Chapter 32 Hangover
Hangover
Iwas woken by the fierceness of my hangover.
My brain felt like it was protesting imprisonment against my skull.
My stomach was a cauldron that threatened to erupt with some kind of catastrophic explosion.
Light stabbed at my eyes as I dragged them open.
I rose, stumbling to the bathroom, and dropped to my knees, clutching the toilet bowl and hurled up wine and god knew what else.
The room spun. The taste of stale alcohol and bile burned my throat, and my head was beating like a drum.
Groaning, I sank to the floor, pulling my knees up and clutching my head tenderly in my hands as I leaned against the tile wall.
I took my hands away from my face and looked down—I was wearing only a white sheer bra and underwear.
A flash of Karson removing my dress emerged.
I groaned again, not from the agony of the hangover, but from mortification.
Climbing to my feet slowly, I turned on the shower, and dragged my sorry ass in. As I washed my hair, I realized with disgust and growing embarrassment, some of last night’s aftereffects stuck to the strands.
After spending a long time in the shower and emerging feeling a bit better, I brushed my teeth, dressed, stripped the bed and headed downstairs.
“Well, good afternoon.” Ethan called out, his voice sent claws through my head.
“Morning. Voice down, please,” I said delicately, moving to the laundry and throwing the sheets in the washing machine.
I came back to the sitting room, wincing and blinking behind tired, sore eyes. Ethan laughed as I lowered my frame gingerly onto the sofa.
“I’ll make you something to eat.”
Ten minutes later, he held out eggs and mushrooms on toast for me with a cup of tea. Bacon and eggs for himself.
“Thank you.” I nibbled at the crust.
He grinned. “Eat, the food will help soak up the alcohol.”
I took a few more bites, sat my plate on the side table, and slumped back on the couch. “Your smirk is not helping.”
“I’m going out to drink . . . a lot!” He mimicked my words to him yesterday, pretending to be huffy.
I ignored his comment and thought back to the reason I’d drunk so much in the first place. “Did you find Jefferson or Cole?”
“No, not yet. Matt has watches on the remaining families, though, which you would have found out if you bothered to stay a little longer.” He threw me a condescending look.
“Matt thinks they’re in danger then, and it is something to do with the development?”
“Is there anyone who wants you dead?” Why ask the question if he thought it was Cole?
Ethan shrugged. “Matt is sufficiently concerned, but it’s just a precaution until we can talk to Cole or Jefferson.”
He mentioned getting more answers from them with such confidence, as if it was a given, as if they’d just spill the beans. The same confidence Karson had last night.
I stared at him, my friend, and that’s what we’d become—friends.
“Of all the places he could build, why choose that estate? Why go to all that trouble killing people for it? It makes no sense. Is there gold or something buried up there we don’t know about?”
“We don’t know if he has killed anyone yet, not for certain.” He sat his plate on the coffee table. He’d taken all of a half a dozen bites. “But if I find out they had anything to do with Katrina’s or those children’s deaths, I will kill them.”
People said things like that all the time in moments of anger, but they didn’t mean it. When it came to crunch time, most people wouldn’t harm anyone. Yet there was something in his tone and a look on his face, something hard, something lethal. Something that made me think he meant it.
Thump, thump, thump.
The image played back in my head of the night at the bar and Ethan’s eyes staring back at me, black, bottomless pits of rage.
A chilled washed over my skin. I folded my arms and rubbed them.
As if he read my thoughts, his expression softened, and he sighed. “It was probably just an accident.”
“Do you really believe that?” I asked.
“I’m not sure what I believe,” he replied, his gaze dropping to the floor.
“The fire is a big coincidence, too big. But murdering children . . .” my voice trailed off.
It was a cruelty I couldn’t comprehend. No human with a shred of decency would do something so horrific.
“But it makes no sense to put a development in an area that is dangerous, where people die, and locals say ghosts and vampires dwell.” I cringed as I mentioned the last part, there was no such thing as vampires or ghosts. I saw my mother, my brain argued.
Ethan snorted. “Superstitious fools with nothing better to do than make up stories to entertain themselves.”
“Something isn’t right—there’s more to this story. There’s something we’re missing.”
“The only thing missing is you in my bedroom.” He changed the subject without skipping a beat.
I rolled my eyes. “Be serious.”
“Oh, I’m serious.”
He looked serious. Dark blue eyes locked with mine, tinged with desire, and I felt a tingle in places I definitely shouldn’t feel them. Why did he have to be so fucking stunning?
“Ethan!” I berated him. “We should be more worried about finding out why he wants to come to Church Heights.”
“Forget about it, Amy,” he said flatly, breaking eye contact as he collected both plates, heading to the kitchen. “Leave the investigations to Matt.”
“You’re not fooling me,” I said, noting how quickly he tried to divert the topic again. “You know something!”
“I think I liked you better when you were semi-conscious,” he yelled back. I got up and followed him. He had his back to me, washing down the plates.
I leaned on the door frame. “What’s going on?”
He turned, leaning up against the sink and crossing his arms in front of him. “I don’t know.”
I raised my brows.
“Just leave it, Amy,” he said, his voice sounding like a warning snarl. “If there’s any kind of danger, I don’t want you anywhere near it.”
“So, you’re saying there is something dangerous up there other than getting lost and unpredictable weather?”
“No.” He snatched a cloth off the sink, shaking his head as he wiped at some crumbs.
Before setting a firm stare on me. “Just promise me you’ll stay right away from Rutherford’s Estate.”
I wanted to look into it, the Toronto’s and the Millers deserved that. My head pounded as if protesting such an erratic, scantily thought-through action, but I said, “Fine.”
Tomorrow, I thought to myself, and I turned and made my way tentatively back to the couch, settling myself down and closing my eyes.
I woke up sometime later feeling much better.
Ethan was nowhere to be seen. I headed to my bedroom and grabbed a pillow, then looked down at the books sitting on my bedside table that Ethan had bought for me when I was in the hospital.
I’d already read two of them by Stephen King, my favorite author.
The last one left to read was Fifty Shades of Grey.
I smiled at the memory of him handing them to me.
I’d looked quizzically at him when I noticed this one.
He’d said, “I know you like happy endings, and this one has lots of happy endings.”
I pulled on a bikini and a little pair of frayed denim shorts that almost revealed my butt when I took a step—Jodie’s selection no doubt.
I grabbed a picnic blanket that I’d seen before in the linen closet, then a water bottle from the fridge, and I headed outside to lie under the huge oak tree.
I spread the blanket flat, laid down with my head on the pillow, picked up the book and started reading.
I read a few pages, but none of the words had sunk in.
I had no idea what I’d just read. I sighed and started the book again.
From down on the road somewhere, I heard the distinct rumble of a motorbike, and it was getting closer. It was coming up the driveway, I realized, and moments later it came into view. It was a black bike, large and shiny. Riding it was Karson.
I closed my eyes and prayed he’d head inside to see Ethan.
He didn’t. “You look terrible.” I could hear the smile in his voice.
I cracked my eyes open. The only word I had to describe him was striking.
He was smiling, his hazel eyes gleamed, like sunlight dancing off dew on spring leaves.
He wore a black T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and his thick head of hair was ruffled from the wind.
My blood rushed through my veins, and my heart did a one-eighty.
I muttered, “I feel worse than I look.”
He laughed, a soft and gravelly sound that fluttered through my body. I stared up at him mesmerized by the sound, by his beauty.
“May I sit with you?” he asked.
Who asks to sit down?
I love you. Oh, Christ.
“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled, tearing my eyes away and flushing with embarrassment. I sat up, tucking my knees up and rubbing my shins, suddenly intensely aware my breath and body reeked of stale alcohol—and worse, the acidic scent of vomit.
He sat down a few feet away, his legs flat, his ankle hooked over the other.
“Thanks for taking me home.” I kept my eyes downcast, and my face tilted slightly away. “I’m sorry about the . . . accident on the way here.”
“It was my pleasure, Amelia.”
I risked peeking up at him, his lips were curved into a wry smile. “You enjoyed holding the hair of a drunk girl back while she projectile vomits?”
“Well, perhaps pleasure is an exaggeration—amusing might be more befitting.” He paused, scanning the trees. “I was riding past and thought I’d call in and see how you were today.”
Just happened to be riding past, not “I came by specially to check up on you.” It was stupid, but I felt a pang of disappointment in my stomach. My eyes shifted to his bike.
“Do you like riding?” he asked.
I looked back, he had this way when he looked at me; his gaze seemed to go straight through me. As if he could read every thought I’d ever had, knew everything there was to know about me, and I was the most intriguing thing in the world to him.
“On bikes, you mean?” I said, laying my legs flat on the blanket.
“Yes, Amelia,” he drawled. “On bikes.”
“I’ve never been on one.”
“I’d offer to take you today, but by the color of your skin, it’s safe to assume you’re not feeling well.”
“I think I had one too many glasses of alcohol last night.”
He raised his eyebrows. “One? More like several.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
He leaned back on his forearms. We sat in silence for a long moment, and I was acutely aware of how close he was. He oozed power; it was as if I could feel his energy, a vibration against my skin and deeper, down to my core, like an electromagnetic field pulling me in. Urging me closer.
His fingers were splayed on the grass. The same fingers that had held my face tenderly.
I remembered the warm feeling of them against the sides of my cheeks.
Delusional disorder might explain visions, but not the feel of his chest on my body, or his arms around my back, or the kiss on my forehead.
Whatever he was, it was nothing sinister; he wasn’t a monster.
I was certain of it. Monsters didn’t save girls from fires.
I should ask. All I had to say was, “How did you run so fast, and what are you?” Simple enough.
I clasped my hands together in my lap and drew a deep breath to ask, but before I could get a word out, he said, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I paused, nerves rattling in my stomach.
“I just can’t work out how I got out of the fire.
The last thing I remember was crawling on the gravel.
How was it possible for me to run a few miles to get past the blaze that had already rendered me unconscious and make it to the road on my own? ”
There was a flicker in his eyes. A dark cloak. A shadow. My stomach knotted as he studied me for a long moment. “Have you heard of cerebral hypoxia?”
It was a better assumption than delusional disorder, but not by much. “Yes, it’s when you have a lack of oxygen to your brain.”
“Correct, memories can be distorted or completely lost.”
So, what was he saying? It was all some kind of hallucination? Like my nightmares.
“Maybe, but the fire was too wild and large for me to outrun it, and I lost consciousness on the gravel road by the lake.”
“You ran yourself out beside the lake’s edge. The fire started right behind your cabin, and it didn’t have time to spread too wide. That’s how you managed to get around it.”
“Strange. I can remember your face, though,” I said with a clip of annoyance. “And moving at speeds not possible.”
His eyes flared then narrowed. He regarded me intently, and there was a sharpness to his gaze that was distinctly unpleasant.
“Like I said, hypoxia can play all kinds of tricks on your mind, and I came to visit you in the hospital. I sat by your bed and I spoke to you—perhaps that’s where you remember my face from? ”
Air rushing past my ears, the roar of the fire . . . “No.” I shook my head. “I remember more than that.”
His lips twisted up, but you couldn’t call it a smile. “What do you think happened? Do tell.”
Oh, the condescending arrogance, so self-assured.
So adamant. Like he thought I was crazy.
I opened my mouth to object and closed it again.
Maybe I was crazy. Christ, maybe I did imagine it?
I bit my lip. Hypoxia? Maybe. It was possible.
It felt so real, but then my dreams were always so vivid they always felt real.
My brain began to pound viciously, making it hard to think, and a fresh spurt of nausea made its way through me. I rubbed my temples with my fingers.
“You must be right,” I murmured, hanging my head and feeling like a complete fool.
He rose in one lithe motion as if he couldn’t get away fast enough. “I hope you’re feeling better soon.”
He turned and strode to his bike, then took off faster than he’d arrived, wearing no helmet. I watched him disappear down the drive and listened until the sound of his bike faded.
“Memories can be distorted or completely lost.” His words settled over my shoulders like a dark fog.