Page 58 of Nowhere Good

Claire.

If the cloth wasn’t still in his hand, he might have thought he’d dreamt her up. But she’d caught him near the peak of his sickness, partially coherent and mostly nauseous, and he remembered her energy. Her light. Like an angel sitting on the edge of his bed. And she was beautiful.

But he wasn’t.

Embarrassment and shame clawed at his chest, like his skin had been ripped off for her to see all the ugly parts beneath. His track marks, the truth he kept hidden. All that stuff about his mom. Fuck. Even his colleagues back in New York—his friends, his partners—didn’t know how he’d felt about his mother when she was alive because he didn’t tell them. It was his own burden to carry. Only his high school ex knew. And now Claire Dyer did too.

And this, right here, was exactly why he hated alcohol.

A beer or two, the odd glass of scotch, sure. But chugging a bottle of vodka had turned him into a faucet. His drunken brain hadn’t cared, because on some level, he liked Claire and wanted to know her. But it wasn’t supposed to go like that.

Seth swung his legs over the edge of the bed and grabbed his phone. With shaky fingers, he found her name in his texts and sent her a message:

I’m sorry for last night.

To his surprise, she replied right away:

Hey, it’s okay! How are you feeling?

A single text message could never scratch the surface of how awful he felt. He loathed himself. It was bad enough he’d nearly been weak enough to break his sobriety—but for a woman to see it, God, it was awful.

But he’d dumped enough trauma on Claire, so he went with:

Like I nearly committed a felony.

Thank you for helping me. Sorry you had to see it.

Three dots appeared, then disappeared. It happened a few times. He couldn’t tear himself from the screen.

Don’t worry, I destroyed your stash. 😊

Feel better, okay?

Seth didn’t know what to say, so he went with nothing. He needed to get to work.

“Jesus, you look rough,” Pereira said.

Seth slumped past Pereira’s desk in the bullpen, the taste of his breakfast stale on his tongue. His go-to egg sandwich doused in hot sauce had never gone down so horribly. “Morning to you too, Pereira.”

“And you stink like a distillery.”

Trying to ignore her, he moved in the direction of the conference room, but Pereira grabbed onto his arm and gently tugged him toward her desk. He reluctantly spun to meet her; he was anything but proud of this.

“I’m only tellin’ you ’cause there’s some FBI chick here,” Pereira whispered, “so you might wanna wipe the look of death off your face.”

“What?”

Before Pereira could answer, Chief Wells poked her head out of her office. “Detective Winslow, there you are. My office?”

Damn it. It wasn’t like he was the first cop to turn up hungover at work, but this was different, because Seth didn’t do this. He wasn’t a drunk. Yet here he was, looking like one, smelling like one.

Too bad—this was the price.

He hadn’t had an encounter with the feds since he worked in New York, so he wasn’t sure what to expect when he dragged himself into Chief Wells’s office. A brunette woman—thirties, at most—with slicked back hair and freckles stood to greet him, wearing an all-navy pantsuit. She held out her hand.

“Detective, good to meet you. I’m Special Agent Erin Maddox.”

“Good to meet you too,” he said, shaking her hand, hoping his palm didn’t feel as clammy as he did. Chief Wells shot him a disapproving look as they all sat down.