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He tensed under it. Then he let his breath out, slow, and his whole body went loose.

Nicole laid the cold cloth against the back of his neck and held it there.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Drew woke up on his back.

For a while he just lay there blinking up at the ceiling, at the faint brown water stain over the bed he’d been looking at since Wednesday, and waited for his head to quit pounding. It throbbed behind his eyes and down the back of his neck, harder every time his heart beat, and his mouth tasted like Jack Daniels and something that had died in there overnight.

The sheets smelled like bleach. They were cool and stiff against his legs and tucked in tight at the bottom the way only a hotel ever bothered to do it, and it took him a second to figure out why that seemed wrong. Then it came back to him in pieces: a woman in a gray uniform at the door sometime after midnight with an armful of clean sheets, and Nicole talking to her low and polite while Drew sat in the chair with his head hanging between his knees. That was about all he had from the back half of the night, and it was more than he wanted.

He turned his head on the pillow, slow, because anything faster made it pound worse.

Nicole was on her side of the bed, facing him, with a good foot of mattress between them. Her eyes were open. He didn’t know how long she’d been lying there like that, but she didn’t look like somebody who’d just woken up. She looked like somebody who’d barely slept.

“Hey,” he said. It came out rough.

“Hey.” She tugged the comforter a little higher on her shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit.” He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, which did fuck all. “Like somebody took a bat to my head and then backed my truck over it, just to be sure.”

Her mouth moved like it might turn into a smile. It didn’t.

“How about you?” he asked.

Nicole lifted one shoulder under the covers and let it drop. That was it. Drew waited for the rest of it, and when nothing else came, he went back to the water stain, because it was easier than lying there watching her not say anything.

“What time is your flight?” she asked.

“Eleven forty. Yours?”

“Twelve fifteen.” She was quiet a second. “It’s a different airline, but it’s the same airport. We could share a cab.”

“Yeah.” He turned his head again too fast and paid for it. “Let’s do that.”

She nodded against the pillow.

His watch on the nightstand said 8:04. The plan had been to ride out to LaGuardia with his parents, his mother’s plan, everybody down in the lobby by nine with their bags, and his dad had already booked the car. That was before last night. Drew lay there another minute and knew he wasn’t getting in that car.

He sat up, and his head throbbed so hard he had to shut his eyes for a second. He stayed on the edge of the bed with his feet flat on the carpet and his elbows on his knees until it eased up some and he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to throw up again.

When he reached for the phone, he noticed the cord. It ran down the back of the nightstand to the wall, where somebody had plugged it back in. He didn’t remember who’d found it. Probably Nicole, sometime while he had his head in the toilet.

He called down to room service and ordered bacon, scrambled eggs, home fries, wheat toast, and a big orange juice, two of everything, plus a pot of coffee. “And you got anything for a headache down there? Advil, Tylenol, whatever you got.”

The woman on the line said she’d send something up from the gift shop with the tray.

“Just toast for me,” Nicole said from the bed.

Drew had already ordered her the eggs. He didn’t take them back.

In the bathroom, he hit the light and regretted it. He braced his hands on the sink and looked at himself anyway. The cut high on his cheekbone had scabbed over dark and ugly, and the skin around it was still red and tender. The welts on his neck had faded to pink lines, and the mark on his collarbone had gone purple overnight. He gave it all maybe two seconds. Then he turned the shower on as hot as it would go and quit looking.

He stood under the water with his palms flat against the tile until the pounding backed off some. He’d planned on not thinking about anything, and that lasted about a minute. Nicole hadn’t touched him once since he’d woken up. Every second she stayed quiet, his head came up with something worse. Part of him wanted to walk out there and ask her straight up if they were okay. The other part knew better. Last night had been a lot. If she needed some time to sort it out in her own head, she could have it. God knew he needed some himself.

When he came out, she was sitting on the edge of the bed in one of the hotel robes with her clothes folded in her lap. She went into the bathroom without a word, and a second later, the shower started.

Drew got dressed, and then he called his parents’ room.