“Then I’ll take him home.” Even to me, my voice sounded hollow, tinny, like it was being projected from speakers in the faraway corners of the vaulted staircase.

“We’ll bring him home.” Brandon wrapped a gentle hand around my elbow. “Let him sleep it off.”

My pulse beat in my throat, in my temples. I wasn’t sure what I would find . . . but no, that isn’t quite right. I think I knew. I understood Christian’s laconic smirk and Brandon’s buzzing anxiety. Looking back, it’s hard to know whether I was prescient to head up there, or whether it was just so obvious.

“I would just head home, Macy,” Brandon pleaded. “When he wakes up, I’ll have him call you.”

His voice continued as a hum in the background, following me all the way up the stairs and to the only closed door, at the very end of the hall. I pushed inside and stopped.

A long leg hung over the side of the unmade bed. Elliot’s shoes were still on, still tied, but his jeans and boxers were at his knees and his shirt was shoved up under his armpits, exposing the lines of his chest, the dark trail of hair on his navel.

Brandon was right: Elliot was passed out.

But so was Emma, lying naked across his torso.

I took a step back, right into Brandon’s chest.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered.

I’d known heartbreak before, but this was a different sensation, like a lit match held to the bloody organ inside, holding steady, waiting patiently for it to dry out, harden into coal, catch fire.

I love you so fucking much.

I love you, and I lust you and want you.

I love you as the person I want to be with forever.

Will you marry me?

“Oh, my God.”

“Macy, it really isn’t what you think,” Brandon said, cupping his hands on my shoulders. “Please trust me.”

“It looks like he had sex with her,” I said numbly, shrugging him off. As much as the scene horrified me, I couldn’t look away. Emma’s mouth was open on his chest as she snored. Elliot’s dick hung limp along his thigh.

I’d never really seen him naked before, never just . . . looked.

Brandon shifted anxiously. “It’s her, Macy. Elliot wouldn’t—”

“Oh, shit,” Christian said, coming up beside me. “Not a good look, Ell.”

I made some gasping, choking sound that he seemed to interpret as a question.

“Nah, they have a history. Just . . . let it go,” Christian said, and then held in a rumbling belch and punched his chest with his fist. “It’s not really a thing. They just fuck around sometimes.”

I turned, bursting past them down the hall, my feet fumbling down the stairs, through the kitchen and then out the front door to the cold, stark air where I couldn’t seem to breathe. I tried to pull in a breath, but it was like I’d been punched over and over in the diaphragm.