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“I know you want to punish me right now, but in my defense, I don’t remember anything from last night. Your brother gets really jealous, and everything’s supposed to be perfect for the wedding. Please don’t mess this up any more than it already is. If not for me, for Hale.”
“Rayne?” Hale knocked again and bile rose in my stomach as a rank sweat broke over my skin.
My chin quivered. “Please. I’ll do anything. A permanent favor for the rest of your life.”
“Fine.” Barrett stormed into the bathroom. “I’ll hide in the shower. You have thirty seconds to get out of here.”
Hale knocked again as I dressed quickly. “Rayne?”
“One sec! Ah, ah, ah…” My feet were too swollen and battered to squeeze into my ruined shoes.
“Rayne, open the door.” Damn his persistence.
“If you find any of my stuff, bring it back to The Plaza. Don’t make a sound until we’re gone,” I hissed, pulling the bathroom door shut.
Panic built like a tsunami as I turned the knob and took a galvanizing breath, then I smiled. “Hale. What took you so long?”
I didn’t make it out the door before red flags blew up around me and his grin faltered.
His hand shot out, catching the door before it locked. “Hold on.”
“Um, I’m really hungry?—”
Not listening to me, he pushed into the hotel room and scowled at the disaster. Bottles littered the floor and a pizza box hung open on the dresser, nothing but a cemetery of half-gnawed crust and bottle caps scattered inside. He bent down to retrieve one very large male shoe. “And this belongs to…?”
My insides locked. “Please don’t be mad.”
“Why would I be mad, Rayne? I find my fiancée in a hotel room on the other end of New York, a bed that stinks of God knows what, sheets a mess, your hair looking as though you’ve been fucked hard, and a dead man’s shoe on the floor.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“No? Then explain it to me.”
My head pounded as a sweat broke across my skin. “I… Let's just get out of here and get some coffee. Once I have food in my stomach?—”
“Whose shoe is this, Rayne?”
Before I could answer, something clattered to the shower floor. Hale’s gunmetal eyes snapped to the bathroom door and he dropped the shoe, his hands balling into fists as he barreled forward.
“Hale wait!”
He shoved open the bathroom door and flung back the shower curtain.
Barrett froze like a deer in the headlights.
I shoved my body between them before any more regrettable mistakes happened, but all of Hale’s anger shifted to shock and then hurt. “Barrett?”
“It’s not what it looks like, Hale.”
His scowl dropped, his disappointment cleaving through me with physical force.
“Hale…” I repeated his name, but his shock cocooned him in emotional armor that reason couldn’t penetrate.
“I need to get out of here.” He was out of the room and moving faster than I could manage on my scraped feet.
“Hale, wait! I’ll come with you?—”
“Not this time, Rayne.”
