Hunter laughed again, louder and full of amusement. “You sure as hell didn’t make it back to her.”
“Voices,” Savannah whispered as she stumbled to a stop. “Volume. So loud.” Using both hands, she waved awkwardly at everyone and forced a pained smile. “Didn’t make it back to who?”
You.
Because you got sick, and I’d been trying to get back to you. To our room. Where we’d been . . .
“Beau was passed out in the upstairs hall with your trash can,” Hunter said matter-of-factly.
Savannah looked up at me, face scrunching adorably before her head fell into her hands. “What trash can?”
“When did you go downstairs?” I asked, voice rough and demanding as that little blur I’d been given replayed in my mind.
What little I remembered of the night before, I was positive happened. And Savannah had been upstairs. With me. In that bed.
She shuffled in my direction and gestured down the hall she’d just come from. “As soon as we came in. Bunch of us passed out in Adrianna’s room.”
I went still as I absorbed her words.
As that fucking blur played again.
My body jolted slightly when Savannah was suddenly there on the stairs with me, falling against my chest. My arms automatically went around her, holding her to me. Protecting her from the nightmare path my mind was racing down.
“Drinking is the worst,” she said. “I vote no.”
My head ached as the pieces I could remember burst through my mind like condemning flashes—all the way up to waking in the hall.
Naked. The sheets on our bed all messed up in a telling way. And Savannah, downstairs the entire—Oh God.
My stomach twisted. Bile rose so fast I had to choke it back as Hunter and Madison’s words from just minutes before came rushing back.
“My girl had to see your ugly ass. You deserved it.”
“Wait, didn’t you see him when you left the room?”
“I woke up on the table.”
“No, you came to bed.”
Savannah and Madison had shared a room on our first night at the lake house. Yesterday, we’d switched. I’d moved upstairs to be with Savannah. Madison had moved downstairs to be with Hunter.
There was no reason for Madison to have seen me this morning because the room she was talking about wasn’t upstairs. Unless . . .
Fuck.
No. No, no, no.
My gaze slowly shifted to find Madison watching me. Eyes wide and face pale, looking about as sick as I felt. Like she’d already come to the horrifying realization that I was now.
“Why are you so tense?” Savannah mumbled against my chest.
“Feel like I’m dying.” The words came out before I could filter myself, but they were the truth.
I was dying. This couldn’t be real.
I couldn’t have—I wouldn’t have touched someone who wasn’t the girl in my arms.
I knew Savannah. I knew every inch of her body. I knew her heart. My soul responded to hers. I would’ve known the girl I was in bed with wasn’t her.
Right?
I drew Savannah even closer when Madison started toward us. Wanting to keep her far from the destruction happening between us. The way the world was shaking. Crumbling.
Falling apart in my hands and—oh God, what have I done?
“Beau, you’re shaking,” Savannah whispered as she inched back to look up at me, brow furrowed with worry. “Come on, let’s go sit down.”
I let her lead me down the steps and across the kitchen, my stare catching on Madison as she slipped around us on her way to the stairs.
Head down and expression twisted with the agony I was drowning in.
What the hell did we do? What the hell did we do? Why the fuck were you in my bed?
I roughly fell to the bench seat of the table and dropped my head into my hands. A trembling breath ripping from me as I drove my hands through my hair before sitting back. Wrapping an arm around Savannah and trying to breathe. To focus.
But all I could see were those two, short pieces of last night.
Savannah telling me to come get her and what I was sure was Savannah underneath me.
It had been so dark in the room, and I’d been fading in and out, but it had been her. It had been the girl I’d known and loved most of my life. I was sure of it.
But the twisting in my gut and the ice-cold pain ripping through my chest said differently.
“Jesus, Beau.”
My head snapped up. The pain there exploding from the sharp movement as I met Hunter’s watchful stare.
My brother.
My best friend.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“You look . . .” He hesitated, his head shaking. “You look bad off.”
“I’m gonna be sick.”
His brows rose in surprise, and Savannah twisted next to me, worry pouring from her as her hand moved to rest on my back.
“Really?” she asked softly. “What can I do? What do you need?”
I needed to go back in time.
I needed to make last night a bad dream.
I wanted to die.
“I gotta go,” I muttered as I stood.
“Beau,” she said as she scrambled to follow. “Let me help. What do you need?”
I turned and wrapped her in my arms, body trembling so damn bad for those few seconds I let myself hold her. “I’m good,” I whispered against the top of her head. “Gonna take a shower, and I’ll be fine.”
I left before she could respond.
Jaw clenched tight and heart aching as I headed up the stairs because, on top of everything else, I’d just lied to Savannah for the first time in my life.
As soon as I was upstairs, I hurried across the hall and into the room that was supposed to be mine and Savannah’s—the room I could hear Madison moving around in. Shutting the door quietly behind me, I stalked over to where she stood on the far side.
“No, no, no, no,” she said, the plea nothing more than a breath as I closed the distance between us.
“The hell were you doing in here?” I ground out.
“I—”
I was so lost in my guilt and my denial that I hadn’t noticed the haze that had slipped in. The simmering in my blood. I hadn’t known I’d even reacted until suddenly, she was there. Staring up at me with a mixture of fear and grief.
My hand was over her mouth, and we’d moved.
I’d moved her.
I had Madison pressed to the wall. Her body shaking and fueling my own tremors and feeding that rage. And I didn’t know how to make myself let go.
Savannah. Savannah. God damnit . . .
“This is mine and Savannah’s room,” I ground out as I struggled to calm myself—to rein it in. “You and Hunter are in the other room.”
Her head shook when I forced my hand down so it was clenching her jaw. Struggling to control what I needed to control. Mentally repeating Savannah’s name and trying to hear her calming voice in my head, and dying a little more each time.
“I don’t—I don’t—” Madison’s body lurched and her eyes filled with tears.
I held her glassy stare as that haze started pulling back. As that burning anger in my veins began receding. “Stay the fuck away from me,” I muttered in a low warning before finally pushing away from her.
A hushed cry burst from her, but instead of leaving, she stepped closer. Like being near me right then wasn’t one of the most dangerous things she’d ever done. “What do I do with this?” she asked, holding out her hand.