Pictures lined her dresser. Mostly her and another woman, who I assumed was Kristen. Sloan looked like the colorful one of the two, even though I knew she was more conservative than her friend. One frame showed them at Disneyland wearing Mickey Mouse ears. Another was them outside the Pantages Theatre with a Wicked poster behind them.

There were photos of Brandon too. I recognized him from the picture on The Huntsman’s Wife. He’d been a good-looking guy. He and Sloan had matched.

He had a Marine Corps tattoo on his forearm. In one picture he wore a T-shirt that read BURBANK FIRE DEPARTMENT on it. There was a photo of him with Sloan on a beach, standing in the surf. Another one in a Tough Mudder frame showed him with Sloan, racing bibs pinned to their shirts. She wore knee-high socks and pigtails, smiling, covered in mud.

It was ridiculous to feel jealous of a man who’d been dead for two years, but I did. I wondered how I measured up. I was a very different person than he was. Just from these photos, I could see we had lived very different lives.

I went back out to the living room and lay down on the couch to spend the night in case she needed my help.

Who was I kidding? I was staying because I wanted to stay.

Something must have really affected her today, and I wondered if I had anything to do with it. She’d said she’d been thinking about me. I thought about what she said earlier on the phone, that she was in an in-between. I didn’t care where she was.

I wanted to be there with her.

Chapter 14

Sloan

? Maybe You’re the Reason | The Japanese House

I woke up wishing I had died in my sleep. My head felt like a tomato that had been dropped from a second-story building.

I felt blindly along my nightstand for my phone to check the time. My eyes were puffy from crying, and my fingers knocked into a glass of water. I cracked an eye open.

Two Advils sat on the nightstand. My phone was on the charger at 100 percent. A bucket was on the floor next to the bed.

I prayed it had been Kristen. I scoured my blank, foggy, hungover memory for a drunken call to Kristen. Hell, I’d even settle for Josh. But then I saw Tucker curled up on the other side of the bed and I groaned. I looked at my last call, squinting at the impossibly bright screen. I’d drunk dialed Jason.

I. Drunk. Dialed. Jason.

I leaned back onto my pillow and put an arm over my face.

He wouldn’t have left his dog here. At least I didn’t think he would have since he’d just gotten him back, so I was pretty sure Jason was somewhere in the house.

I sat up gingerly, trying not to jostle my head. I downed the water and the pills, holding the glass with both hands. Then I stumbled to the bathroom and took the longest pee of my life. I brushed my teeth three times, practically drank mouthwash, and turned on the shower. When I went to pull my hair from its ponytail, I realized with horror that it was damp.

Someone had washed my hair.

Jason had washed my hair.

Sweet Jesus, just let me die.

After I’d showered, just to prolong the inevitable awkward first encounter with Jason since the hair washing, I turned on the faucet and ran a bubble bath.

Thank God for my new water heater.

I folded a cold wet washcloth over my eyes and sat in the tub with Tucker curled up on the shaggy bathroom mat.

Someone tapped on the door.

“Sloan? Mind if I come in? I have your coffee.”

Jason.

The lock on my bathroom door was broken, like every other stupid freaking thing in the house. Ugh.

“The door’s unlocked,” I mumbled. The bubbles had me covered from the neck down. I dragged the washcloth from my eyes and lolled my head toward the door.

Jason let himself in, leading with a Starbucks cup. “I figured you wouldn’t want to wait for this,” he said, looking at the wall.

“Thank you,” I rasped. “You can look. I’m covered.”

He turned to me and put the coffee in my hand. Then, instead of leaving, he put the toilet seat lid down and sat on it, grinning at me.

I smelled the top of the cup. I didn’t care what kind it was. It was coffee. I felt a caffeine headache lurking behind my hangover and I’d take anything. I took a sip, closing my eyes. Sweet nectar of the gods, it was my drink! A triple grande vanilla latte. How did he know?

“I saw an old cup by your easel. The drink was written on the outside,” he explained. “When I heard the shower go on, I ran out to get it for you so it would still be hot.”

I think I fell just a little bit in love with him in that moment. I got a murky vision of telling our grandchildren about the day Grandma almost drank herself to death and Grandpa saved her with espresso.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” I said, my voice husky in a way that told me I’d been vomiting.

“How are you feeling?”

Deathly? Mortified? Heartsick?

“I’ve felt better.”

Jason wore a gray Muse T-shirt and jeans. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his sky-blue eyes searching my face. I was puffy and hungover and this talented, sexy man had just brought me my favorite coffee after spending a night washing barf out of my hair.

Jaxon Waters washed barf out of my hair.

I was too sick for the embarrassment to truly settle in my bones. I accepted this information with a shallow understanding of how fucked up it all was and the knowledge that I’d dwell on it obsessively later while applying the appropriate mortification.