“Now, tell me what happened,” she said, setting the clipboard across her knees. “How do you know you were drugged? Did you taste it in your drink?”
“Not at first,” he said. “When I thought back on it later, yeah, it had tasted salty. But I wasn’t expecting it, so it didn’t occur to me until my face went numb. I’ve felt that way before.”
“All the girls give you the date rape drug?” she joked. Then she realized she shouldn’t be kidding about this. “When?” She heard her own alarm as her voice pitched higher. “Here in Vegas?”
“No.” He waved her panic away with one loose hand. “Back home. A long time ago. High school.”
“Somebody slipped you a roofie?” she asked in disbelief.
“No.” He paused so long that Wendy was about to remind him what they’d been talking about when he sat up straight and said, “It was on 9/11, when my brother died.”
“Oh.” He’d always seemed so aloof. Now she wasn’t just seeing him loose for the first time. She was seeing him more vulnerable than ever. And she was beginning to understand how his hauteur was a protective shell for the pain underneath.
“The first few days,” he said, “I had a hard time holding it together. And, you know, holding it together is everything.” He took a deep breath. “My dad told the doctor to give me something. He needed to fix the situation and he couldn’t help my brother anymore, so he fixed me. I did feel calmer on the surface, but underneath, the horror was still there, just weighed down with sedative where I couldn’t access it, like oil floating on water.”
“You were how old?” Wendy thought back to 2001 and how surreal it had felt to see images of the Twin Towers collapsing from her living room in West Virginia. “Sixteen?”
He nodded.
“And you’ve been trying to make it up to your dad ever since.”
He looked down, black brows furrowed, lips pursed in concentration on that lost day he couldn’t help. She’d known him when he was college age. It was easy to picture him younger still: thinner, in a rock band T-shirt rather than a designer one, his face more open and trusting.
As she considered the sixteen-year-old Daniel, the older one finally came into focus for her. His need for control, his perfectionism—it all made sense to her now. With that knowledge came a wave of longing. She wished she could reach out to smooth her fingertip over his dark brows and stroke away some of that pain. But she didn’t dare. Whatever temporary and tenuous alliance they’d formed, that would crumble the instant he felt she was treating him like a child.
She simply turned back to the forms, placing her body at the ready, and relaxed a little when his head finally sank onto her shoulder again.
A few minutes later, he jerked away from her, as if he were embarrassed to be seen in a moment of weakness, when a doctor stepped into the room to give them the report. Daniel did have the drug in his body, but the level was low enough that, since he hadn’t had respiratory failure already, he would be okay in another eight hours.
Back at the casino hotel, as they got out of the taxi, he murmured to Wendy, “Rick will see us and know I’m f**ked. It’s not safe for you.”
His paranoia was catching. But she honestly didn’t feel like they were in danger. “Nobody’s going to do anything in a crowded casino,” she assured him.
“I can’t walk straight,” he said.
“Lean on me,” she said. “Act like we’re lovers.” She slipped her arm around his waist, and they made their way through the lobby.
Inside the elevator, he pushed away from her and backed against the wall. “I’m so sorry. I’m all over you, and I don’t mean to be.”
“You’re not all over me,” she said stoically.
“Yeah, I am, and you know why? You’re hot, and I am very attracted to you.”
She laughed lightly. “You’re high, as we’ve established.”
“No, seriously. I’ve been hot for you for a long time.” He settled his shoulders against the wood-paneled wall of the elevator and gazed at her sexily through half-closed eyes. “In Dr. Abbott’s class, you used to wear this blue tank top, and I would think, Does she know how low that shirt is cut? Does she know what that looks like when I’m standing up and I pass by her desk?”
Staring at his shadowed face, she felt herself flush. She had known how low that blue tank top was cut. She’d worn it to get his attention. She’d thought it hadn’t worked.
They both started as the doors slid open at their floor.
“Come on.” She held one arm out to him. They walked down the hall together, weaving only a little.
“I am so tired of this gargantuan hotel,” he whispered. “It’s like walking from my apartment to the Lower East Side.”
“Where’s your apartment?”
“Chelsea.”
“Mine, too. Do you ever go to the Hell’s Kitchen flea market?”
“All the time.”
They arrived at his room. He leaned his forehead against the wall as he reached into his pocket for his wallet, drew it out, and stared at it.
“Need some help with that?”
He laughed. She loved to hear him laugh. An hour before when he’d laughed, she’d been afraid for his health and his sanity. Now that she knew he would be okay tomorrow, it moved her to see him so undone. She treasured the moment, because she knew she’d never see him like this again, unguarded with her.
Putting her head close to his, she peered into his wallet and plucked out the room key card. She swiped it through the lock. He pressed down on the handle. As he pushed the door and followed it into the room, he gave her a hard look over his shoulder, suddenly lucid. She wasn’t sure whether he was wishing she would stay out or sexily urging her in. Either way, she followed him inside, because she would have felt uneasy leaving him alone like this.
He shut the door behind her, turned the dead bolt, and placed the chain in the lock with surprising dexterity. And then she got her answer about what his look had meant. He backed her against the door, slid his hands around her waist, and kissed her.
Instinctively she opened her mouth for his. He accepted her invitation and swept his tongue inside her, making her shudder with want. She couldn’t do this, though. If he half remembered this later, he would hate her for letting it happen when she had control and he didn’t.