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“It’s wasn’t the booze,” he said as I helped him to his feet.
“What is it, then?”
“If I tell you, I know you’ll get mad,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulder as I helped him out of the office. He didn’t say another word until we were in the car. He was hunched over in his seat, and his face was white.
“What did you do?”
“Someone gave me this little pill and told me to try it,” he said. “Oh God, stop the car.”
I slammed on the brakes. He opened the door and vomited. My stomach churned at the sight.
“So someone gave you a little pill and you took it, no questions asked?”
“Not uncommon at places like this, Luna.”
“I guess it isn’t.”
“At first, I was on a real high, and then all of the sudden it hit me. I’m never going to do that again.”
“I thought you were smarter than that. Someone gives you a pill and you turn stupid. Hey, Devin, look, it’s a bridge, jump off it,” I said as we passed over one.
“Very funny.”
“This is why I hate Milan. Too many temptations. I want us to move and get away from here. No more of these clubs. I don’t even think you enjoy them; you just think you do. The only reason you moved here in the first place—”
“Stop the car!”
Once again I pulled over. He stumbled out of the car, and I heard him throwing up on the sidewalk. I took a deep breath and climbed out after him. He was kneeling on the sidewalk on all fours as he continued to be sick. Pedestrians watched the spectacle, but I didn’t see many smartphones whip out to film us. Devin’s face was too close to the sidewalk for anyone to recognize him.
“Are you okay?” I asked, caressing his back and kneeling down next to him.
He shook his head and vomited again. I looked away, fearing I’d be sick myself.
“Devin, maybe we should go to the hospital.”
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll be fine in a minute.”
His voice was quivering, and I knew that he was in bad shape. “Are you sure?” I said with concern.
“I just need to get it out of my system.”
He seemed to be over the worst. I helped him back into the car. He was exhausted as I pulled away from the curb. He could barely keep his eyes open as I drove the twenty minutes to the house. When we arrived, I helped him inside, almost all his weight on my shoulders. I helped him out of his clothes as he groaned in pain. I got some liquids into him, and then he fell asleep. I sat in the chair next to the bed and watched him. I expected him to drop dead at any moment. My heart was racing, and there were several times I’d had the phone in my hand, ready to call an ambulance.
He awoke once during the night and made a mad dash for the washroom. I jolted awake, not realizing I’d dozed off in the chair. I found him kneeling over the toilet bowl, his chest still heaving, but there was nothing left in his body. When he turned to look at me, there were tears in his eyes from the pain.
“I have never been so sick in my life,” he said in between hurried breaths. “But I think I’m over the worst of it now.”
“Do you want some water?”
“No, a gun would be better so I could shoot myself. And trust me, I’ll never do this again, to either of us.”
ChapterThirty-Five
Luna
It was a hot September in Manta for the race weekend. Despite the wretched heat, Juan and I had been fielding questions about Blake Carlton since the moment the Perez team arrived. I slapped a smile on my face and gave our canned responses about how wonderful it was to have Blake on the team. I also couldn’t escape all the questions about my relationship with Rafe: Was there infighting? Was the team about to break up? And other nonsense like that. By Friday morning, I’d talked enough about Blake and my relationship with my brother. I wanted to focus on the race itself.
Rafe and I had talked a couple more times in the weeks since the party. I didn’t entirely trust him, knowing he was close to Blake, but I’d accepted that I’d exaggerated his role in this whole mess. Our differences put aside, our PR guy, Juan, insisted we be seen and photographed together. A happy family.
