And who knows who this mysterious blonde is.
She could be trying to get pregnant. She could be out to hurt me. She could claim I raped her. Who the hell knows?
“Hey,” Keith snaps in my face and it’s only then that I realize he was trying to get my attention. “Get a grip.” I shake my head. “I mean it, man. We’ll figure out what’s going on, but you have to get a grip.”
“My phone. I need my phone.”
I stand up on shaky legs, leaning all my weight against the wall, because my muscles feel weak, like they can’t even support my weight. “Here. I found it on the floor.” Damien hands me my phone and I unlock it. Scrolling through, I find my text stream with Naomi and open it up. There are a couple of texts from her around two in the morning, but that’s not what’s robbing the breath from my lungs and having my heart beat in a way I know it’s never beat before.
“I texted her,” I whisper, staring incredulously at the words I know, I know, I didn’t write. Both Keith and Damien hover over me, trying to see what I’m staring at and I hold it out so they can.
“What the hell?” Keith asks.
“That’s not me, brother.”
“I know.”
“Someone texted Naomi from my phone. Someone slipped something in my drink and probably undressed me and maybe had sex with me and sent my girlfriend a text from me.”
Before I can stop it, I drop my phone, turn around, bend forward, and throw up into the toilet.
“I’m going to lose her,” I mutter when the last of the dry heaves have wracked through my body. “Jesus. I’m going to lose her, and I can’t even blame her for that. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if I had sex with someone behind her back.”
“It wouldn’t be behind her back, Gus. If someone drugged you, then that’s not your fault. Just as it’s not a woman’s fault if she’s drugged and then raped.”
Raped. That sounds like such a ridiculous word to use. It’s not something in on all my worst nightmares that has ever occurred to me. How does a woman even rape a man? I have no idea, but God, if I did have sex with someone, it was certainly unwillingly.
But…could she believe me?
She won’t.
She’s been through so much. Hurt so many times. Lied to and manipulated.
I need to go to her, but how can I? Not like this. “I need to go see Naomi. Can you take me to her?”
“Gus, you can’t see her in this state. That won’t help anything. I’m going to take you to the hospital. Have them check you out and make sure you’re okay. Run some tests.”
I shake my head. “I can’t go to the hospital.” But as I stand up, my world begins to sway once more as a fresh wave of cold sweat covers my forehead. I stumble, falling, only to be caught by Keith and Damien.
“If not the hospital, I’m taking you to Jasper’s.”
“No,” I garble, my voice sounding distant as silver and black spots dance behind my eyes. “Adalyn,” I push out. “Home.”
I force my eyes open, somehow now sitting upright, buckled into the passenger side of Keith’s truck. It’s a big truck. A man’s truck, as he calls it. But once again, I can’t remember how I got here.
What the hell did she give me?
It’s bouncing through my body, through my mind, in waves. In torturous, flowing, dark waves I can’t see through or think past. It’s maddening.
“Where?” I slur, leaning back and closing my eyes once again because keeping them open only makes my vision blur worse.
Keith is silent for what feels like too long before he says, “Your house. But I called a few people.”
I have no idea what that means, but I can guess. The sun is just starting to rise, and I hate the day it’s bringing with it. “What did I do?”
“We won’t know what happened to you until the doctor comes. But you didn’t do anything. Someone did this to you, brother, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
I shake my head. I appreciate what he’s doing, but it makes very little difference to me right now. Whatever happened is done and I’m going to lose the only happiness I’ve known. “How do I explain this sort of thing to someone like Naomi?”
Keith heaves out a breath but does not answer. He knows as well as I do there is no explaining this away. And the likelihood that she’ll believe me, let alone forgive me, is none.
Chapter Thirty-One
Naomi
* * *
By the time I walk into my house again, I’m exhausted, wind-swept, and miserable. I have no idea how far I walked or how many miles I put in between myself and this house, but it’s useless. There is no escaping this. I just have to find a way through it as I always do.
As I always have.
When I walked away from Florian that day in the hotel, I thought I was going to die. I didn’t think I would survive losing him and then I lost our baby on top of that. That last one is still the worst of it, but losing Gus somehow, even though I’ve only known him such a short time, hurts worse than losing Florian did.
I can’t even figure out why. Maybe it’s that I trusted him with my already tender and fragile heart. Maybe it’s the profound love and passion I thought we shared. The words we spoke and the promises we made and the hope. Goddammit, that hope was everything to me.
Thank god we’re no longer doing the duet together.
I don’t ever have to see him again.
My skin is tacky and my clothes cling to it as I run up the stairs into my bedroom. I need a shower. I need to focus on small tasks and block everything else out. I cried my entire walk on the beach, and I can feel just how puffy and raw my face is as I tug my shirt over my head. I’m no stranger to heartbreak, yet it never seems to get easier.
If anything, it’s harder to bear.
I catch sight of my phone on my bedside table where I left it this morning, and instantly more tears fill my eyes. I shake it off, heading into the bathroom. I set the water to scalding hot and remove the rest of my clothes, terrified to even so much as glance at my reflection.
My phone rings from the other room and I scream.
I scream so loud.
Because I want to answer it.
I know it’s him. I know it. But I’m not ready yet. I’m not strong enough, so I get in the shower instead and cry and yell and wash my hair and body, and cry and yell some more, and then I step out, wrapping myself up in a towel.
My phone rings again, and I pad back into my bedroom, staring at it as Gus’ handsome face flashes across the screen. “You’re a fucker,” I bark at it. Growling out a few other choice expletives, I pick up my phone, but instead of answering, I find the picture of Gus with that woman that I had texted myself from Florian’s phone and send it to him.
There. That should shut him up.
And it does. My phone is silent, and I hate that it’s silent because I want him to call me and I never want him to call me again. God, the brain is a twisted, vicious fucking thing.
The second I slip on my panties, my phone blares like it’s got a point to make, and this time, I pick up.
“You have so much nerve calling me.”