Page 48

“Jason.” She sniffed.

She was drunk. No mistaking the slur in her voice.

“Sloan, where are you?”

“Home.”

I breathed a sigh of relief that she wasn’t driving or somewhere unsafe.

“Jason? I was thinking about you today.”

I felt the weight I’d carried all day in my chest lift. “I was thinking about you today too,” I said gently.

“You don’t want me, okay?”

“What?”

“You don’t. Trust me, you don’t. I’m messy. I’m a mess. I’m in an in-between.”

I smiled softly. “I like your mess.”

She didn’t reply.

“Sloan?”

“Can you come over?”

I was in motion before she finished her sentence. I grabbed a backpack and started throwing things into it, cradling the phone with my shoulder. “I’m on my way. Sloan? You have to unlock the front door. Do it now, while I’m on the phone.”

“Mmmkay,” she said. A few moments later I heard the sound of a bolt lock being turned.

“I’m getting in my truck now. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Tucker jumped in the cab with an enthusiasm that could only come from knowing where we were headed.

“Jason?” she said as I pulled down the driveway. She was crying again. “You make me want to cook for you.”

I smiled at the compliment. I understood what that meant to her to say that. Then the line went dead.

She didn’t answer when I called back.

Ten minutes later I pulled into her driveway and jogged to the front porch. Tucker had his nose pressed into the crack of the door, and when it opened, he tore into the house like he was retrieving a duck. But I stopped in the doorway with my mouth open.

The living room looked like a tornado had gone through it. Black trash bags everywhere and stacks of men’s clothing strewn all over the floor. A knocked-over lamp and hangers in a pile, men’s shoes scattered on the carpet.

Brandon’s clothes.

A tumbler sat in a small clear spot in the middle of the mess with an empty bottle of tequila and wads of balled-up tissues next to it.

I followed Tucker’s excited noises through a bedroom and into an adjacent bathroom. Sloan lay crumpled by the toilet on a white floor mat, her cell phone next to her. I crouched beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Sloan? Can you hear me?”

She groaned, but she didn’t open her eyes. I sighed and scratched my beard. Completely wasted.

I got a damp washcloth and cleaned her face. She’d been sick at least once. I flushed the toilet and wiped the seat with toilet paper.

She’d thrown up in her hair. I lifted her and moved her to rest against the bathtub, pushing her shower curtain aside. A cotton ball was taped to the inside of her elbow like she’d had blood taken. I peeled that off and threw it away. Jesus, what had she been doing today?

I managed to wash her hair with a cup by letting it fall over the lip into the tub. Tucker sat in the bathroom doorway watching the activity. He seemed to know I was helping her. At one point she started to cough, and I turned her to the toilet and held her hair back while she threw up again.

She muttered some apologies, vaguely aware I was there. Then she went back under.