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“Why don’t you tell me?”
The haziness in my mind made me stiffen. “This isn’t funny, Eli,” I snapped. The last time I woke up without a memory, my entire family was dead. “What the fuck happened to me.” Looking around, I realized that I had another question. “And where the hell are we?”
The frown that Eli always seemed to wear on his face deepened, and I stiffened. I’d been dreaming of Carina and my mother. The end of the dream though—I shivered.
“What happened?” I asked once more.
Eli sighed. “You got drunk,” he said.
“Drunk?” Just like the night I woke up in the hospital, I began to piece together the memories that were just out of reach. The difference was that I remembered everything. Matteo convincing me to go to the party. Sophia and I drinking our weight in tequila. Dancing. Then, a guy’s hands on me.
I groaned and laid back down in the bed. “I’m sorry,” I apologized as the memory of my screams filtered through my mind. The memories weren’t the clearest. Hell, even now, I felt a little loose. The alcohol was still in my system, which might be a good thing. It numbed the embarrassment that was coursing through me.
“Want to explain to me what happened?”
Eli’s dark eyes did not leave me.
“Not really.”
I prayed he would leave it at that. But I doubted he would. I couldn’t really blame him. Who the fuck starts screaming bloody murder while at a house party? Eli already didn’t trust me, and I knew this hadn’t helped.
I kicked off the comforter that Eli had put around me. It was a dark blue, and smelled like his cologne. We were in his room. “I’m going to my bed,” I said, surprised that he let me get to the floor. “Thanks for helping me out.” I gave a nervous laugh. “I guess tequila and whiskey don’t mix.”
More like the combo of alcohol, anti-anxiety medication, and trauma made for a very bad evening. I wanted to smash my head in the wall for being so stupid.
“You were calling out for your mother.”
I froze as my hand reached for the doorknob.
“You kept screaming at the party. You thought that Matteo and Luca were trying to kidnap you.”
Eli was saying a lot without speaking the words.
“I was drunk,” I reminded him. I flashed back to the shots that I’d downed. Sophia had stopped about five before me. Once I’d realized that the booze kept the thoughts at bay, I’d been all in. Ironically, drinking had the opposite effect of what I’d desired.
“You were,” Eli conceded.
There was a note of pity in his voice. “But you know what they say: a drunk mind speaks sober thoughts.”
My stomach rolled, and I blamed it on the drinking. I needed to get back to bed. Not that I would be getting any sleep. Even as I stood in the room with Eli, I couldn’t get the dream out of my mind.
It was the same one that I had almost every night. I never spoke about them. I knew that my father would force me to speak to someone again, and if I mentioned how little sleep I was getting, they’d want to ply me with pills.
The pills could keep me from remembering, and I was too desperate for that to take the sweet relief of a dreamless sleep.
“Look.” I turned to face Eli. He was dressed in a black t-shirt and jeans. His dark eyes were trained on me, and I felt as though he were trying to peel back all the layers that protected me from scrutiny. “I know you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you. I just don’t want you here.”
I snorted. “Whatever.” His expression didn’t change. “I’m sorry that I got so drunk. I don’t know what all that was about, and frankly…” I looked down at my feet, hoping that a meek willed countenance would give him what he wanted. “I’m really fucking embarrassed.”
Eli is impossible to read, and the silence that stretches between the two of us makes my stomach turn. If he presses the issue, I don’t know what I’m going to say. My mother and brother’s murder weren’t a secret. Sure, my father kept it out of the news. Not hard when you basically owned the media, but Eli’s parents knew the truth.
Still, I didn’t want that information shared. After everything happened, I cut my friends in L.A. off. I refused to see Caleb, and I’d hidden away at home doing nothing but trying to get the memories back.
I told myself it was because I needed time to think, but truthfully, I was just tired of seeing the pity in people’s eyes when they looked at me, and the fear. Everyone near me seemed to die, so I couldn’t blame people from being wary of me.
“Fine,” Eli said.
