Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

DAKOTA

Jay made every step from leaving the bar, the car ride to my apartment, and getting his clothes off and into bed difficult. He wasn’t doing it on purpose, but since he couldn’t even stand up on his own, I had to do all the work to keep him on his feet long enough to get him safely to bed. By the time I locked my apartment door, he couldn’t even keep his eyes open anymore.

“Fuck, Jay,” I muttered under my breath as I dumped him unceremoniously on my bed. I could probably have been gentler—I’d never handle one of my ICU patients like that—but I was still pissed, so maybe I wasn’t being as careful as I should.

“I-I fucked up,” Jay slurred as he splayed like a jellyfish across my comforter. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about his drinking or the fact that he ghosted me and didn’t answer any of my calls after he promised he’d come back here after work. It didn’t really matter now. I wasn’t taking any drunken confessions or apologies. We were going to have a full- blown come-to-Jesus talk tomorrow once he was coherent. Now, I was just focused on getting him settled.

“Shhh,” I muttered as I pulled his boots off. His pants were much more difficult. “Fuck, baby, you gotta help me here.”

Jay made some noises, but didn’t actually move. So I managed to maneuver him enough on my own to get his pants off. After a similar struggle with his hoodie and t-shirt, Jay was finally just in his underwear, and passed the fuck out.

I rolled my eyes and left him where he was to fill up a water bottle and get some aspirin in case he woke up in the middle of the night. I placed them on the bedside table and threw another blanket over him since I wasn’t going to struggle with the comforter that he was lying on.

Once Jay was settled, and I was sure he was okay, I let the anger come. It had been there, just hovering under the surface, but I was good at compartmentalizing, and making sure Jay was safe was top priority. Now though, I had all the time in the world to stew in it.

I wasn’t even sure what I was most pissed about. Or who I was the most annoyed with. Beckett told me he monitored Jay’s drinking and cut him off eventually, but clearly he did a shit job of it. It wasn’t fair to blame him. He was working. Beckett couldn’t spend every fucking minute babysitting. He wasn’t Jay’s keeper. Jay was a grown man and capable of making his own decisions. Just lately, he’d been making shitty ones.

I sat on the edge of the bed and just watched Jay as he slept. He looked so much younger like this. Innocent and vulnerable. His dark brown hair was all mussed and falling into his eyes. It was getting long again, and would start curling around the ends. I loved it, but Jay hated it. He said one of his mom’s boyfriends used to rip him out of bed by his hair when he was sleeping. He kept it short for years after that, and only recently started to let it grow longer, though it still made him uncomfortable.

I ran my hand up and down Jay’s tattooed arm that was thrown haphazardly over his face, like he was trying to protect himself. Tattoos covered most of Jay’s body. A lot of them were from his buddy who was apprenticing at a tattoo shop. They were random, and some of them pretty fucking shitty, but I still loved them. I had memorized every single one of them over the last few months that we’d been together. I could probably trace them with my eyes closed.

They weren’t all arbitrary though. The heavily inked black roses on the inside of his forearm that started at his wrist and went all the way up to his elbow served a dual purpose. They were a tribute to Beck and Riley’s mom, a woman Jay never met, but it was to represent his brotherhood with Beck. Apparently, Beck had a tattoo representing Jay, but neither of them would tell me what it was or what it meant. The roses also covered up the heavy scarring on Jay’s wrist. He didn’t like talking about it, and I didn’t know any of the details, but I did catch him staring at it sometimes, looking lost.

“What are we gonna do, baby?” I whispered to the darkness as I lightly pressed my lips against the scarred and tattooed skin. “I want to help you, but you have to work with me here.”

Of course Jay didn’t answer. He was utterly still as he slept off his drunken stupor. Only the rise and fall of his chest let me know he was even breathing. I watched that chest rise and fall for minutes, possibly hours, unable to look away.

But eventually, the lack of sleep was getting to me. I luckily had the day off tomorrow, but I still needed rest because I’d be starting a four-day-in-a-row shift the following day. I pushed myself off the bed and forced myself to leave Jay long enough to go into the bathroom and get ready for bed.

I wasn’t gone for longer than five minutes, but it didn’t stop all the worst-case scenarios from running through my head. Would I come back to find him choking on his own vomit? Or would he not be in the bed at all? By the time I finished brushing my teeth, and threw my clothes into the hamper, my nerves were fucking shot and I threw the bathroom door open, unable to catch my breath.

Jay was exactly where I left him. Eyes clothes, covered in my throw blanket, and breathing softly. I took a deep shuddery breath. “Fuck.”

“It’s okay. He’s okay. Everything else can wait till the morning.” I kept repeating that to myself as I climbed into the bed next to him.

As tired as I was, I thought I’d fall right to sleep, but it was more difficult than expected. I was dreading tomorrow. I had no idea how Jay would react. There was every possibility that he would get scared and defensive and run. It was my biggest fear, and one of the reasons I let things go for so long, but I couldn’t do it any longer.

I loved Jay. He was it for me. But I had to think about my well-being too. He had been on a downward spiral since…well, since his mom died probably, but things were good for a while. We’d been caught up in each other and the bliss of the all-consuming feelings we both had for each other, even if we hadn’t admitted it.

However, lately it was getting harder and harder to ignore it. Jay was struggling. It seemed the better his life was getting, the more he pushed against it. I had taken enough psychology classes in college to get what was happening and to understand. But something had to give. Either Jay had to get help or…well, I didn’t want to think about the or . I told Jay I’d fight for him till the end, and that was true. I wasn’t giving up. But I needed him to fight for himself too.

Just as my eyes were finally getting too heavy to continue to avoid sleep, Jay moved, his arms and legs wrapping around me. He unconsciously brought me closer so we were plastered against each other without an inch of space. His arms tightened around me, like he was afraid if he allowed me even a smidgen of room, I would leave him.

Tears filled my eyes and I blinked them back. I kissed his bicep, the only thing I could reach from the position. “We got this, baby. We’ll get through this.”

I could only hope I was telling the truth.