17
EMIL
Iwoke up to the splitting ache of pain splicing through my brain. Drumming pounds filled my ears as nausea churned my stomach.
“Fuck,” I muttered in a low, long groan. Hugging a pillow to my chest, I curled around the softness. It didn’t help. Putting pressure against my body wouldn’t ease this emptiness inside me. Nothing would fix my dilemma.
Light seared my retinas as I pried my eyes open. I’d left the light on again, and I wasn’t sure if I had the energy to get up, cross my room at my father’s house, and turn it off. I had no clue where I’d put my phone last night when I figured drinking myself into oblivion wouldn’t be a half-bad idea.
Wait.
It still is night.
That explained it. This was only the starting or mid-point of a hangover. I hadn’t slept it all off yet. Letting out a deep growl, I hugged the pillow as I staggered to the wall. I slapped at the lightswitch and I swore my soul, whatever was still with it and not buzzed, sighed in relief.
Darkness was better.
Quiet was wonderful.
As I lay back down, dropping to the mattress, I waited to pass out again so the blurring nothingness of sleep could give me the perfect remedy to what ailed me.
It wasn’t a curse of drinking too much and being wasted.
It was the hole in my heart that spread me open wider from Sadie’s absence.
“It’s not love,” I mumbled with my face smashed against the pillow. “It can’t be,” I slurred to myself before passing out once more.
When I woke next, I slowly came to with too many urgent needs propelling me out of bed. I had to piss. I needed water. My stomach growled with hunger. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start with some kind of drugs to prevent this headache from getting bad again.
Sighing heavily as I trudged to the bathroom, I blearily regarded my reflection in the mirror.
“Fuck.”
I looked like shit. I felt like it too.
It’s like I’ve taken Ivan’s place.
Rolling my eyes at the not-funny joke in my head wasn’t wise yet. This was the kind of hangover that made any facial expression torture.
I didn’t resort to drinking myself to sleepeverynight. I couldn’t afford the vulnerability and weakness of being shit-faced when I still had to take hits and kills. That sloppiness would getmekilled. While I was miserable to miss my little agent who I wasn’t allowing myself to love, I wasn’t sunken so low in depression to be suicidal.
Hot water soothed my face. Steam filled the air and acted like a balm on me, comforting me as I waited to feel moderately human again. I didn’t drink like this often, but with the expectation that I’d be here in this huge mansion on my own, the loneliness hit extra hard.
Two days ago, my father left on a pre-holiday getaway with Gabriella and Andre. Raisa and Ivan thought Lev might like it too, since the destination had stuff for children. Then since Lev was going, Alexsei joined in because Misha and Lev were best friends.
When they turned to me, inviting me on the “family” plans, I scoffed. As the single dude, the bachelor, the one without a child, I shook my head and tried not to look too bitter.
Gabby pitied me, but I shot her a look to shut up. “No, I don’t want Emil to come,” she said.
Luka rolled his eyes, tired of us bickering.
“Because he has to be here to take care of Mellow.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered.
She glared at me. “He’s just a baby kitten.”
“Yeah, and there aren’t cooks and maids and guards who can’t handle babysitting a kitten for a couple of days?”
