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“Stop squirming,” he ordered, not looking at me, but I could hear the steel in his voice, the same tone that probably made grown men weep in courtrooms.
“Make me,” I taunted, though it came out more pathetic than provocative.
Weston didn’t bite, just kept on with his task like he hadn’t heard a word.Bastard.
The shoes thudded to the floor, discarded, forgotten. Just like I wanted to be. But not by him. Never by him. Weston’s fingers left my skin, and I felt the loss like a punch to the gut. He straightened up, reached into his pocket, and pulled out his phone. Dialed with purpose. I watched him, the line of his jaw set hard against whatever pain he was hiding.
“It’s an emergency,” he barked into the phone. “Can you come asap?”
“Tell him to bring some drugs,” I shouted through the haze, my voice a twisted mess of agony and mirth.
He ended the call with a sharp click and sank down beside me on the couch. The space between us was charged, heavy with things unsaid, fists thrown, and kisses we pretended to regret.
“Is he bringing drugs?” I asked, letting the words dribble out, not caring how desperate I sounded. Fuck it all.
“You are the drug,” Weston shot back, voice laced with a dark humor that made the air in the room thicker. “That’s why we’re all fucked-up now.”
Silence swallowed us. An uneasy truce laid bare between labored breaths and the distant wail of sirens from the streets below.
“Why did you come?” I asked, the question slipping out, slurred and sodden from the alcohol still coursing through my veins.
“Why wouldn’t I?” His reply wasn’t gentle, but it struck a chord, something deep and resonant that I didn’t want to acknowledge.
I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all—us—but the effort seemed as monumental as scaling Everest. So instead, I lay there, in the ruin we’d made, waiting for salvation or damnation. Whichever came first. The ache in my head pulsed like a second heartbeat, a relentless drumming that threatened to split my skull. My throat felt like sandpaper, raw and dry, but the thought of standing up to get water was more than I could handle. Instead, I stretched out on the couch, every movement a study in pain, and slung my legs over Weston’s lap without asking. It should’ve felt wrong, but it didn’t. Not even close.
“You’ll do anything for me, won’t you?” The words tumbled out, half challenge, half plea.
Weston’s brow arched, his gaze flicking down to where his fingers grazed my bruised shin. “Apparently the fuck so,” he said, an edge to his voice as he pointed to the marks we’d left on each other.
Laughter tried to claw its way out of my chest, but it got tangled with the agony and came out as a wheeze. We were a mess, the pair of us, battered and bruised in more ways than one. “You look like shit,” I rasped, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Right back at you.” His lips twitched, a ghost of a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
I wanted to argue, to throw something back in his face, but the energy wasn’t there. Instead, I lay sprawled across his lap, feeling every inch of the wreck we’d become, letting the room spin just a little slower around us. Silence swallowed the condo whole, the kind of quiet that’s thick with unsaid words and too much damn pain. The clock on the wall ticked away minutes we’d never get back. I watched them go, each second stretching longer than the last. Weston was a shadow in my peripheral vision—solid, silent, too fucking close.
His phone shattered the stillness—a ding that felt like a gunshot to my throbbing skull. My eyelids were leaden, but they dragged open as his body tensed beside me.
“Finally,” he muttered, thumb swiping over the screen before shoving the device into his pocket.
The door buzzed then, a sound far too cheery for the shit show awaiting on the other side. I craned my neck, bones creaking like an old man’s, to watch the doc stride in. Tall, dark hair, eyes like a storm about to break—motherfucker looked like Cole, my brain-dead, drunk mind decided.
“Whoa. He looks like Cole. What the fuck?” It slipped out, slurred and sloppy, echoing weirdly in the space.
The doctor’s chuckle rumbled deep in his chest as he set his leather bag on the coffee table. “Evening, Mr. Ashbourne.”
“Kid’s three sheets to the wind.” Weston waved off my comment, his voice gravel and steel. “Ignore him.”
“Easy enough,” the doctor replied, his smirk telling me he didn’t give two shits about my nonsense.
I sank back into the couch, letting the cushions swallow me whole. My gaze stuck to the doctor like he might morph into someone else if I blinked. But he stayed put, just a doc in our fucked-up fairytale, ready to patch up the princes after their latest battle. The coffee table groaned as it scraped closer, the doc’s hands firm on my shoulders, hoisting me into a sitting hell. I bit back a curse, blinking against the pain as his latex-clad fingers prodded at my nose.Not broken.His words to Weston, not to me—as if I wasn’t there, like I couldn’t feel the throbbing in my own goddamn face.
“It feels like someone is trying to rip my face off.” The moan scraped out of me, raw and ragged.
“Mm-hmm,” was all I got, some half-assed doctor noise before he was turning, all business and bullshit bedside manner, to Weston.
My head lolled. But fuck if I was going to miss this show. Weston stripped his shirt off, muscles playing beneath the skin like some kind of private performance. My throat dried up, then moistened again, because damn, that man could wear—or not wear—a shirt.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, no one listening. Weston’s back was a roadmap of shadows and strength, and my eyes traced every line, every curve, down to the swell of his ass. Couldn’t tear them away, even if I wanted to—and I didn’t want to. Not at all.
