Rome. Jay Crownover

condition had apparently gone from bad to worse. He was actually slumped on the bar, his head hung low like his neck couldn’t hold it up anymore, and the dim light was casting dark shadows on his face. He looked terrible and tired, and most definitely wasted. His pretty eyes were open only half-mast, watery and bloodshot. His mouth was twisted in an ugly frown and even though the air-conditioning was on, I could see a thin film of sweat covering his skin. His big, battle-scarred hands were shaking where he was holding an empty tumbler between them, and it looked like he was having an argument with the huge bearded man behind the bar.

      I carefully walked up behind him and caught the eye of the guy who looked like he had given birth to every Hells Angel ever to walk the earth.

      “Hi, I’m Cora.”

      The guy gave me a quick once-over and lifted an unruly eyebrow. “Tiny little thing, aren’t ya?”

      I was actually two inches taller than Shaw, but since I didn’t have half of her curves, I think I looked a lot smaller and more delicate than I actually was. I lifted a shoulder and let it fall.

      Rome turned on the stool and I saw his eyes widen and then try and focus on me. I wasn’t sure he recognized me at first, but then the blue lit up like the base of a flame and a drunken and sloppy grin spilled across his face. I tried to keep my eyes focused on the scar on his forehead, because he was lethal when he smiled like that and I knew he wasn’t in his right mind at the moment. That slight imperfection made me remember exactly who I was dealing with, Captain No-Fun, not flirty-fun-drunk Rome.

      “Rule had an emergency at the house, so I’m gonna take you home, okay?”

      “Where’s Rule?”

      At least I think that’s what he asked, but it sounded like his tongue was too big for his mouth. I put a hand on his arm as he leaned toward me and almost toppled off the stool.

      “He had something to take care of. So you’re stuck with me.”

      He lumbered to his feet and I thought I was going to get dragged down with him. Luckily he seemed to have pretty good balance even when he was hammered because he caught himself on the bar and blinked those killer baby blues at me.

      “I’m so tired.”

      I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure what he was talking about and peered around him at the burly bartender who was watching us with serious, dark eyes.

      “I know. I’m gonna get you home and put you to bed.” Man, that shouldn’t sound nearly as appealing as it did. I needed to stay away from this guy. He made my head go wonky.

      “You need a hand getting him to the truck?”

      I shook my head and hooked a hand around his lean waist and tried not to wince as he leaned all that considerable weight onto my side.

      “If I can’t get him in on my own, there is no way I’m getting him out on my own.” I took the keys he brought me and gave Rome a little nudge with my hip. “Let’s go, Goliath.”

      “If he’s functional tomorrow, let him know he has the day off.”

      “What happened to get him in this state?”

      The guy shook his head and stroked a hand over what was seriously the most awesome beard I had ever seen.

      “Life happened, darlin’. Sometimes it just gets the better of us is all. Take care of that boy, he needs someone, too, especially right now.”

      I was going to answer that I took care of all my boys, but I never got the chance because Rome chose that moment to lurch toward the door. He put a thick arm around my shoulders, pulled me so that I was pressed flat against his chest, and buried his nose in the short hair on the top of my head. He awkwardly marched me backward while he struggled to stay upright and headed for the parking lot.

      “You smell good.”

      Typically when I got off work I smelled like antiseptic and all the cleaners used to keep the shop sterile and safe. I had to wiggle free enough to breathe, but since Rome was going in the right direction and seemed steady enough on his feet, I didn’t make him let me go. I tried to subtly steer him toward the shiny red Dodge that the bartender had indicated was his, but he suddenly stopped and stared intently down at me.

      “You really do have the prettiest eyes.”

      I cleared my throat and tried not to blush since I had never really been the blushing type.

      “So you’ve mentioned.”

      His words were still hard to understand, but the way the blue in his eyes was glowing wasn’t. I was hardheaded to a fault, but I wasn’t going to deny I thought he was hot, I mean I was only human and there was something about all that plain, old-fashioned beefcake that was hard to ignore. But I was surprised that he seemed to return the sentiment. I didn’t for one second think I was any more his type than he was mine.

      We stumbled, half stepped, and shuffled to the truck. It took some maneuvering and some wiggling on my part to get him to let me go and get him to climb up into the monstrous vehicle. I closed the door on him as he was humming an awful rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” and closed my eyes for a second. I had plenty of experience dealing with moody, drunken boys—Rule was a pro at being a handful after too many cocktails—but there was something about the abject sadness, the visible sorrow hanging around in those azure eyes that made Rome just a little trickier to handle. I had an inkling that he could go from malleable and sloppy to really difficult in a heartbeat.

      The truck was big and I had to slide the seat up as close to the steering wheel as it would go. I was lucky it was a newer model, because there was no way I would have been able to reach the pedals if had been one of the old-style bench seats. It was also an automatic, which was nice since I hadn’t had to drive a stick in forever.

      I glanced over at my passenger and found him slumped over so that his head was resting on the window. His eyes were closed and his chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm. I was going to take him to the Victorian and have Nash help me wrestle him inside, when his voice cracked out from someplace so deep and dark it gave me goose bumps when it whispered across my skin.

      “Do you ever wonder ‘why you’?”

      I frowned at him and shot Nash a text to see if he was home.

      “Why me what?” I didn’t understand what he was rambling about and his eyes were still closed, so I wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t talking in his sleep.

      “Why am I the one still here? Why was I the only one to walk away? Why did I dodge one bullet only to end up useless and unnecessary anymore? Whose plan was that? Why was I someone Remy couldn’t tell? Why didn’t he trust me? Why? Shouldn’t there be a point to it all?”

      It was incoherent for the most part but the sentiment behind it was heartbreaking and shouldn’t be coming from someone so vital and thrumming with life. I didn’t really have a working understanding of how survivor’s guilt affected a man that had seen so much, but in Rome’s case it seemed to be eating him alive.

      “That is probably a conversation you should have with a professional and maybe not when you tried to drink your liver into submission.”

      “People die every day that shouldn’t die. It isn’t fair and it isn’t right. There should be some kind of rhyme or reason to it.” But there wasn’t, and when he was sober he had to know that, didn’t he?

      My phone dinged at me and I had to wait until I stopped at a stop sign to check the message. I swore softly because Nash wasn’t home and had no plans on returning. I didn’t want to bug Rule, not to mention he wasn’t the most sensitive of guys and there was no way Rome was in any state to be left to his own devices. I was just gonna have to take him to my house and put him on the couch until he sobered up. Jet was on the road and Ayden was working late, so that meant I was only going to have to deal with a million questions and speculative looks from Asa.

      “A lot of bad things happen every day that shouldn’t