Goddamn it.
I let go of Kelsey’s waist to scrape my fingers across my scalp. She started slipping, and I rushed to hold her tight against me again. I pressed my forehead against hers, trying to get her to meet my gaze.
“Everything is going to be okay, Kelsey. I’ll take care of everything. I’m taking you home.”
She sighed, almost sleepily, and then planted another kiss on the center of my chest before sagging against me.
She laid a hand over my heart, and if I thought I felt guilty over that drink, I was choking on it now.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “This is my fault. I should have been watching.”
She lifted her head, but her eyelids were heavy, and each time she blinked, they stayed closed a little longer. She wrapped her arms around my neck, and I swept an arm underneath her legs.
With her cradled against my chest, I headed for the exit.
“I’ve got you, princess. You’re safe. If you can hear me, no one’s going to take advantage of you. I promise.”
She mumbled, “Bummer.”
I tried to laugh, but there was a crushing weigh on my chest, so it came out as nothing more than a breath. “You’re something else.”
People looked at us strangely as I waited in line to get Kelsey’s things from the coat check, but no one said anything. I kept asking her questions, trying to keep her awake.
I was completely naïve of what to do in this kind of situation.
But eventually, she stopped replying, and by the time I hailed a cab outside, she was asleep.
I told the driver the address of my hotel, and once I had Kelsey lying on the backseat with her head in my lap, I rummaged through our things for the dress she’d worn a dress over her swimsuit earlier in the evening, but I didn’t want to wake her to try to put it on. I laid it over the top of her so that, maybe, the taxi driver would stop staring at her through his rearview mirror. Because if he didn’t, his face was going to get to know that mirror really well.
I tried to swallow down the guilt cloying at the back of my throat, but it didn’t budge. I brushed Kelsey’s hair out of her face, letting my knuckles graze the curve of her cheek.
She was so beautiful. And it tore me to pieces to see her this vulnerable.
Because if she was anything like me, and I believed she was, it must kill her to be weak. It had taken me so long to deal with losing Rodriguez and Johnny and Teague and Ingram. For a time, it had been easier to cut them out completely, to burn out those memories with bitterness and distractions, so that no one had to see how completely dismantled I was.
I felt that same way now . . . dismantled. Like all I wanted to do was to hold Kelsey and piece her together, but I too was just a mess of parts, incapable of helping her in the way I wanted.
Maybe I couldn’t save her. People can only save themselves.
But I could be there for her like Rodriguez had been for me. I could take the bottle or her pain or her past or whatever it was that made her tired and use it for target practice just like Rodriguez had done for me. And maybe if we were lucky, our demons would be the dismantled ones.
When we were almost to the hotel, the driver took a turn too fast, and I had to hold her waist and shoulder to keep her from tumbling onto the floorboard.
She stirred. “What’s happening?”
Her eyes met mine, and I felt the shift in my thinking take root. I couldn’t leave her. Wouldn’t.
“We’re in a cab. I can’t be certain, but . . .” I tried to appear calm for her sake. “I’m pretty sure someone slipped something in that drink while it was sitting on the bar.”
She laid a hand across her eyes and groaned, “Fuck.”
“I tell you that you’ve been roofied and that’s all you have to say?”
“You tell me I’ve been roofied and expect me to say more?”
Even drugged, she had an attitude. And even though I wanted to get mad, I couldn’t. Not when she was like this. I trailed my fingers through her damp hair, wishing I could do more.
She laid a hand over mine on her stomach, lacing our fingers together. She fell asleep that way, but we arrived at the hotel less than a minute later.
I paid the driver, and then as carefully as I could, maneuvered her out of the cab. I tried my best to keep her covered by her dress, but the desk clerk still stared as I entered the building.
I didn’t bother getting her a new room. There wasn’t enough time, and I didn’t want her out in public like this any longer than she had to be.
She blinked up at me in the elevator, her lips marred by a frown.
“You scare me,” she said.
The air turned solid in my lungs. What did she think I would do to her? I struggled to take a deeper breath and then, as slowly and calmly as I could, said, “You have nothing to be scared of. I won’t . . . I wouldn’t. I’ll help you get to bed, and then I’ll leave, get another room.”
She shook her head.
“Not that. I don’t think that.”
“Then why do I scare you?”
“Because I don’t want you to see.”
She wasn’t making any sense. She didn’t want me to see her like this? The situation was hardly her fault, and it wasn’t as though I hadn’t been there the other night when she’d been so drunk that she’d gotten sick.
“See what?”
I shouldered open the door to my hotel room at the same time that she said, “Me.”
I stood in the entryway for a few moments, stunned into silence before I felt the cold, wet fabric of her swimsuit soaking through my T-shirt. I crossed the room quickly and gently lowered her into a cushioned chair.
I laid the things I’d gotten from the coat check at her feet, and then knelt in front of her.
“Why wouldn’t you want me to see you, Kelsey?”
She sealed her lips and shook her head.
“Kelsey, look at me.”
She did, reluctantly. She looked miserable. I pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. It was selfish, but I wanted to be the one person who got to see her. I wanted to be the only one with whom she didn’t feel the need to hide. “You are beautiful, that’s all I see.”
Her eyes went glassy, and I hated not knowing what to do to help her. As I watched, her head began to nod and she struggled to stay upright.
I cleared my throat, but still didn’t know what to do. She needed to rest. That was my best guess. “I, um, we should get you out of your wet swimsuit.”
I felt sick thinking about it, but I also didn’t want her to get a cold from sleeping in wet clothes.