Okay, great.

Thankfully, the stairs are very close, and I don’t have to go too far carrying him. With some prodding, Mason manages to ease up the stairs with my support. I drag us to the closest door and open it, and it looks like Noah’s room. Perfect. He’ll be Noah’s problem now.

I deposit Mason on the bed and he lands on the end of it, half of his body hanging off the end. He groans and I take a big, well-earned breath of air and try to catch my breath. I honestly broke a sweat; getting him here was not easy.

“Mason?” I ask, and he makes some noncommittal sound. “You’re going to fall off the bed like that.”

He makes no move to fix himself and I sigh. With a knee up on the bed for leverage, I try to maneuver him so he won’t slide off the mattress, and grab his arm to pull, but it’s all useless. He won’t budge. I switch to pushing him up on the bed and finally make small progress. It would be a lot less awkward for me if he was wearing a shirt, not that the view is bad. With one final, big push, I finally get him in the middle of the bed, but I slip and land with a heavy thump on top of him, banging my head on the low headboard in the process.

“Damn.” I rub my head and take a second to get over it.

Having a fully grown teenage girl land on top of him must’ve woken Mason up, because I feel his hands land on my waist.

“Amelia?” he asks groggily.

“Amelia?” comes a second voice from the entrance of the room.

Standing with his hand on the doorknob is Aiden, the prince of perfect timing, taking in the scene in front of him. Me, lying on top of Mason, who’s shirtless and has his hands on my waist, in bed.

“This isn’t what it looks like!” I exclaim, trying to roll off Mason and the bed.

Aiden stands there with his face blank, then cocks his head to the side as if listening to something.

“Stay here,” he says emotionlessly, then backs out of the room, closing the door behind him.

“What?” With zero grace, I flop off of the bed and scramble to my feet, staring at the closed door. A quick glance at Mason shows he’s passed out again.

I start toward the door, but my conscience tugs at me, forcing me to turn around. Cursing under my breath for wasting precious seconds, I cross back over to Mason and roll him into recovery position so that he doesn’t choke if he throws up, which hopefully he won’t. Satisfied Mason’s taken care of, I rush out the door, close it behind me, and run down the stairs to explain myself to Aiden.

6

As soon as I get into the hallway, I realize something’s wrong. The air’s thick with a tension that has no place at a party, and the feel-good energy that permeated the house before has been replaced with a sense of foreboding. The music has been cut off and there’s shouting coming from downstairs. I follow the loud voices into the main room.