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And what was worse, I didn’t want to.
Liam
The sound of yelling wakes me. My head pounds like someone is using my brain as a trampoline. “Ugh. Why is everything so loud?” I shove my face into the pillow, hoping to muffle the sounds.
“Why don’t you wake up and explain why your room smells like dead fish?”
Henry. His voice is like thunder in my brain. “What the fuck are you talking about?” Jesus, why is everything so loud? I haven’t even opened my eyes yet. “Why is the damn bed spinning?”
He says something else, but all I can do is groan as my stomach turns. I feel green. Is it possible to feel a color? And whoever is spinning this damn bed will get their ass kicked when I can finally stand.
“God, Henry, why don’t you grow up and stop being such a dick for once?”
My eyes open. I did not just hear that voice. It must be whatever is causing this throbbing and spinning. There’s no way…
“Why are you such a cheating slut? Old habits die hard?”
Oh, fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I bolt upright with my hands gripping my head. My stomach free falls so hard, I almost fall back again. It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust, but when I do, I see her.
Hallucinating. I am fucking hallucinating. On some powerful, potent, nightmare-inducing drugs because she is not here.
I try to blink her away, but nothing happens. “Krista? What the fuck are you doing here?”
When she doesn’t answer, I look to my best friend for answers. His hands fly up. “Don’t look at me. When I left last night, you were STD-free.”
“You called me!” Krista’s voice is worse than the scraping of metal on metal. It reverberates through my head, increasing the pain until I can’t see straight. Dear God, I’m seeing sounds and hearing colors.
She and Henry continue to yell back and forth, but I don’t listen. I’m trying to figure out what she is doing here. How did she even get in? Because I did not call her. I would never call her. Lifting the sheets, I look down and see I’m naked. This keeps getting worse. I need to go back to sleep and start over. Maybe it will erase whatever nightmare I’ve woken up in.
If only it were that easy.
It’s clear their arguing won’t stop, and she won’t leave until I do something. I choke down the bile rising in my chest, wondering if it’s the hangover, the woman in my bedroom, or the situation.
Stupid question. It’s all three.
My fingers rip through my hair as I growl with anger, then wrap the sheet around me as tight as I can fucking get it because I don’t want my goddamn dick to turn to stone—or more like ash—if she looks at it. I walk to where they’re arguing and grip her arm. “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you need to get the fuck out. Now.”
She jerks away, arguing that I called her, but I know it’s impossible. When I reach for her again, she sidesteps me, but Henry grabs her other arm and pulls her out. Her grating voice echoes as she curses and screams.
I use the opportunity to throw on a pair of shorts and a shirt, then stumble from the room, holding on to whatever I can because the damn floor is moving.
“Have you lost your goddamn mind?” Henry booms as I stagger past him to the kitchen. “Krista!”
“There’s no way I called her. I deleted her number a long time ago.” I grab the black device, click the side button, turn on the screen, and curse. I rip my fingers through my hair and pull at the roots, hoping it will wake me up from what must be a bad dream.
“Let me guess,” he grits out, not bothering to hide his anger. “Not as deleted as you thought.”
Henry’s disdain for Krista isn’t a secret. Never has been. My ex-wife could get hit by a bus, and he would celebrate with a block party. They didn’t get along when we were teenagers. He barely tolerated her for me. After we split, his hatred grew.
I can’t blame him. If he’d been with someone like her, I’d have felt the same. Krista is the very definition of toxic—manipulative, narcissistic, and vindictive. She’s not a good person, and he doesn’t understand why I put up with her for so long. Looking back, I don’t either, but at the time, I thought it was the right thing to do. She’s my daughter’s mother, after all.
“No, asshole. I somehow ended up with Casey’s phone. I remember making the call, but I was seeing triple, so I brought up the last number I called.”
I was trying to call Lily. To beg her to please come back. Plead with her to not fuck that guy she left with. Tell her whatever I had to so she wouldn’t go through with it.
