Page 91 of Offside Devil

Each word is like an individual gunshot, but I still can’t open my eyes. Consciousness is floating just out of reach, and based on the way my head is throbbing and my stomach churns, I’m not sure I want it.

I start to drift back off—only for loud, metallic banging to startle me awake again.

“No more sleeping!” a familiar voice snaps. “Gallagher is coming back from daycare soon. I can’t have Uncle Zane passed out on the sofa.”

Jace.

I’m at Jace’s house.

Fuck.

I blink my eyes open and hiss like Dracula. “Do you live on the fucking sun? What is wrong with this place?”

Jace’s blurry figure walks around the couch and I hear the fwish of the blinds sliding closed.

Hello, darkness, my old friend.

“The only thing wrong with my house is that you’ve been sweating out last night’s poison all over my leather couch for the last ten hours.”

I drag a hand through my hair. It feels like my brain is trying to escape my skull. I can’t remember the last time I felt this terrible.

Actually, I can. The entire first week after I decided to get sober was a descent into the bowels of hell.

As my eyes throb and my stomach churns, I’m wondering if hell doesn’t have a basement.

My phone vibrates on the table and I lunge for it, just to shut the damn thing up. But my hand-eye coordination is ten kinds of fucked, so I end up skidding my phone across the coffee table and onto the rug. At least the vibration is muffled.

“It’s been ringing like that for hours,” Jace informs me. There isn’t a drop of sympathy on his face. “All night, really. You said Mira wasn’t your girlfriend, but she sure as hell calls you like one.”

“Mira?” Snippets of conversation float back to me, but it’s like trying to write a novel with alphabet soup. Nothing goes in the right order. “What happened?”

“Well, you decided to throw away four years of sobriety and get trashed at a bar. Then you tried to fight me when it was time to leave.”

I squint up at him. I don’t see any black eyes. No bruises. “I must not have tried very hard. You look fine.”

“Only because you were so drunk you could barely stand,” Jace growls. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Whitaker?”

“Right now, your volume control.” I reach for my phone, moving slowly so I don’t upset the very delicate game of balance that is keeping the contents of my stomach inside my stomach. It vibrates again, Mira’s name flashing on the screen.

I don’t even have time to dismiss the call before my phone goes black. It’s dead.

Suddenly, Jace swats my phone out of my hand. “I carried your ass out of the bar, cleaned your vomit out of the backseat of my car, and had to give my kid breakfast in his bedroom so he wouldn’t get scared seeing you passed out on my couch. The very fucking least you can do is tell me why.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “It’s nothing.”

“Wrong answer, asshole!” he barks. “After you spewed alcohol all over my backseat, you also spewed your guts. I know everything.”

I snap my attention to him, moving so fast my head spins. “What does that mean? What do you know?”

What did I tell him?

“I know Mira had a date last night.” Jace drops down on the far end of the sofa with a sigh. “It’s obvious you’re into her. I saw you two at the party. I haven’t seen you like that with anyone. Ever. Not even Paige.”

Paige is dead.

I have a son.

Mira is…

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