We all get up, and I tip. Vonn steadies me.
Nash eyes me curiously. “How much have you had to drink?”
“Maybe one of us should keep a hold of him on the way back down the stairs?” Vonn suggests.
“That much, huh?” Nash says dryly. Then he sniffs me, scrunching his face as he leans away. “Jeez, you smell like a brewery.”
“Fuck off,” I mutter as we head to the stairs. “Byrdie didn’t say anything.”
Byrdie is walking beside Vonn, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, when she says, “I was trying to be polite.”
Vonn nearly falls down the stairs laughing.
I’m tempted to push him, but Byrdie is smiling up at him, so I take the hit on the chin and hope I make it down these stairs because my vision is decidedly…blurry.
Chapter 11
Byrdie
Makhistinksof booze.
How he got up the three flights of stairs to the roof will forever be a mystery, especially since it took Nash to steady him or he’d have fallen down them at least five times.
Vonn decided we’d move our conversation from the roof to the living room that Nance and Makhi turned into my bedroom. He gently nudges me toward my bed and lifts the covers over my legs, and I smile as I sit with my back to the headboard.
Makhi flops to the floor near my door. It looked more like his legs just gave up on him. He catches me looking and gives me a wink, like he’d intended to collapse in a heap on my floor. His cheeks were flushed, and he was swaying a bit before, so it wasn’t as intentional as he’d like the rest of us to believe.
Nash does not believe Makhi’s collapse/slump was intentional from the brief smile that stretched across his lips. He sits on the floor with his legs straight and his arms folded neatly across his chest.
Vonn sits leaning against my bed.
He’s big all over, over six feet tall and with the muscles to fill each of those feet and inches, so his additional weight presses my bed against the wall in a way it hadn’t before.
It’s past midnight, and they’re all fully dressed. Does anyone in this house sleep?
When Nash looks at me, I lie down and pull the sheets up.
They want me to talk.
That’s why they’re all here. No one has said a word since we settled in my room, and their need for answers bears down on me in a way I don’t like.
What do they want me to say?
Are they waiting for an explanation of what I was doing up on the roof?
Well, I can’t give them one.
I don’t know.
I don’twantto know.
“Makhi told us about what he did,” Vonn says, glancing over at me. “Firing you and kicking you out.”
I catch his eye, and he takes my hand, which I’m resting on the bed.
“I wasn’t using my brain,” Makhi says.
“He was being a fucking idiot,” Vonn adds with a growl.
