Tani glared back. “We’ll get to it right now,” she said frostily. “What are you doing here? And why aren’t you at your concert?”
Kabir’s glare faded, concern overshadowing everything else. “Tani what day do you think it is?” He came forward and tried to pry her right eyelid open wider with his thumb, peering into her eyes like it held all the secrets of the universe.
Tani smacked his hand away. “It’s the day of your concert, isn’t it? I got the passes you sent me. Jay and I are going to be there. But why are you here?”
Kabir’s face went carefully blank, his eyes burning into her, like dark coals that simmered beneath the surface.
Unease swam through Tani as she met his gaze. “What?” she asked, her voice dropping an octave. “What am I missing?”
“Apparently, a whole day or night,” Kabir said quietly. “What’s the last thing you remember, Tani?”
A whole day or night? She stared at him blankly.
“Tani!” His quiet voice was an inexorable demand.
“I, um,” she tried to think back. “I finished work, went to a pilates class and then came back to the building. Jay came over, saying there was something he wanted to talk to me about.” Her brow furrowed as she tried to place what happened next. “We…”
It was fuzzy. She could remember patches of an argument or was it just a heated conversation, her head pounded too hard for her to be sure.
“We need to get you to the hospital.” Kabir sounded grim. “I want to have you tested.”
“Tested?” Flummoxed, she stared at his hard profile, her gaze tracing that familiar, beloved, scruffy, stubbled jawline. “Tested for what?”
“Drugs?”
Tanisha’s jaw dropped open. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”
“Tani, listen to me. When I-“
A pillow hit him smack in the face before he could finish whatever rubbish he was spouting. She wasn’t even aware of throwing it but she realised she was already clutching a second one and taking aim. She paused, hand clenched in the pillow.
“How dare you?” she seethed. “I don’t do drugs and you know it. Just because you and your bandmates and your groupies are smoking, inhaling, and shooting up shit doesn’t mean that-“
“Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.” His voice was granite hard. “When you called your mother last night, you were babbling. The line dropped and they couldn’t get through to youor to Jay.” Saying Jay’s name seemed to cause him physical pain. “So they asked me to come over and check on you.”
Embarrassing yourself.The words were a shameful echo of the past, of a time she really didn’t want to recollect.
“Okay.” Her voice was shaky as she processed the information he was spewing at her. “You checked on me. As you can see, I am okay. So, you can leave now.”
“You’re not okay.”
Tanisha sighed. “Kabs-“
“YOU ARE NOT OKAY!” The furious roar silenced her. Kabir stalked over to where she sat, looming over her, and sending another one of those inappropriate shivers through her. His angry, molten gaze held her confused ones.
“You don’t even remember me coming to Jay’s apartment. You don’t remember me carrying you out of there. And you sure as hell don’t remember me tucking you into bed. Do you, Bug?”
Bug. The nickname sent a pang of desperate longing through her. Desperate, forlorn, and hopeless.
“Do you?” he growled again, this time right in her face. He was so close, she thought despairingly. So close and yet, so far.
“No,” she whispered, realising he was still waiting for an answer. “I guess I had more to drink than I could handle. But drugs…Come on Kabs, you don’t believe that of me, do you?”
“No, I don’t.” He seemed about to say something else but stopped himself.
“I remember everything else,” she told him hastily, hoping he’d drop this insane insistence on going to the hospital.
“Do you?” He looked at her, his gaze hooded. For a split second, she saw his eyes drop to her lips before he dragged them back to meet her own. Heat shot through her, pooling in her core as she looked at his ruggedly beautiful face. Not hers, she reminded herself. Her Kabs, he would always be her Kabs, but he was nothers.
