the bed, with a kind, steady gaze that’s completely without judgement. “You’ve been out of control this year,” he says.
I open my mouth to argue but decide against it when he raises his eyebrows. How does someone so slight scare me?
“Robbie may have given you something,” Pip says. “But you have to admit that lately, it’s also something you might have done of your own choice.”
I sneak a look at Reuben, but he’s staring down at our joined hands as if they hold the answers to the mysteries of the world.
“You’re forgetting jobs,” Pip continues. “You’ve been turning up late, and it’s as if you’re careening off the tracks while I have to stand by and watch, and I can’t have that. You mean too much to me.”
I’m unexpectedly touched. I knew he liked me, but I can count on one hand the number of people who really give a shit about me. This feels like something a friend would say. Not a booker.
As if reading my mind, he says, “You’re my friend, yes?” I nod. “Well, friends tell each other the truth, and Xavier Quaver, I’m terrified I’m going to lose you if you go on like this.”
He falters, and Jonas steps in. “We’d like you to take a couple of months off.”
“What?”
“I can demand it. Your contract specifies no drugs, and you know that you’ve been taking them, even without Robbie’s actions. You fell off the runway in Milan.”
“It was very slippery,” I say sulkily.
“I don’t want to invoke that contract clause. I need you to get yourself well because you want to get well.”
“Just a couple of months,” Pip says quickly. “We want you to go somewhere where you can relax and get better.”
“Like rehab?” I say acidly.
“Do you think that’s the right option?” he says in a calm voice.
I consider that and then shake my head. “No. I haven’t got a problem.
” I haven’t got a habit, but the truth is that I might possibly develop one if I keep going.
Drugs were a shiny extra to a night for me once—something to liven up the boredom and make me feel free and easy.
But lately they’ve become something much scarier—a crutch I can’t be without. “Not rehab,” I say again.
“Then where?” Jonas asks.
“He’ll come with me,” Reuben says, breaking into the moment with his usual sledgehammer tendencies.
“I bloody will not,” I say immediately. There’s no way I’m going anywhere with him with my resistance so lowered. It’s a disaster in the making.
He raises one eyebrow. “Yes, you will.”
“I’m sorry. Who died and put you in charge?”
“I decided.”
Jonas sighs at our rising voices. “Stop it, the pair of you. Reuben, I’ve told you that I cannot agree to this plan. Xavier is a grown man and perfectly capable of making his own decisions. You can’t just take him off somewhere because you say so.”
“I can, and I will.”
Jonas looks up as if praying for patience. I could tell him it’s hopeless. The heavens have never answered that plea for me. “You do not have the right,” Jonas says.
Reuben straightens, and I can almost see the words form on his lips.
“Oh shit,” I breathe, but it’s no use.
“I have every fucking right, Jonas. Xavier is my husband.”
“That’s done it,” I whisper. I lower myself back into my pillows and close my eyes as the room fills with noisy voices. I consider joining the argument, seeing as it’s about me, but I think I’m coming down in favour of just letting Jesus take the wheel for the time being.