Better Hate than Never (The Wilmot Sisters, #2)(30)

“She was lucid for a second, but”—another snore rolls out of her—“she could fall and stay asleep through the Second Coming,” I tell him, hating that I know it, that I have a catalog of memories of Kate growing up—gangly limbs, freckled nose, tangled hair, out cold beneath the backyard trampoline; curled up on the landing of the stairs; even once snoring in the bathtub of the third-floor bathroom, where she stashed herself for hide-and-seek and fell asleep because no one found her.

Kate twitches in her sleep again, flopping onto her back. The whiskey she was clutching rolls away from her.

I scoop it up and inspect the bottle. I know without a doubt that bottle was sitting unopened at the bar earlier this evening because I brought it. A good quarter of it’s gone.

A low whistle leaves Jamie as he notices that, too.

“And apparently she’s drunk as a sailor.” I set the bottle aside.

“I’d like to check for signs of alcohol poisoning,” he says, crouching beside her. “Sorry for the physician mode, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t.”

I crouch beside him, feeling a harsh, sharp pang in my chest as Jamie holds her wrist and feels her pulse, then gently lifts her eyelids, examining her. “Is she all right?” I ask.

He nods. “Fine. Just a little tipsy and tired. We should make sure she sleeps on her side in case she gets sick.”

“Jamie?” Bea calls groggily from the main room. She stands from the chair she was sleeping on and rubs her eyes. “What’re you doing?”

“Just, uh . . .” He clears his throat as we both stand, too. “Closing up for the night. Coming.” Quickly, he turns back to me and asks quietly, “Can you manage helping Kate to bed?”

I arch an eyebrow, glancing from Kate’s slight form back to him. “I think I can handle it.”

Bea sleepily wanders toward him and Jamie backtracks, catching her when she slumps into him and wraps her arms around his neck as she whines about being tired. Jamie sweeps her up and shifts her high in his arms, then turns and carries Bea toward her bedroom.

Sighing, I crouch down again and say, “Wake up, Kate.”

I get a snore for an answer.

“Kate, wake up.”

“No,” she grumbles.

I had a hunch she’d do this. She’s a deep and cranky sleeper. I’d rather poke a sleeping bear than wake up Kate. Which means I just need to suck it up and pick her up, then dump her in bed.

Except I can’t quite seem to make myself do it. I stare at her as she sleeps, long legs tucked up, knees to her chin, snoring like a truck driver. Like a fool, for just a moment, I watch her sleep and count the constellations of her freckles. I stare at her full lips parted, her expression smooth, utterly at peace.

I’d give anything to feel as peaceful as she looks, but this is what Kate does—hooks me by the innards and wrenches me open, like a gutted fish. This is what happens when twenty minutes pass and I don’t know where she is, a world of difference from twenty months when she’s on the other side of the planet, out of sight, out of mind.

Anger and resentment knot beneath my ribs.

“Kate.” I grit my teeth and clutch her unhurt shoulder, squeezing rather than jostling it, so I don’t shake her body and hurt the arm still tucked inside that sling I can’t look at. “Wake up,” I tell her.

She snores.

“Fine,” I snap, my head swimming, the warning pulses behind my eyeballs signaling a migraine coming my way. “If you won’t get your own ass to bed, I’ll get it there.”

After the worry she just put me through, I should let her sleep all night in a cramped storage closet and earn the sore muscles she deserves, but goddammit, that is untenable to me.

So I slip my hands beneath her, my palms grazing her shoulder blades, the tendons at the back of her knees, before I lift her into my arms.

“Hmm.” Her head flops against my chest on a thud that reverberates through my body.

“Hmm yourself,” I mutter sourly, tucking her tighter against me, “you sanity-shredding shrew. You heart attack of a hellion. You’ve got me so angry, I’m being alliterative.”

“Hmm,” she mumbles again. A smile quirks the corner of her mouth.

It brings me to an abrupt, wrenching stop. I stand in the middle of the apartment, staring down at her—the straight, proud line of her freckled nose, those tiny wisps of auburn curled lovingly around her jaw. I stare at that dimple in her cheek that’s as good as a black hole, a vortex devouring time and space, catapulting me through a kaleidoscopic blur of memory.

I look at Kate and see her when she was a baby, then a child, that same dimple in her cheek.

And then I see her just how I did that day I came home for good, a box of shit from my city apartment clutched in my arms, as she stood on the porch, no longer a pranking, conniving little girl, but a woman. No smile, no dimple in sight, her eyes holding mine.

The world melted away to nothing but the slivers of sage in the cool blue of her eyes, the smoky gray ring around each iris that darkened like the sky as a storm rolled in above us, whipping the trees, flooding the air with ozone and a crackling, electric warning.

Dragging past to present, marrying memory with this moment, lightning flashes outside, chased by an ominous boom of thunder. A rare, sudden storm for this time of year.

I tell my feet to move, my body to cross the distance to her room, drop Kate on the bed, walk away, and never look back.