Besides, there weren’t many people left to talk to. Rubi was asleep at the table. Nash, Orla, and Locke were holed up in the corner. And Folk had abandoned ship hours ago.
Only Decoy remained, clearing up around us, watching the prospects on the gates, guarding the staircase that led to the residence.
I steered Mateo to the door, punched the code in, and checked back. “You’ll be okay?”
Decoy flashed me a droll grin. “Isn’t much different to stag duty on deployment. You’d better hustle. He’s on the loose.”
I spun around. Mateo was gone, but I heard him clumping up the stairs and jogged after him.
He was at the top by the time I caught him, staring at Juana’s bedroom door. “I want to check on them, but I’m too drunk.”
“They’ll just laugh at you.”
“I never laughed when my dad was drunk. I don’t wanna scare her.”
I couldn’t imagine Liliana ever being scared of her dad. But there was an easy fix to this. A quick one that didn’t involve Mateo playing chicken with a closed door. “I’ll do it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Go to bed.”
Mateo pushed off the wall and meandered to my room. I watched him reach the bed, then I strolled on past to Juana’s door.
I knocked. No one answered, but we had a protocol. We checked each and every time, so I pushed it open.
Juana and Liliana were asleep, TV on, an empty tube of Pringles between them.
I shut the TV off and pried the Pringles tube from Liliana’s hand.
Her sketchbook was in the other, pages filled with the big grey horse Mateo and Alexei had brought home from Surrey last week.
Chapi.
Mateo was lucky I loved him.
Heh. I was lucky he loved me and that every horrible turn his life had taken had given me two extra people to care about.
I slipped out of Juana’s room and shut the door.
In my room, I found Mateo had loaded the diffuser with lemon oil and switched it on. Then passed out face down on his side of the bed.
Fully clothed.
That was his other thing about drinking and sleeping with me. He wouldn’t take his fucking clothes off in bed. But I was working on that as much as I was working on myself.
I tugged his boots off.
He groaned and made a clumsy swipe for me.
Laughing, I evaded and shut the blinds, turned the lights off bar the diffuser lamp, and ditched my jeans for sweats.
I missed his bare skin, but there was no way I was wrestling his T-shirt off him. Last time I’d tried, he’d rolled us both off the bed and Nash had come running with a baseball bat.
Life was never dull.
I lay down beside Mateo. Even drunk, he was a quiet sleeper. Considerate. I had to wrestle his hand from beneath him.
Fingers twined, I noticed his eyes were open. Awake? Debatable. But I rolled to face him anyway. “You know I love her, don’t you?”
