I shoved that thought to one side. I was here now, and there was no way I was letting him out of my sight. Bryan smoothed Dec’s hair from his face, returning the goofy smile Dec flashed at him. I felt a stab of irrational jealousy. I didn’t want Dec smiling at random people because I wanted him to smile at me, even though that was me being stupid.
“I’m just going to get him to his room.”
“And I’m helping,” I insisted.
Bryan regarded me with something like curiosity for a moment.
“Patrick you say? Mr. Grady calls you Pads?”
I blinked at him for a while. “Uhm, yeah, he used to when… yeah.”
“Okay then.” He shrugged, and pressed buttons, and when the doors opened, we all managed to get into the wide service elevator, created, I imagined, for carrying the big cleaning carts up and down the floors.
The lights flicked past the low numbers, up to the letter P, and then the elevator stopped and creaked open onto another dark corridor.
“This way,” Bryan instructed, and we moved one clumsy step at a time to a door opening into a plush reception area complete with sofas and a glass table with fresh-cut flowers. There were two doors opening from this space, one marked stairs, the other blank, and of course, there were elevators—two in fact—both much smaller than the one we’d just used to get up here. Bryan opened the door, and we stepped into luxury. Thick carpets, drapes opening onto the snowy vista outside, a balcony plus hot tub with the mountains in view, sofas, the biggest television I’d ever seen, and through one of the doorways, I spied a bed, and that was where we headed.
We almost managed to get inside when Declan curled in on himself.
“M’sick.” He retched in warning, and with amazing dexterity, Bryan guided Declan into the bathroom, closing the door when he came out, to give Dec privacy.
“What happened?” I asked, my hand already on the handle to go into the bathroom.
“You need to give him space,” Bryan murmured, placing a hand flat on my chest.
“You don’t know what I need,” I said, worry making me rude, but when he frowned, all I felt was guilt. “Sorry. I’m… you can trust me… I’m a cop for what it’s worth, responsible…”
He eyed my crumpled suit as I patted my pockets for ID, but of course, first law of being in shit situations was that of course my ID wasn’t at hand. It was, in fact, buried in my duffle, and god knows what dark corner it had settled into. Anyway, my being a cop didn’t seem to make him chill at all, which would be even worse when he found out I was only a rookie.
“If you’d go down to reception, Penny can arrange for coffee, and if you need to eat anything—”
“I need to make sure Declan is okay,” I interrupted and, then, scrubbed at my eyes. “Shit, sorry. I apologize, I’ve been traveling for two days, and the airports are either closed or delaying flights and, I turn up and there’s no wedding, and then I find Declan drunk out of his mind and no sign of the other groom.”
“It’s okay, sir.”
“Patrick, please.”
He inclined his head. “Patrick. If you want my advice, Mr. Grady needs to hydrate and sleep.”
“I wanted to talk to Declan, I didn’t expect him to be like this.” I had no idea what Declan would do when he saw me, if he could see I was rescuing him as he asked; I’d run through every scenario that mostly ended up with him either thumping me or declaring he wanted to be with me forever. It seemed as if my brain couldn’t settle on a happy middle ground where we talked like two rational adults.
“I don’t want to leave him.” My voice sounded smaller, and something in me must have spoken to Bryan. He pulled water from the refrigerator, went into the bathroom to check on Declan, and I heard low voices.
Was Bryan in there hugging Declan? Reassuring him? I’d seen the smiles they’d exchanged. Bryan probably knew what had happened with the wedding and why Declan was drinking champagne as if it were going out of style, and I knew nothing, and that burned. I should know exactly what was going on with my former best friend, and I would’ve done so if only I hadn’t ghosted him. Or if he hadn’t ghosted me straight back.
Hell, if we’d just talked about what had happened between us maybe we could’ve fixed things, but no, I’d fucked things up beyond repair. Maybe there was no coming back from my refusal to attend the damn wedding and my honesty about what I really thought of him marrying this Lennox dude, not to mention the hurtful words I’d thrown at Declan after I revealed I’d done a background check on said fiancé. Best friends watched out for each other, but all I’d done was demand he listen to me, and driven him toward Lennox, the man who’d promised him everything he ever wanted.
Apparently.
Not that it had ended in a wedding, and why the fuck was that? He said he needed rescuing, but from what? What had Lennox done to him? I knew Lennox was an asshole.
I’d wanted to stop the wedding, talk to him, apologize, and tell him he was worthy of more. Maybe that more wouldn’t be me, but it had to be something different from Lennox asshole Jeddard. The entire Jeddard family was shady, not that I’d found anything concrete, but just enough to decide they were shitty people to get involved with.
I’ll kill him for hurting Declan.
“He’s okay,” Bryan reassured me, and I moved to go past him, but he shut the bathroom door before I could get inside, and then patted my arm before subtly guiding me to the door.
“I want to see him.”
“He said that he uhm… doesn’t want to see … uhmm… anyone,” Bryan said, but the unspoken word was me—Declan didn’t want to see me. Of course, he didn’t.
“You’re sure he’s okay?” I had rookie cop skills to get past people blocking my way—I knew some moves—but I was frozen in place and couldn’t have shoved past Bryan if I tried.
“He’s embarrassed more than anything.”
“He should never worry about being sick in front of me.”
“There’s more to it than that, and I’m sure you can cover it all in the morning.”
“But, okay, if he's not leaving now, then I need to book a room. But if he’s leaving, then you should know he can't actually drive, and I know that because I tried to teach him, but he has this whole issue of left versus right, and when he hit the garbage cans at the convenience store he decided he was never going to learn. So, he’ll need to order a car in the morning if he is leaving, maybe that Bob guy who brought me here, because he didn’t crash, although I don’t reckon he likes us because we’re gay, because he did that hand thing.” I took a breath and carried on. “But if Dec’s already organized one at all, I just want to be there to talk to him before he heads out, or maybe he’ll say I can go with him. I guess I could go and sit on the sofas outside this room and wait. What do you think?” Everything spilled out so fast that it took a moment for Bryan to work his way through it all, and by the time he did, we were outside in the hallway, and he was calling the elevator—the guest one this time. The right doors opened, and we stepped inside.
“Good job we’re in this one,” he said with a smile and gently ignored my rambling words. “The left one is haunted you know.”