NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1)(53)

But here it is, lying on the bathroom counter.

I pick it up with shaking fingers.

Where is he?

I rush back out of the house, intent on asking Dare to drive me back into town to look for him when I glance down at the beach and I see that our boat is gone from the slip.

Since dad’s in the house and Dare is in the cottage, there’s only one person that could’ve taken it.

Finn.

I jog down the trail to the beach, and sit with my legs dangling on the pier. Because there’s only one thing to do.

Wait.

I wait until my body is stiff, until the sun sinks low in the sky, and still Finn hasn’t come back in. I start to get pissed actually, because he had to know I’d be worried.

He’s doing this on purpose, I decide. To teach me a lesson.

Anger boils my blood and I stomp back up to the house where I slam a few things together in the kitchen to make my dad a sandwich.

He looks up at me in surprise. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Finn took the boat out alone,” I snap. “He’s obviously mad at me.”

My dad pats my shoulder. “He’s been sailing for as long as you have. He’s fine,” is all he says. I want to grab his hand and snap it off because he’s so involved in his own sadness that he can’t see anyone else’s.

“You don’t know that,” I snap at him again.

“I do,” he says confidently. “He’ll be fine.”

I can’t even stand to stay and eat with him, so I slam back out the door, but on my way an idea occurs to me, something I’ve never considered doing before.

I pause at my dad’s bar.

And then I grab a bottle of gin, my father’s drink of choice.

He’s certainly been drinking it a lot these past weeks, trying to forget his pain and his issues. I can do it too. If it works for him, it’ll work for me. I clutch the cool bottle in my fingertips as I jog down the porch steps.

I think I see the curtains of the Carriage House moving, and I think I feel Dare staring at me through the glass, but I don’t stop. And I don’t put the bottle down. They can all judge me. I don’t care.

I deserve a respite from reality.

I slide down the trail, pad through the damp sand and sit on the pier with my bottle of gin. After a few minutes, I open it, and take a swig.

I almost immediately spit the vile liquid out, coughing as the fiery stuff blazes a trail down my throat and into my belly. I can feel the heat of it, peeling off the tissue of my esophagus and I want to hurl the rest of the bottle out to sea.

It’s disgusting. How can anyone willingly drink it?

But as I wait for minutes, then an hour, then two, I pick the bottle back up.

I stare at the empty horizon, and take a swig, forcing it down. I stare at the stars, at freaking Andromeda and her stupid love story, and take a swig. And before long, after fifteen swigs, my belly feels warm and my memory feels fuzzy.

A blissful sense of foggy detachment envelops me, and I no longer feel my raw throat or taste the disgusting liquid. I drink more and more, until I fall back on the pier and stare at the sky, enjoying the way the stars swirl and twirl around me, like I’m on a carousel and they’re in mirrors.

I close my eyes for a minute, and my eyelids spin too, round and round, until I actually start to feel dizzy.

I open my eyes, and Dare is standing over me, leaning over the edge of my horizontal periphery.

I smile. I think.

He smiles back.

“How much have you had?” he asks ruefully, picking up the bottle and examining it. There’s only a couple of slogs left and I graciously wave my hand.

“You can have the rest,” I tell him, as though I’m bestowing a gift.

My words are slurred through, my tongue thick and heavy, and even though that’s what I meant to say, it comes out at gibberish. I try again.

Still gibberish.

I stare at him helplessly and he chuckles.

“That much, then?”

He bends down and offers me his hand. I shake my head.

“I’ve gotta wait for Finn.”

Which sounds more like, “Lesh gofur a schim.”

Dare shakes his head. “I don’t want to swim, thanks. We need to get you to the house before you pass out.”

I know I should stay right here on this pier and wait for Finn. I know I should be more worried about my brother because it’s dark and he’s alone and he never stays out this late by himself, but the gin has accomplished one thing aside from rendering my tongue muscles useless.

It’s made me carefree.

I don’t have a care in the world right now, which is a blissful, amazing gift. No wonder my dad likes this stuff.

I let Dare hoist me up, and then I promptly collapse against him when my legs give out.

“Hi,” I say to his chest. His marvelously amazingly sexy chest.

“Hi,” it says back. “Let’s go, Cal.”

Dare’s hands pull me under my armpits, and then suddenly, I’m in his arms, cradled like a baby as he walks all the way up the trail.

“I’m too heavy,” I mumble into his shirt.

“You’re not,” his shirt answers.

He doesn’t stumble, he doesn’t falter, he simply grips me tight and makes the climb. He’s barely breathing heavily when we get to the top.