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“Verity someone...” Charlie waves his hand before he grimaces and focuses again.
“Jesus,” Alex mutters. “So, someone is impersonating me?”
“You have got to be fucking deluded if you think I’m buying that!” Alistair hisses.
“One way to find out,” Damien says. “Give me your phone.”
Alex digs in his pocket and hands it over after he unlocks it.
Damien’s eyebrow goes up, and he shows me the texts between him and Ever.
“Fuck,” I mutter, my eyes shooting up to pin Alex’s until he squirms. “You have a twin we don’t know about?”
“No!” he says, aghast. “I’m an only child! You know this. You know my family!”
“Do we?” Alistair growls.
He grabs Alex again and stalks off downstairs, followed by Damien. Charlie scampers off and returns shortly with a bowl, which he hands to me.
“She’s going to need that when she wakes up.”
Nodding, I take it and turn back to Ever, my head pounding with the clusterfuck of the situation. It’s a fucking mess, a catastrophe waiting to implode, and she’s in the middle of it, silent and unknowing. The Four Cardinals, we call ourselves, but right now, we’re just four screwed-up guys losing it over a girl who deserves better than any of us.
Pulling up the desk chair, I sit in it and place the bowl on the floor, watching her, ready for action.
The minutes tick by, and I can hear the shouts from downstairs as Alistair, Damien, and Charlie try to get to the bottom of this, but I’m not leaving Ever. This is our fault.
I’m pretty sure she wasn’t sexually assaulted in the sense that Stanley raped her. But it was seconds away from happening. If we hadn’t shown up when we did, she would’ve been violated in the worst way possible, and there would’ve been no coming back from that. How the fuck this all happened is a mystery that needs solving, but I can’t focus on that. I have to leave that in the hands of the other guys. Ever needs me here.
Seconds later, she groans and curls up on her side. Then she sits up suddenly, and I move like lightning, grabbing the bowl and placing it in front of her. Her gaze locks with mine in shock before she sticks her head in the bowl and throws up the entire contents of her stomach. I push her hair back and murmur to her in between heaves until she is completely done and flops back to the bed. Crossing over to the bathroom, I throw the vomit in the toilet,flush and then swill out the bowl, taking it back to her for round two.
She whimpers as I sit next to her, placing the bowl back on the floor, and I take her hand. “Hey.”
“Fuck,” she groans. “What the fuck?”
“I was kind of hoping you’d tell me that?”
Her eyes flutter open, and she turns her head, going paler but holding onto the retch. “Too much vodka,” she murmurs.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” I ask carefully.
She frowns. “I was at that party. Alex ditched me, and I got drunk, I guess. I only had two. I think. The last thing I remember, I was heading for the bathroom, and then I woke up here.”
Breathing in deeply, I let it out slowly. She doesn’t remember. Roofied, without a doubt. That fucking cunt is dead.
She groans and closes her eyes again. I grip her fingers tighter before letting go. “I’ll leave you to rest.”
She nods, and I stand up to leave, seeing Charlie hovering in the doorway.
When I close the door quietly, he asks, “Why didn’t you tell her?”
“She doesn’t need to know how close she was to being violated. Not yet. We will tell her, but let her heal first from the effects of the drug.”
“And what if she was raped? Shouldn’t we call the doctor?”
“I don’t think she was.”
“How can you be sure?”
