..

Seth was on his way back to the stairwell from the upstairs bathroom when he spotted familiar blonde curls through a doorway. He detoured immediately, pushing the door open the rest of the way with a clumsy shove. Allison was stretched out in bed fully dressed, heels still on. Eyes closed, a regular Sleeping Beauty. A frat boy was already half in bed with her, one hand on the pillow by her head and the other pushing her shirt up her stomach toward her bra. Another was at the foot of the bed with his phone out and camera on. When he saw who’d walked in on them, he snapped it shut with a tired, “Ah, shit.”

His friend didn’t realize he was already dead and sent Seth an impatient look. “Hey man, wait your turn.”

Seth could barely see straight, but in no universe could he not take a swing. He lurched forward, trusting the bed to stop him before he fell over, and caught hold of the guy’s frat jacket to start wailing on him. Three hits were enough he could throw the man off the far side of the bed and more than enough to lose his balance. He sat heavily on the mattress, swearing as he waited for the world to stop spinning, and glared at the three men bobbing and blurring together at the foot of the bed.

“Sorry, man,” the guy said, three mouths but one voice. “Didn’t know she was yours.”

She wasn’t; she never would be. But Seth refused to say that. Instead he gave Allison a rough shake. He thought she moaned, but it was more likely the man who couldn’t figure out how to get off the floor again. Allison was warm to the touch but limp and unresponsive. Seth held his hand up by his face, watching and waiting for his fingers to settle down into five digits. As soon as his vision was sorted, he got up and stormed out of the room.

He almost missed the railing when he grabbed at it. For a second he thought he had; he saw the stairs swim up toward him before he overcorrected and bounced back up. He could only see the outer edge of the party from the second-floor landing, but he yelled “Reggie!” down there anyway. A couple was trying to squeeze past him to find an empty room, but Seth grabbed the guy’s elbow and demanded, “Where is Reggie?”

“Don’t know a Reggie,” he said, pulling out of Seth’s grip and shouldering past.

Seth put his hand on the wall and stumbled down the stairs with a graceless speed that left him tasting the shots he’d been throwing back all night. He pushed his way in circles around the lower level, from the hallway to the kitchen and through the back doorway into the living room. He found Damien on the couch with a bottle of gin in one hand and a roach in the other.

“Where is Reggie?”

“Claudia,” Damien said with a jerkoff gesture. “Left uhh…” He trailed off to think, but his grasp on time wasn’t good enough to figure it out. Eventually he gave up with a shrug. “He’ll be back sooner or later.”

“Allison’s fucked up,” Seth said.

“Who isn’t? It’s a party.” Damien held out the roach in offering.

Seth left him there and went back upstairs. Up was much harder than down, as he kept almost tilting backwards. He had to haul himself up the last few steps with both hands on the railing. When he stumbled back into the room where Allison was not-resting, there was a new man waiting for him in the same frat lettering as the guy he’d knocked out. He punched Seth on his way through the doorway and started hollering some dumb shit about frat rules. Seth let it go in one ear and out the other, taking just a moment to register the taste of blood between his teeth.

A second later he launched at the man. Something everyone always forgot about the ragtag Exy team taking up space on campus: they were used to hitting and being hit hard enough to hurt through armor. Seth could take a punch better than anyone in this house and he knew how to swing twice as hard. He beat the man until he was snotty and crying on the floor, then sat down beside Allison again and pulled his phone out of his pocket. His fingers ached so badly he wasn’t sure he could handle the buttons, and his vision was crackling black as nausea threatened to get the best of him.

“Wymack,” a voice said at his ear.

Seth hadn’t realized he’d managed to dial out. “I can’t wake her up,” he said. He kicked at the fallen frat boy until he rolled away and Seth could see the lettering on his jacket. He read it off to Wymack, who answered with just a brisk ETA before hanging up on him.

There was no way any of them would get invited back to a frat house once he called a coach to their doorstep, but Seth would deal with his teammates’ outrage later.

He knew Wymack arrived by the way the music abruptly cut out downstairs and by the nervous rumble of conversations as students gave ground with mumbled excuses. Seth checked his bloodied knuckles as he listened to footsteps on the stairs. He could have called out, but his stomach was all liquid and he didn’t trust it not to spill over.

There weren’t a lot of rooms with open doors up here, so it only took Wymack a few moments to find them. He held out a hand to help haul Seth to his feet, then moved past him to check on Allison. Seth watched him check her breathing and her pulse and wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him to do the same.

“We’re leaving,” Wymack said, more to Allison than to Seth. He hooked one arm behind her shoulders and another behind her knees, and he hoisted her ragdoll body off the bed like she weighed nothing. He carried her out of there and took the stairs down as carefully as he could. Seth hadn’t been invited to come along, but he followed after them anyway. Better to go with them and face Wymack’s judgment than have to fight everyone in here as soon as Wymack was out of sight.

“Door’s unlocked,” Wymack said when they reached his car.

Seth got the back door, and Wymack put Allison down across the backseat. Seth went around to the other side so he could help pull from the other end. He had to wrap her long hair up and tuck it against her throat; she’d kill him if he closed the back door on any of it. With her safe, he was free to take the passenger seat, and Wymack got them moving.

Getting in the car was the worst idea Seth had had all night, and Wymack had to pull over twice so Seth could throw up into the gutter. He didn’t realize they’d stopped for good until Wymack got out of the car. Seth stared out the windshield, blinking as hard as he could until the lettering for Reddin Medical Center came into view. Abby was on the curb under the streetlight, pajama pants poking out beneath her coat.

Wymack got the back door open and began the process of getting Allison out. Seth started to reach for his buckle, but Wymack said, “Wait here,” and Seth was tired enough to listen.

Wymack kicked the back door shut as soon as he had Allison clear of it, and Abby swiped her keycard to get them access to the building. She had to disarm the code before she could get the door for Wymack, and she rushed him out of sight. Seth considered going after them anyway, then put the chair back as far as it could go and fell asleep.

A careful hand on his shoulder woke him up some time later, and Seth pushed himself up to see Reddin was gone. He looked in the backseat, found it empty, and turned a bleary look on Wymack.

“We’re at Fox Tower,” Wymack said. “Can you make it inside?”

“Where is she?” Seth asked.

“Abby’s staying with her until the morning,” Wymack said. “Drink some water and get some rest, but know we’re going to talk about this when you’re sober enough to retain anything I have to say to you. Don’t start,” he said when Seth scowled at him. “Can you get inside, or do I need to come in with you?”

“I got it,” Seth said, fumbling with his buckle. He half-fell out of the car but managed to catch the door before his knees hit asphalt. He checked his pockets, looking for his wallet, and showed it to Wymack in a moment of triumph. “See?”

“Seth,” Wymack said as Seth started to close the door. Seth leaned over to peer across the front seat at him. Wymack’s expression was serious, but not angry, and all he said was, “Thank you for calling me tonight.”

Seth looked away. “She’s going to be all right,” he said. He refused to word it like a question. Allison would always be all right in the end. He was the one falling apart every time he looked at her. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He shouldn’t have started looking in the first place. She was goddamned royalty and he was just—

“She’s going to be all right,” Wymack agreed.

Seth closed the car door and staggered to the rear door of Fox Tower. It took five tries to get the sensor to read his card, since he couldn’t hold his hand still long enough to trigger it. The elevator ride was so terrible he had to squat in the car for several minutes after it reached his floor. When he thought he could risk it, he headed for his room, where he nearly broke his key getting in. The others were all gone still, so Seth shuffled over to the couch, managed to kick out of one shoe, and passed out face down.

..

Fox Tower was so hostile the next day Seth had to take his hangover out into the fresh air and too-bright sun. It was exactly the wretched mistake he expected it to be. He crouched on the sidewalk and scrunched back into what little shade the building cast at this time of day. He scratched angry lines through his stubble and hated everything about the world. He was starting an alphabetical list of the most annoying things he could think of for lack of anything better to do when a familiar car turned into the parking lot.

There was no reason to get his hopes up, but Seth folded his arms across his knees and watched until the car came to a stop at the curb. Allison got out alone and waved Abby off through the passenger window. It was another minute before the nurse pulled away, as if she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to leave yet, but Allison stood still and watched her until she finally put the car back into drive. Seth took advantage of her distraction to study the willowy freshman. Her hair had obviously been washed and redone, but she was wearing what she’d had on last night. It was the first time he’d seen her in the same thing twice, outside of her Exy uniforms.

Only when Abby’s car was out of sight did she turn toward Fox Tower. Seth expected her to head inside without a second look his way, the same way she’d rebuffed him all semester. As much as it pissed him off to be dismissed right out of hand, he knew she was too good for him.

But Allison wasn’t heading for the door; she was coming over to stand in front of him. He held her gaze for only a moment before turning his attention on the parking lot. It wasn’t like he cared that she was okay, after all.

“At least stand up when I’m talking to you,” she said, a touch impatiently. “I’m not sitting on the ground in this skirt.”

“I’m comfortable,” he said.

She gave his thigh an ungentle kick. “I said get up.”

“Annoying fucking woman,” Seth said, but he stood up to glower at her. “What do you want?”

The curl of her lip said she was rethinking this entire thing, but finally she gave a sharp jerk of her hand and said, “To thank you, you witless tool. Don’t make me regret it before I can get it out.” It was enough to shut him up. Allison folded her arms across her chest and stared him down. At last her expression eased into something more troubled than annoyed and she said, “Thank you. Abby told me what happened.”

If it was anyone else, Seth would have mocked them for needing rescuing. He felt the taunts biting at the back of his throat, but what came out was, “I thought you were dead. And—good riddance, obviously,” he added, more to save himself than to rile her up again. “But Coach can’t afford another scandal, so—”

“Shut up,” she said, reaching for him.

He did as he was told, too distracted by her touch to remember the rest of his tirade. She had one of his hands in both of hers as she studied his bruised and bloodied knuckles. The fists that had gotten him this far in life looked meaty and ugly in her long fingers. For a moment he wanted to apologize for the brute he was; for a moment he was so ashamed of all of his hard edges he wanted to yank free.

But then she skimmed her thumbs over his knuckles, and she sounded so soft when she said, “Thank you for looking out for me.”

He could have said I shouldn’t have had to, or I won’t do it again, or Don’t drink so much next time. Even in his head they sounded more like lies than truth. What he said instead was, “I want to. Wanted, I mean.”

She studied him with unabashed curiosity for another minute before finally letting go. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, a little too smug for his likes, and she said, “No, I think you meant ‘want’.” She was undeterred by his fierce scowl, but since she wasn’t laughing him off he forced back every insult he could have thrown at her to reclaim the safe distance between them. The restraint paid off when Allison said, “You’re taking me to dinner tonight.”

“I didn’t hear a question in there.”

“I didn’t hear a refusal,” Allison said. “Pick me up at seven.”

She left without waiting for a response, and Seth could only stare after her. The door to Fox Tower swung closed behind her before his brain caught up with him again, and he gave a short fist pump of triumph.