Go back to sleep. Rest your eyes for a minute and then you’ll be…good…as…
The thought never resolved. Sleep claimed her, though it only lasted a moment before the singsong,I-told-you-sovoice of her brother cut through her blissful, dreamless sleep. “Good morning, your majesty.”
“Back so soon?” she groaned, not bothering to open her eyes.
“Rushed back to make sure you were still alive. It was touch and go there for a while.”
Okay. You can do this. Move one eye at a time. With great difficulty, she worked the left open.And now the other one. The right followed suit. Sunlight bled through the house’s grand windows, piercing her bubble of darkness. God, her head ached. This was why no one stopped drinking. As soon as you stop drinking, bad things happen.
“What time is it?”
Thomas checked his watch.
“Three thirty,” he said.
For the first time since she’d arrived at the house in the back seat of Captain’s convertible on Friday, the house was quiet. Totally still. There was no music, no breaking of glass, no male laughter.
“Where is everyone?”
“Gone. Left you some instructions about the ball and some money for repairs to your room.”
Collecting her strength, Sam pushed herself up. Nope. Big mistake. Her body slumped against the staircase’s supportive wall.
“How was the reunion?” she managed. God, she was thirsty. How was she even capable of speaking with a throat as dry as the Sahara?
Black spots appeared on the wall around Thomas’s head. His posture dipped. It was his turn to slump.
“Don’t want to talk about it.” He spun the conversation back on her with the skill of a Russian ballerina. “How was your Christ Church Stand?”
“Don’t remember.”
“Don’t remember or don’t want to tell me?”
“That is the Animos way, right?” Sam kept her cards close to her chest now. “Silence or death.”
Thomas’s retort died as he pointed to a crumpled-up ball of paper crushed on the staircase where only moments ago Sam’s head rested in fitful sleep.
“What’ve you got there?”
“Huh?” Sam asked, unmoving. The less she moved, the less it felt like her skull was the inside of a particularly productive salt mine.
“What are you holding?” He pointed now, his annoyance at the repetition clear. Sam knew him to be a patient man. Lately, with her single-minded dedication to the Animos and their cause, she’d basically been tap dancing on the floor of his patience reserve.
“It’s, uh, I don’t…” She reached and uncrumpled the paper. The black pen marks sent her stomach careening to the bottom of her feet and her hazy, drunken memories flooding back to her. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” Thomas prodded, his eyes widening slightly.
Sam wanted to vomit. Sam wanted to scream. Sam wanted to rip the piece of paper into a million tiny pieces. More than anything, she wanted to dissolve into the very wood of the staircase, to become nothing more than a grain of timber. Timbers couldn’t feel overwhelming shame. Floorboards never revealed themselves to or depended on the one person in the world they shouldn’t have. Staircases were only there to be trampled on, not defended by too-handsome staff members with impossibly kind eyes. Her head fell back against the wall with a painfulthump. It reverberated through her entire head. Even her teeth ached with the force of it.
“What?” Thomas questioned again.
“I do remember,” she corrected herself. “Kind of.”
If she hadn’t been as hungover as a sailor waking up in a jail cell, maybe she wouldn’t have spilled her entire guts to her disapproving brother. But, as it was, she was starved for real friendship, and he was her only option. In a cold, detached voice, she laid out the details of the night: how she’d taken her stand in the frosty darkness only to have the hired help take pity on her and hide her body with his own.
She left out how vulnerable Daniel made her feel, and not because she was naked. Nor did she mention how his smoky, roughened voice made love songs almost bearable.
God, she’d been soniceto him, so doe eyed and swayed by his sweet refusal to outrightsayhe was protecting her. Not only did she talk to him through the night, but she actually abandoned the Animos andthanked himwhen it was all over. Sure, she’d tried to save her reputation with an emotionless dismissal at the end of it, but his lopsided grin might as well have been an itemized list of her failures.
