Believe (True Believers #3)(52)
Author: Erin McCarthy

I remembered him telling me that he only beat the shit out of people who deserved it, and I knew he hated Nathan on principle, but I didn’t entirely get the rage. Maybe my brain was still too foggy. “He knew about Nathan. I told him a few weeks ago. So I have no idea why he would go ballistic like that. He didn’t get in trouble, did he?” That was my main concern, if anyone had called the cops. Phoenix would go back to jail, no question about it.

“No. It’s okay. But my God, what a night. I think we need to stop doing Girls’ Night.” She gave me a smile. “Too much drama.”

“It wasn’t Girls’ Night. It was me. All of it.”

“No, it wasn’t all you. Don’t take Nathan’s guilt on to yourself.”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” I said, because I didn’t. Guilt had become so familiar to me, it was odd and scary to have my secret shame out there in the open, for my friends to discuss and question.

I already knew what I had to do—what I had been planning originally, before I had met Phoenix and let Tyler convince me that I needed to pretend nothing had happened. I needed to move out. There was no place in that apartment for me while Kylie was trying to recover.

“You didn’t call my parents, did you?” I asked, the thought sending me into a panic. My mother would be shocked, my father would be so disappointed. My grandmother, well, she would be disgusted. “What time is it anyway?”

“It’s six a.m., and no, I didn’t call your parents. We left your phone at the apartment by accident, and it was the middle of the night and it looked like you were going to be okay, so I didn’t go back for it. Should we have?”

I shook my head. “God, no. This would destroy them.”

Phoenix came back around the curtain with a nurse then, and Rory stepped back to let her check my vitals.

After she went through a whole round of questions, she said, “The doctor needs to stop in, but you can leave at any time if you’d like to go home. We’ll go over the instruction list for home care, and I have some information for you to take home about the dangers of binge drinking and resources available to you.”

There was no judgment in her voice. She was smiling and rubbing my arm. It actually made me feel worse. If she were bitchy about it, I could get defensive. But there was nothing there but the kind concern of a total stranger.

“Thanks,” I said, as she gently pulled the tape back on my IV. She had short, spiky red hair and hot pink scrubs.

“I have kids who are in their late twenties. College has too many keg parties. Hopefully this was a lesson learned for you.”

“Yeah,” I said, because I was supposed to. And it was a lesson. But then so had waking up naked with Nathan, and yet I’d done it again. That scared me to the point that I felt numb. I wanted to ignore all of it, I wanted to lie on my couch for a week straight, eating cereal and watching TV, painting every canvas I could get my hands on with shades of deep, bruised purple.

“It won’t happen again,” Phoenix said, and something about his tone had me glancing toward him. That sounded weird. Like he planned to put an ankle bracelet on me or something.

“You can change back into your clothes.” She put a bandage where the needle had punctured my wrist. “Be back in a flash with the doctor.”

Rory reached for the clothes they had obviously removed from me at some point. I was still wearing my bra and panties, so I sat up and tried to slip out of the arms of the gown without flashing both Phoenix and Rory.

“Oh, God, this dress is still wet,” Rory said, blanching a little.

I was so exhausted, I didn’t care. I just wanted to get home and sleep. Except that it stunk. “Gross.” But I pulled it on anyway, because I didn’t really have a choice, and hey, it was my own puke. I supposed I deserved it. The gown fell away as the dress slid down into place, damp and smelly.

Phoenix, who had been standing there silently, his body completely still, suddenly started and yanked the curtain back with more power than was needed. “I’ll go pull the car around. Rory, let me have the keys.”

It was totally obvious that he wasn’t processing any of this any better than I was.

Ten minutes later I was climbing into the back of Riley’s car on shaky legs, sighing as I sunk down, my eyes closing. The physical discomforts—the pounding head, the dry mouth, the tremor—gave me a focus on something other than my thoughts.

But one kept coming to the forefront anyway—that I didn’t want to risk death. That if guilt drove me to that place, then I was going to have to figure out how to let go of the guilt.

To forgive myself.

Ultimately, I couldn’t control if Kylie or my other friends did or not. But I could control my own feelings. And I could control my actions.

But first I wanted to sleep, for days and days, until my head no longer felt so heavy and my thoughts so sluggish.

Phoenix helped me up the stairs to the apartment and into the living room, his firm arm around me, taking the bulk of my weight as I leaned heavily on him. The two flights of stairs wiped me out, and I said, “I can’t walk to my room. I need to rest on the couch.”

Nausea was crawling up my throat, and I was out of breath. As I sank down I saw Rory scrambling to grab the empty vodka bottle. She slipped it into her ever-present messenger bag.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Can I get you anything? I should take Riley’s car back soon, but I can run to the store if there’s anything special you want, like Gatorade or Popsicles or soup?”

I was about to speak, but Phoenix beat me to it. “I can get her whatever she needs. You should get the car back to Riley. Thanks for everything, Rory.”

“Yeah, thank you.” I wanted a hug but wasn’t sure if I could ask for one.

“Sure. I’ll talk to you soon.” She looked at Phoenix. “Take care of her.”

He nodded.

Once we were alone, I curled up on the couch and tugged at the hem of the dress, trying to pull it up without much luck. I wanted the smell away from me. It wasn’t helping my squirrely stomach. Suddenly Phoenix’s hands were pulling it up over my hips and past my ribs. He wasn’t being particularly gentle and I protested. “I got it.”

“Let me help,” he said gruffly, sliding a hand behind me and forcing me up into a sitting position.

My head spun from the motion, and my face went hot. “Phoenix, stop.”

But the dress was already over my head, and I sank back. I closed my eyes briefly, then I looked up at him. “That’s a little rough,” I complained. “I don’t feel good.”