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“I’m gonna leave you with the water.”

His head came up. “What?”

“You’ve had enough for tonight.”

For a second, Drew just stared at him. He didn’t like being told when he’d had enough, but working up an argument felt like more than he had in him.

“I’ve got a room upstairs,” he said.

“All right. You can take the water up with you.”

Drew pushed the water an inch away. So that was it. “Fine. Can I get the check?”

“Sure thing.”

He shifted on the stool, and his elbow slid off the edge of the bar. He caught himself with his other hand and held still until the head rush passed.

Fuck, he was drunk. Really fucking drunk.

The check came, and he bent over it. He could read the total fine, but he read it twice anyway before he added a tip and wrote his room number under his signature in handwriting that looked like shit. Then he pushed it back across the bar.

“Thanks.”

Drew took one last drink of water. It went down too fast, cold in his stomach, which suddenly wasn’t sitting right.

He needed to get upstairs.

He turned on the stool and stretched one foot down, expecting the floor to be closer than it was. The move pitched him forward, and he caught the edge of the bar hard.

The bartender was right there. “Easy.”

“I’m all right.”

Drew got his other foot under him and stood up, but his balance kept going after he’d stopped. He hung on to the bar until the room quit moving.

“Want somebody to walk you to the elevator?”

He shook his head, then wished he hadn’t. “Just give me a second.”

The bartender stayed close while Drew waited. From where he was standing, he could see the elevators right across the lobby, and all he had to do was get there.

He let go of the bar, took a step, and grabbed the back of the stool. Fuck. He stood there until the floor felt solid, then tried again.

He walked slow, eyes on the elevators, paying attention to every step. Halfway there, he drifted too close to an armchair and banged his thigh on it. He steadied himself on the chair and kept going. When he finally made it, he jabbed the button and leaned his shoulder against the wall to wait.

Chapter Forty-Five

Phallon couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Drew Kiernan with a drink in his hand.

Back when she first started coming around, he’d been the loudest one at every party, and she’d watched him put away Jack like it was nothing. Drunk Drew was a whole different person. He laughed at everything, he let girls sit in his lap, and he didn’t say no to much of anything. She missed that Drew. Then sometime last year, he quit, all at once, and sat through every party after that with a bottle of water and wouldn’t tell anybody why. Now he was on his third Jack Daniel’s, and she’d counted every single one.

She’d picked an armchair across the lobby, half-hidden behind a potted palm, close enough to see down the length of the bar and far enough away that he’d have to look hard to spot her. He hadn’t looked. Once, when the lobby doors opened, he turned his head toward the entrance, but whoever came through wasn’t who he wanted. Then he went back to his glass.

A Cosmopolitan sat open in her lap. She hadn’t turned a page in twenty minutes.

He looked awful. His jacket was gone, and so was his tie. His sleeves were shoved up his forearms, one higher than the other, and his hair was a wreck from him dragging his hands through it. Drew never slouched, not in class, not on the sidelines, not anywhere, and now he was hunched over that bar with his shoulders rounded.

He was still the best-looking man in the building. That hadn’t changed.