“No!” He was in front of me in just a few steps, his grip on my arms so tight it was painful. “Tell me that it didn’t happen!” he demanded.

“I can’t.” I jerked out of his hold. There was no need to slap his face, not when he was already beaten from my admission.

“Are you done, now?” Emmie asked, calm as always. “Do you maybe want to pull out his heart and stomp on it too?”

“I think she just did that,” Shane muttered for the first time, joining in. “And he has no one to blame but himself, Em.”

“She knew that it would destroy him.” Emmie pointed at me, looking wild. “She knew that she had all the power here, and she used it against him! If she loved him the way everyone seems to think she does, she never would have done that.”

Her words were like a slap to my face. I couldn’t find the words to defend myself against her because part of me knew that she was right. I stared at the man that stood with his head hung, tears falling form his eyes, and knew that I had made this mess. This was all my fault…

“She used it to protect herself! Drake is a grown man, he makes his own mistakes. Stop putting his mess on her shoulders.”

I didn’t even hear Shane’s words. His voice was just background noise to me as I fought the urge to vomit. I had made a mess of my life, and I had ruined the future I had wanted so badly with Drake. With a pain filled cry, I turned and ran down the hall toward my room.

Chapter 22

Drake

I didn’t know what to expect as I left my apartment with my out of town guests. Emmie flagged down a taxi as soon as we were out on the street, and I was the last to slide into the back. Layla gave me a grim little smile as Emmie gave the driver the address from the front seat.

I tried to return her smile, but my face felt frozen.

The ride felt like it took an eternity, but it was over far too soon. I was torn between wanting to hurry and fix this and wanting to put it off in hopes that it would just fix itself. When we reached Lana’s building, we had to wait downstairs until someone let us up because Emmie and Layla had never been there before.

Some muscle head guy answered the door, and I noticed a shirtless guy seated on the couch that I had to assume was Linc because he was checking me out as soon as we stepped inside the apartment.

“Who the hell is this?” Jesse demanded.

Muscle Head glanced at the guy on the couch. “He’s with me.”

Shane came from down the hall, and I wondered if he had been in Lana’s room. “It’s cool, Jess. Lana is safe.”

“Random guys come in and out of this place regularly?” Jesse asked, his brow furrowed and his eyes stormy. He sounded like a protective father.

“Not as often as you would think.” Linc tried to put him at ease.

“Linc would never let anyone hurt us.” Harper appeared behind Shane, her hand touching his back before stepping around him. “There’s isn’t anything to worry about.”

“I don’t like it,” Jesse grumbled but didn’t comment further. How could he without sounding like a hypocrite after all the years we had put Emmie in the line of one night stands? Some of those girls were dangerous in their own right, but Emmie had been able to take care of them.

“Linc, I think I’m going to go, man…” Shirtless said, eyeing us all with apprehension now.

That caught me off guard. Muscle Head was Linc? I couldn’t picture him as gay. He was too…Not! “No way! You are not the roommate. She said you were gay…”

“Dude, I am.” He pointed at the shirtless guy still sitting on the couch. “See? That’s the guy you saw me hanging out with last night. Remember? We talked for like twenty minutes last night, man. Me, you, Dallas, and Axton? Ring any bells there, man?”

“Of course he doesn’t remember.” Lana’s voice had my head snapping around. She looked pale, sick. My heart constricted. I did this to her! “If he was inhaling Jack Daniels like I suspect he was, then he would be lucky to remember his own name today.”

“Angel…” I took a step toward her.

“Don’t.” Her voice was cold. “Don’t ever use that word again.”

Layla moved closer to her sister. She said something but I could only focus on Lana. Her shirt was three times too big on her, her yoga pants something that I had seen a thousand times. Her hair was a mess even pulled back into a ponytail. There was sweat on her upper lip and across her forehead, and I wondered if she was feeling ill.

“I wish I could take last night back,” I told her, taking a few more steps closer. Maybe if I could just hold her everything would be okay. Her glare stopped me. “I know I let you down, Angel…”

“I said don’t.”

The words came out as a whisper, but they felt like they were shouted inside my head. She didn’t want me to call her Angel. It was understandable after everything I had put her through during the last twenty-four hours. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt any less. “Nothing happened.”

“And you know this because you remember? You know that nothing happened?”

“No, I don’t remember anything from last night, Angel. But…”

“But nothing! If you don’t remember, then how can you be so sure that nothing happened?”

“Because your sister beat it out of Gabriella,” Jesse’s assured her.

“I… What? She did what?”

Jesse had a look of pride on his face and a half-grin tilting his lips. “Yeah, I know. It was so hot. Between her and Em, I think the bitch is bald in a few places.”

“She admitted that nothing happened and you believed her?” I thought there might have been hope in her voice.

Jesse shrugged. “She may have only been saying that to get Layla off of her. Not that it worked. I had to pull her off. Em, what was your take? Do you think she was lying?”

“I doubt that anything happened. Drake hadn’t had a drink in months. That much liquor in his system...he was probably useless below the waist.”

I wasn’t in the least embarrassed to have Emmie talk about the probability of my dick working or not. If anything, I was relieved that she thought that. Maybe it would help convince Lana…

Lana’s eyes closed and I thought she was relieved, that everything was going to be alright now… Her next words made my head spin. “It wouldn’t be the first time that he was that drunk and was able to function,” she whispered.