“You’re not taking him in?”
Paxton sighed. “The cops stopped looking for him. We—the police—failed him. If he can get some real help and get straightened around, what good would it be to tie him up behind bars?”
“If he gets picked up, let me know.”
Paxton held me a little sturdier and walked me to the front door of the house. I hissed the farther we went because feeling was starting to return to my body and I fucking hurt all over.
“What about you there, mate. Hospital?”
“For what?” I asked at once. “All they would do is demand to know where I got the drugs and maybe call the cops on me. Fuck that. I’ll go get tested next week. For everything.”
“Why do you need to be tested?” he asked sharply.
I shook my head, not ready to talk about every single thing that had happened. Or maybe I had already? But he just asked why I needed to be tested. I was feeling confused, and I hated that. “Because.”
Paxton frowned at me suspiciously, and I stumbled to a stop in front of the door.
“Wait, this is your house?” I said as recognition hit me. I definitely wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
“Yeah.”
“No, take me home.” I tried to turn around.
“You’re not okay.”
“Fine, toss me on the floor in front of a toilet,” I said, letting him swing me back around. He opened the door and ushered me inside. The house was dark, but warm and comfortable, just like the outside implied. It had the feeling of resting, waiting for its owner to come home, and wasn’t cold like my apartment.
“You’ll sleep in a bed and like it.”
Snorting, I cut him a look, but the crinkles around his eyes seemed amused.
“Your cleaning bill.”
My stomach chose that moment to do what I thought I’d have till morning to wait out, and it lurched in a very bad way. “Bathroom,” I gasped, and he dragged me through the house. I didn’t see much of anything. He snapped on a light that blinded me and urged me forward.
I hit my knees in front of the toilet, surprised that it was black, and my blanket slipped down but I didn’t care. Couldn’t care. I was too busy losing my stomach into the porcelain bowl. I retched until it hurt.
“Fuck, this is why I stopped doing drugs,” I mumbled miserably and pressed my forehead to my arm where I had it draped across the seat. I spit, and someone kind flushed the toilet for me. “Fucking heroin. I hate it.”
“You know what they got you with? You’ve done this before?” Paxton asked, but there wasn’t any judgement in his tone. I glanced at him, but his gaze was steady, and he actually rubbed a hand across my back. That was nice. His palm was warm and rough and just right. I thought back to that night I’d run away from him almost a year ago and sighed to myself. This was the kind of guy who settled down and was sweet to a man. Maybe I’d been on the wrong track. Not that anything would have worked out that night with him when his husband wasn’t even in the ground yet. I laughed in spite of myself. I was a terrible fucking person.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. No, I’ve never willingly done this before. Occasionally when I was partying hard the first year of law school, I used to get coke mixed with heroin. Law school’s stressful. Getting fucked-up on the weekends keeps you sane. Anyway, I’d get sick as hell the next day anytime I got mixed bags, and my connection never fucking told me when they did that. So I stopped.”
Paxton didn’t say anything after that, and I turned my face, heat scalding my cheeks as I watched the toilet fill and listened to the last of the water run into the tank. The silence stretched out and became heavy. “That wasn’t an admission of any guilt, Officer.”
He chuckled. “Never had anyone hate me enough to do what they tried to do to you tonight.”
“Yeah, well.” I shrugged because I didn’t know what to say. “I wasn’t shocked by anything that happened. Not really. What does that say about me?”
“We’ll find out who they were for you,” Paxton said, determination clear in his tone. “So you can be safe.”
“Don’t strain yourself. I have my own friends. It’s not your problem.”
He harrumphed and stood. That warm hand left my back and I missed it. I shivered.
“Come out when you’re feeling up to it,” he said, and his boots stomped along the tile until he was out of the bathroom. “I’m going to see Slater off.”
