Page 42 of Cruel Abandon (Fallen Royals 5)

Her eyes narrow. “Really.”

“I’m not using it…” Yet. I can’t promise I won’t be tempted to climb in next to her. She’s safer out here, where the promise of being a gentleman is a firm reminder in front of me. The bedroom is a bit hazier. Gray area, so to speak.

Maybe she knows that, because she just sinks lower on the couch and rolls onto her side. “Go to sleep, Liam.”

Eventually, I will. But for now, I content myself with watching her settle into her dreams.

I’ll grapple with these strange emotions later.

13

Sky

The morning isn’t as awkward as I feared. He walks me back to my apartment, which is startlingly close to his, and leaves me at the door without so much as a backward glance. I tiptoe inside and punch the alarm. Worst-case scenario, Whitney is awake and ready to interrogate me about my whereabouts. Or she’ll still be crying.

Instead, I find Taryn in my kitchen.

“Oh,” I say, freezing in my tracks.

She pauses, then nods. “Morning.”

“What are you doing here?” I have a bad habit of foregoing pleasantries when I’m surprised.

Taryn chuckles and sets down the coffee pot she was fiddling with. “I’m on Whitney duty,” she says. “We were all here last night. Me, Jeff, Tasha, Isa. I’m afraid Isa and I slept on your floor, unfortunately. Jeff was a mess, so we put him on the couch, and Tasha slept in Whitney’s room.”

I squint.

Jeff is Natalie’s boyfriend. It makes sense that he’d be here with the rest of her close friends, I suppose.

“Are they still…?”

“Sleeping?” Taryn supplies. “Jeff can sleep through anything. Seriously, I saw him once sleep through the final battle in the last Lord of the Rings. Who does that?”

I smile. “No one with sensible hearing, I suppose.”

She offers me a cup of coffee, and I reach out and take it from her. “Isa had to work. I think Tasha has an early class. I was going to hang out with Whit, just make sure she’s okay. The detective she talked to yesterday said Natalie’s parents are arriving today from North Carolina. Earliest they could come up.”

Huh.

Sounds like a mess I want to steer clear of in entirety.

“And Whitney’s parents?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Haven’t heard anything.”

From brief meetings with them on move-in days and when they’d come to visit, I only know the bare minimum. They’re still together, for one, even if it doesn’t count for much. They’re overprotective helicopter parents, too. My skin crawls at the idea of being raised by them.

“Right.” I set my purse on the counter and grab the creamer, offering it to her before doctoring my own coffee.

She leans against the opposite counter. I will say, Whitney’s friends came prepared. She has Halloween pajama pants on and a black hoodie. Fuzzy orange slippers. A little early for the creepy holiday, but whatever.

I usually camp out in my room on Halloween. Too many masked people running around stresses me out. It was one of the things Dr. Penn and I talked about every now and then: my irrational fear of masks.

The full-faced ones, anyway.

I went to my high school’s masquerade balls without a problem. People at that school wanted to look beautiful, and that resulted in petite masks that illustrated their lips or some other feature.

Halloween is more of a gamble.