The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(29)

When we reach my door, I set her down gently. “I need you to be really quiet, okay? Sloane’s in the bed, so I’m gonna put you on the couch.”

She nods but all my caution was unnecessary—there’s a light on in the bedroom. Sloane must be up and she probably knows I left, which will go over about as well as everything else I’ve done this week.

Drew falls onto the couch without appearing to notice the blanket and pillow already there. She curls up and kicks off her shoes and just like that, she’s out cold. I get a second blanket from the closet and am pulling it over her when Sloane walks in, fully dressed.

“She smells like a distillery,” she says, arms folded across her chest.

“I thought you’d be asleep.”

She walks into the bedroom and I follow, feeling too tired for a fight but knowing we have to discuss it.

She’s got her suitcase out and it’s already packed.

“Sloane,” I say, running a hand over my face. “What are you doing?”

She swallows. “I’m going home.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” I argue. “Look, go to sleep and we’ll discuss it in the morning.”

“I need to get out of here,” she says. “I hate what it’s turning me into and I should never have come in the first place. I know that now." Her shoulders sag as if defeated and I hate that.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m so sorry this wasn’t what you wanted.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t apologize,” she says, and she forces a small smile. “I knew the deal from the beginning of the trip. You told me how you felt but I chose to ignore it.”

I sink onto the edge of the bed. “You seemed so ambivalent in Somalia. I had no idea it meant anything to you.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m not sure I thought it meant anything myself until I got back to Atlanta. I turned it into a competition with Drew, rather than admitting to myself that coming here in the first place was a terrible idea. And competing with Drew was my second terrible idea, because that’s a competition I was never going to win.”

“Drew had nothing to do with this,” I argue. “Obviously. She’s here with my brother.”

She takes her toiletry kit and shoves it in her carry-on. “Is she, though? I was hoping once your brother got here it would change, but it hasn’t,” she says. “She’s at the center of every room for you. She’s the center of every conversation. She’s all you can see.”

"Sloane…" I begin, running my hands through my hair. What she’s saying is ridiculous. "I don't know what you think is going on between me and Drew, but you're wrong. There is absolutely nothing there."

She puts her bag on the floor and pulls it over to where I sit. And then she stops and wraps her arms around me, pressing her cool lips to my cheek. "I know you think that's true. I just hope you work it all out before a bad situation gets worse.”

There’s no arguing with her, clearly, and I’m not sure I would anyway. Because the truth is that I like having Drew here, all to myself. I wish my fucking brother had never shown up at all.





19





DREW





January 27th





I wake up half on and half off the couch with the sunlight blazing through the window.

For a moment, I wonder if I’m on tour, because it’s very much like the morning after a show. My mouth feels like I shoved it full of sand, and my brain is howling like a wounded animal that deserves to be put out of its misery.

Not on tour.

Hawaii.

Fuck my life.

What the hell happened yesterday? I see flashes of things—eating tacos at some total dive with a bunch of surfers, getting beers with our Uber driver, and a pig roast with some random Hawaiian family. I’m pretty sure I offered to let one of them get married at Tali’s beach house. I seem to recall even showing photos of her wedding.

I bury my head in my hands and groan.

“There’s Advil on the table beside you,” says a voice. I squeeze open a single eye and see Josh sitting at the desk, tapping away on his trusty laptop.

“Why are you here?” I ask. My voice is rough, like I smoked a carton of cigarettes.

“Why am I in my room?” he asks. “Great question.”

“Shit,” I whisper. I struggle to push off the heavy blanket on top of me and sit up, burying my head in my hands again. I’m sweaty and filthy and I want to be placed in a medically induced coma until the alcohol is out of my system. “Shit.”

More snippets of the evening are coming back to me now. We were in the rental car. And I was remembering my dad singing me those stupid Russian songs from his childhood in his piece-of-shit Jeep and drinking the whole time, and I think I might have told Josh about it.

I reach for the water he’s set out for me on the coffee table. “Whatever I said to you…can we just pretend I didn’t say it?”

He closes his laptop and turns in his chair to look at me. “Why?”

I close my eyes. “I don’t…discuss my father, okay? With anyone. And that’s all just…it’s shit I don’t want out in the world.”