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“My eyeballs are melting,” he groaned, hunching over in his chair. “Close the door, Seb.”
“I’ll wait outside, boss.” Seb left the room after giving me a final look, closing the door behind him.
The ensuing silence was physically painful. Worse than the headache. I couldn’t stand up straight, like every muscle in my body had just given up and refused to do their jobs because I’d treated them so badly. I was weak and shaky, and I could see that Holt’s hands were trembling just as badly as he raised his coffee cup to his mouth and took a long gulp.
“This is the worst,” he eventually croaked.
“Yeah.”
“Why did we do that?”
“Um.” I shuffled nervously. “To, um… Because I was supposed to forget everything, right?”
He was silent for a moment. Then, “Yeah. Did it work?”
Oh god. Did I tell him the truth? I mean, he obviously knew I remembered some of it, because I remembered him. But if I told him I remembered a lot of it, would he send his hitman, Axel, after me?
“Kind of…?” I eventually offered. “It’s, uh, super hazy and stuff.”
Holt nodded, then cringed in pain and huddled deeper into his chair. He was wearing a suit again, but the top button was undone beneath his messily knotted tie. “Do you remember the, uh, the whole… mix-up? With the…”
“With the stripper? Yeah.”
He let out a wheezing breath and slowly lowered his forehead onto the desk. “Fuuuck.”
“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “Nothing to be embarrassed about. I, um, told you plenty of embarrassing stuff about me.”
I immediately cringed. Why had I brought that up? I didn’t want him to remember any of it, for fuck’s sake.
Holt lifted his head and licked his lips. His cat-eye sunglasses were sitting crooked now, but he didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he didn’t have enough strength to lift a hand and adjust them.
“Yeah, so, um, about that… Why don’t you sit down, Taylor?”
Oh god. Oh no. I’d forgotten that he was, like, some wrestler Mafia boss or something. Here came the threats. Something about cannoli and concrete shoes. Sleeping with fishes.
Knowing that big, scary Seb was right outside, I hobbled my way over to the chair on the other side of the desk, taking a deep, shaky breath as the urge to vomit rose back up.
“Here.” Holt popped the lid off his coffee and slid it across the desk. Then he did the same with the bottle of aspirin.
I took both gratefully. “Thanks.”
The coffee was rich and black, with a hint of something sweet and grassy. I remembered him talking about weird “emotion syrups” last night, but I didn’t want to bring that up. Didn’t seem like a good idea when he’d gone to all that trouble trying to get my memories of the night erased.
“Your eyes look like pissholes in the snow.”
I was mildly offended, but my eyeballs were throbbing, and I could barely open my lids. “I feel like death.”
“Yeah. I was lying under my desk before you got here.” He paused, fiddling with the takeout cup lid. “Are you seriously going to work? Have you ever taken a sick day?”
“Uh…” I exhaled shakily and pushed the coffee cup back across the desk after taking a deep gulp and swallowing the aspirin. “A couple years ago, when I had the flu.”
“Oh yeah. You told me you threw up all over your shoes, then forgot and put them on to go out and get more medicine.”
I cringed. “Don’t talk about throwing up, dude.”
“Yeah, no, bad idea.” His voice sounded a little tight as he raised a fist to his mouth. “Um, so… about last night…”
I almost felt too shitty to be truly scared of what was coming. Honestly, I was too hungover to care. Right now, being knocked out so I forgot everything sounded kind of nice, actually.
