I ripped my eyes open, the sound of something crashing in the kitchen jerking me awake. Immediately, I lurched out of bed and padded barefoot to the bedroom door, gripping the baseball bat I kept in the corner before I emerged from the room.

  And then, I blinked in surprise at the sight of Tor slumped on the floor, dishes surrounding him that he’d obviously knocked off the counter. His chest was slowly rising and falling, his arms hanging limply by his sides, his hands laying palm up on the floor.

  “What the—shit,” Jesse whispered as he came up behind me.

  I shoved my baseball bat at him. “Put that back for me.” I walked forward and crouched in front of Tor, gently shaking him. He groaned but didn’t open his eyes. The smell of alcohol wafted off him like a pungent cologne—like he’d fucking bathed himself in it.

  Christ.

  “Tor,” I called, tapping his cheek. His bleary eyes opened, staring at me. He blinked slowly—too fucking slow. Guilt and worry gnawed at my insides. If something happened to him because of me, because I’d pushed him into this, I’d never be able to live with myself.

  “Salem…” he groaned, his eyes shutting again.

  “Hey.” I grasped his face in my hands and gently shook him again. He groaned, squinting at me. He had definitely had more than just a bunch of fucking alcohol—something more than weed. “What’d you take, baby?” I asked, gentling my tone, the term of endearment slipping out before I could stop it.

  He shrugged, closing his eyes again. I clenched my jaw, shaking him again. He whined and slowly opened his eyes again. “Tor, baby, what’d you take?” I asked again, this time purposely using it. I knew I was digging the knife deeper into both of us—it was fucking double-edged at this damn point—but I had to know what he took, and I knew in this state, the best thing to do was be soft and gentle. Just like I used to be.

  “Pills,” he mumbled, his words heavily slurred.

  I sighed, my heart in my throat. “What kind of pills, baby?”

  He started falling asleep again. I pulled him away from the counter he was slumped against, and he just fell forward against my chest, officially out. I hefted him into my arms, grunting at his dead weight, before I eased up from the floor and made my way to my room. The door was open, and I sent a mental thank you to Jesse for leaving it open. I wasn’t sure if I would have been able to open it with Tor slumped in my arms.

  When I settled Tor on the bed, he didn’t even budge. I tugged his boots off his feet before easing his jeans down his legs. He only loudly snored as I tugged his hoodie and t-shirt over his head, tossing them to the floor near his boots. His limbs were all askew on the mattress, but when I tucked him in and then slid beneath the blankets beside him, he rolled onto his side and wrapped himself around me like a little monkey.

  Just like he used to.

  A lump suddenly formed in my throat, and I buried my face in his hair, still able to smell him beneath the alcohol wafting from his every pore.

  This… this was a fucking wake-up call. I had to fix this. I fucking had to. Because the mere thought of someone else fixing Tor made me feel like I should be in a straight jacket.

  And the mere thought of him killing himself over me made me want to go ahead and slit my own throat.

  7

  Tor

  I felt like absolute shit. There was no other word for it. My head was pounding. My mouth tasted fucking horrible and was so dry, I felt like I was choking when I swallowed. My limbs were too heavy for me to really function. And everything was too goddamn loud. Why was the fucking air conditioning so noisy? Was it broken?

  “Someone needs to fix the AC,” I mumbled.

  The bed shifted beside me, and a familiar body pressed against my back. An arm draped over my side so they could lean over me and look down at my face. I blinked at Salem, surprised to find him… cuddling me. His dark hair was a mess—messier than usual—which meant he’d just woken up. His dark eyes were coated in sleep.

  “Why are you in my bed?” I mumbled, closing my eyes again when staring at him just made me dizzy and nauseous. I didn’t even have the energy to push him away from me. Besides… I was feeling shitty enough that I wanted him close just for a moment, even with all the animosity between us.

  “I was worried you might overdose or choke on your own vomit,” Salem told me conversationally. I grunted. “You wouldn’t tell me what you took other than pills.”

  “Oxys,” I muttered. “I think.”

  Salem sighed, clear disapproval in that single noise, but I didn’t have the energy to fight with him. For once, I felt as dead on the outside as I did on the inside. And I was pretty sure I might throw up in the next five minutes.

  “You smell like you bathed in alcohol,” Salem finally said. “You need a shower.”

  “Can’t move,” I mumbled, my eyes still shut.

  Salem sighed again, and then his body heat was gone, making me shiver. The sick, nauseous feeling in my gut only intensified without him pressing into me. But a moment later, he gently tugged the blankets back before sliding his arms beneath me. I gagged and swallowed my vomit back down, the room spinning the moment I opened my eyes. “If you move me, I’m gonna hurl,” I warned.

  “Throw up then,” he told me, not seeming like he cared as he gently—so fucking gently and slowly—lifted me from the mattress and against his chest. “Clothes can be washed. You probably need to throw up whatever is left in your stomach anyway. You’ll probably feel better.”

  I blinked at him, trying to figure out what the hell was going through his head. He was acting like the old Salem. Like my Salem. And it was… confusing. I didn’t know what to make of it. Or of him. And my head hurt too damn bad to try to figure him out.

  Salem was a confusing mess of puzzle pieces that didn’t seem to quite fit together. Used to be, my pieces fit seamlessly with his, making both of us whole. We were part of the same puzzle, each of us having the pieces the other didn’t have. But in the months we turned our backs on each other after that fateful night, our pieces became jagged. Broken. Ruined.

  We didn’t fit anymore. And that… hurt.

  “What are you doing?” I asked when he eased me onto the toilet seat in our bathroom.

  He yanked his shirt over his head before dropping it to the floor. I forced myself to look away from his abs and toned muscles. From the light dusting of hair on his chest.

  From my name tattooed above his fucking heart. Some days, I wished he would just black it out. It would make more sense. Still seeing my name on his skin, right above that important organ, just left me confused.

  “We’re getting a shower.”

  “Why?” I grunted as he turned on the water.

  He turned to face me with an arched brow. “Because you smell like a fucking brewery, Tor. That’s why.”

  I shook my head before groaning in pain. I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the shelf behind me. “I meant, why are we getting a shower?”

  I didn’t bother looking when I heard Salem’s clothes hitting the ground. I was afraid to. I wasn’t sure if I could handle seeing him naked. Not now. Not after what happened a little over a year ago…and then what happened immediately after.

  When he treated me like a stranger. When he’d treated me as if I meant nothing to him. As if he hadn’t been my sole reason for breathing for so long.

  “Can you even stand on your own right now?” Salem demanded.

  His body heat pressed into me, infiltrating every single one of my senses. Overwhelming me and making me fucking needy for him. When I peeked open an eye, he was standing right in front of me, practically hovering over me, his dark eyes roaming over my face.

  “I could’ve taken a bath,” I griped.

  He exhaled loudly through his nose. “You’re a right pain in the ass when you’re hungover and feel like shit, Tor. You always have been.”

  I glowered at him, my hackles rising. “No one is forcing you to take care of me,” I snipped, immediately becoming defensive.

  He suddenly grasped my jaw, his fingers pressing into my cheeks hard enough to bite. My nostrils flared, my cock waking up. Pain had always turned me on a little, but Salem… Salem touching me had the power to unravel me.

  And he was shredding me to pieces.

  “Stop being a fucking brat, Tor,” he growled. “I’m trying to make shit right. Last night, I slept like shit because I was terrified you were going to take your last breath because of me. I was terrified I was going to be the one to indirectly kill you. It’s a feeling I’ll never forget. It fucking… it hurt, goddammit. To imagine a world without you in it.”

  My breath sagged from my lungs at his confession. At the raw agony in his voice. At the pain darkening his eyes.

  “Salem…” I croaked, a hurricane of sadness and pain swirling in my chest. How the fuck did I have the capacity to hurt for him, too, on top of all my own agony?

  He shook his head. “Don’t, okay? Just… don’t. Just let me take care of you and try to navigate how to make shit right between us again.” When I opened my mouth again, wanting to know what game he was playing at, he loosened his grip, stroking his fingers over my cheek now. There was no way to hide the shiver that rolled down my spine. “Please, Tor.”

  Swallowing thickly, I finally nodded. I wanted to know where the fuck this left us. I wanted to know why he suddenly gave a fuck about what happened to me. I wanted to know why he was suddenly hurting when he had never seemed to give a shit about what he was doing to me before now.

  I wanted to know so many things, but I could clearly see, even in my still sightly-drunk haze, that now wasn’t the time.

  Salem was trying to sort through his own shit… for basically the first time ever.

  I would give him time to do that and try like hell to not get my hopes up.

  I wasn’t sure if I’d survive the crash if he hurt me again.

  Salem helped me undress—or well, he did most of the undressing considering my limbs still felt like dead weight. And because I couldn’t stand on my own, Salem had to hold me against him. And even though he was still in his boxers, I could feel him. Feel how hard he was. And it was sending so many mixed signals to my hungover yet still slightly drunk brain.

  I was confused. So damn confused.

  Did Salem want me? Because fuck, if he did, I’d let him bend me over right now. Fuck me in this shower. I’d give him the best blowjob in the history of mankind if he’d let me.

  His soapy hands ran over my body all while he braced me against him. Shivers coursed down my spine. My cock was standing at attention between us, but Salem was ignoring it. He literally only touched it long enough to clean it, and even then, he wasn’t actually touching it—just the fucking washcloth was.

  It was torture.

  I turned my head to look at him, not realizing his face was so close, and our lips brushed. I jerked back in surprise, my heart leaping into my throat, and in the process, I lost my footing. Salem’s hand slipped off my hip when I moved, and he lurched forward to try to catch me.

  But it was too late. I knew it, and I saw it when he realized he wouldn’t be fast enough. The horror in his eyes and the fear in his voice were the last things I was aware of.

  “Tor—!”

  My head smacked against the side of the tub just as his hands found purchase on my waist. My eyes rolled back in my head, and I threw up right before I blacked out, pain slamming through my skull.

  8

  Salem

  “Tor?” I gently shook him while holding him against my torso, my heart slamming against my chest like it was threatening to break free. My throat was almost too tight to speak, panic—something I’d never felt before in my life—choking me. “Tor?”

  Nothing. He was out cold.

  I cursed and reached up, shutting off the water before lifting him into my arms and carefully stepping out of the shower. After sitting my wet ass on the toilet seat, I snatched a towel out of the cabinet above the toilet and began to frantically dry Tor off. Getting him dressed wasn’t much easier. Dressing someone who was essentially dead weight was hard as hell, but I managed to get boxers and a t-shirt on him before deeming that was enough. It would have to be.

  “Jesse!” I barked as I yanked on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. He shoved the door open, frowning at me.

  “What? What is it?” he demanded, running his eyes over me as if he was looking for an injury.

  I tossed him my car keys. “Start my car and open the passenger door.”

  “What—”

  “Just do it!” I snapped as I lifted Tor from the bed. Jesse’s eyes widened, his face a little stricken, before he rushed out of our room and to the front door. Dalton jumped up from the couch when I stormed through with Tor in my arms, but I didn’t give him a chance to ask a single question.

  I had to get Tor to the fucking emergency room.

  I eased Tor into the passenger seat before buckling his seatbelt. After I shut the door, I jogged around to the driver’s side, calling to Jesse and Dalton over my shoulder, “I’ll text you in a bit.”

  Once I was on the highway, doing way over the speed limit to get to the hospital, I grabbed Tor’s hand in mine, linking our fingers together.

  That kiss could have changed everything between us. It was a mere accident, but I couldn’t deny that the entire time we’d been in that shower, I’d been hoping he would turn his head and let his lips slide against mine. But fuck, now that it’d happened, I wished I could take it back.

  And not because I regretted it.

  I wished I could take it back and redo it all over because maybe Tor wouldn’t have freaked the fuck out. I’d seen the panic in his eyes. Seen the blood wash from his face all before he fell and damn near cracked his skull open on the side of the tub.

  He’d been blind in his need to get away from me, terrified shit between us was about to explode once again.

  “I’m sorry,” I rasped, my heart in my throat. I brushed my thumb over his knuckles before tightening my grip around his hand. “I’m so goddamn sorry I’ve destroyed everything.”

  Delia: ANSWER MY FUCKING CALL, SALEM.

  I sighed and rubbed at my forehead with the tips of my fingers, agitation swirling in my gut. She’d called me over two dozen times, and I knew why. When I’d rushed into the waiting room with Tor slumped in my arms, the bruises on both of us had been unmistakable from our fistfight the day before. We both looked like shit.

  And someone had discreetly snapped pictures of us and posted them on social media, which started a shit ton of rumors about what had happened to both of us.

  The biggest one being that we were abusive to each other and toxic and that everything we’d fed the public about us being a happy, loving couple was a lie.

  I mean… it was. But I was working to try to change that. I was just a bit shit at it. And I’d probably waited way too long to try to fix things between us.

  I swiped Delia’s message away, choosing to ignore her like the mature adult I was. I didn’t have the headspace to listen to her yelling at me. She would do clean-up, just like she always did. We were too important to Nightwork Records for her to do anything but that.

  I’d deal with her some other time… like when my entire reason for still existing wasn’t lying in a hospital bed beneath starched, white sheets in a pale blue hospital gown.

  Tor was suffering from a concussion—a pretty bad one. And they wouldn’t be able to give Tor anything for pain due to all the Oxy still in his fucking system. The doctor had been surprised Tor hadn’t overdosed, and that… well, it made me sick to stomach. Vomit had flooded my mouth.

  Tor could’ve died last night.

  All of this shit was my fault. And it was ripping my insides to shreds.

  I set my phone in my lap before leaning forward and thrusting my fingers through my hair, blowing out a harsh breath. I’d already been here for fucking hours, and Tor hadn’t woken up. Dalton, Jesse, Spike, and Kalin had already come by one at a time to see Tor and check on him and also make sure I didn’t need anything. They’d offered to get me food, coffee, something to drink… I didn’t want any of it.

  I wanted Tor to wake up and look at me with those gray eyes. Even if he looked at me with nothing but hatred, I would at least know he was truly okay. Because those doctors could say whatever they wanted to me, assure me however many times they wanted that Tor was going to be just fine aside from a major headache—and probably crashing from the pills—but I didn’t believe them.

  A low groan sounded from the bed. Immediately, I jerked to my feet, and my forgotten phone clattered to the floor. The screen no doubt broke when it fell, but I didn’t even bother checking. I just stepped over it and hovered over the bed, my hand grabbing Tor’s left one. He slowly opened his eyes, a pained moan leaving his lips as he shut his eyes again.

  “Light,” he mumbled.

  Immediately, I let go of his hand and quickly walked over to the light switch by the door, flicking off the light. Only the low light of the bathroom shone, and it was only enough for me to be able to see where the fuck I was going. When I made it back to his bedside, I grabbed his hand again.

  “Tor, baby, the light is off,” I assured him.

  He slowly cracked his eyes open again. He blinked at me for a moment as if he couldn’t believe that I was standing there, hovering over him. “Am I in a hospital?”

  I nodded. “Yeah,” I rasped. “We, uh, accidentally kissed, and you slipped and smacked your head on the side of the tub before I could catch you.”

  Tor grunted and shut his eyes again, no doubt in a lot of pain. “I want to go home.”

  I brushed my thumb over his knuckles. “I’ll see if one of the nurses can find your doctor so we can get you home, okay?”

  He grunted again in answer. I gently squeezed his hand before laying it flat over his stomach and striding out of the room. The nurse working the desk right outside his room looked up at me. “Can I help you?” she asked, not unkindly. Just very matter-of-fact and business-like.

 

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