Chapter 30

Shawn

T he longer Daniel remained silent, the more I knew I wasn’t getting an answer out of him while everyone fucked around in the kitchen. Since they seemed distracted, I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward my bedroom. The second I opened the door, Nacho tried to make a run for it, but then realized there were a bunch of strangers and hightailed it back under the bed. Poor little dude was terrified all over again.

Once the door was closed behind us, my fingers threaded through Daniel’s hair as I pulled him to me in a gentle kiss. The way he melted into me and wrapped his arms around my waist set me more at ease after he’d locked up before.

When we pulled away, we rested our foreheads against each other. Daniel had his eyes closed, but he seemed more relaxed.

“I don’t—I don’t know why it bothered me so much. The teasing. It’s not like it’s something new. They tease everyone...”

“But you’re not everyone and from the sounds of it, you had it pretty rough from someone you thought you could trust.”

Daniel’s eyes opened. He backed away slightly, but kept his arms around me.

“It—I don’t want it to fuck up everything. It feels stupid.”

I tugged him back in close, placing another quick kiss against his lips before pulling away completely, capturing his hand once more, and pulling him the rest of the way into the room. We sat on the edge of the bed, and he stared at where our laced fingers rubbed together.

“If it feels important to you, then it’s not stupid. You have a right to feel everything you feel about that situation. Have you ever thought about talking to someone else about it... like a therapist or something?”

Daniel snorted. “The funny thing about that is that it costs money. Seattle is already stupid, fucking expensive. If you missed that part, I’m not exactly rolling in it.”

I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. Maybe I really lived a spoiled life. If I ever needed anything, my parents had made it happen. No questions asked. It seemed like his parents would do the same, but that also meant opening up to them about what had really gone on with his supposed best friend and his girlfriend. It was one thing to tell your friends, something totally different to tell your family. He didn’t need to if he wasn’t comfortable with it.

“If I helped, would you do it?”

Daniel pulled his hand from mine. The entire atmosphere in the room shifted, like whatever I’d said crossed too many lines.

“You—you don’t need to take pity on me.”

And just like that, he was up and walking out the door. What the hell had just happened? We’d been doing so good with talking shit out, and now it felt like I was sliding backward. I didn’t want to betray Daniel’s trust, but there was only so much I could do to support him.

I gave it a whole two minutes before I walked back out of the room. Daniel was back on the couch, beer bottle clutched in his hand, while Nathan sat next to him, arguing with his brother about something. Joe was sitting on one of the bar stool, scowling at both of them, so maybe it had something to do with him.

It was becoming the group secret. We were all rooting for something to happen with Aiden and Joe, but Nathan was dead set on keeping the two of them as far apart as possible. It didn’t make any sense. Sure, Joe had a reputation, but we all did at some point or another. It wasn’t fair to hold that over his head like that.

My attention shifted back to Daniel, who finished his drink and made his way to grab another. We’d all been drinking a lot today, but we were all approaching drunk territory before food. There was a long way to go before midnight and if we were really doing this New Year’s Eve party thing, we all needed to start pacing ourselves. Add in the fact I now knew that Daniel was upset, I wanted to keep an extra eye on him.

Instead of reaching for another beer, Daniel pulled the bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and grabbed a fresh tumbler from the cupboard. He threw a few ice cubes in the glass before pouring some of the amber liquid over it. It was way more than a shot. It would be one thing had he not grabbed something so strong, but that was one of my dad’s favorite malts and it could pack a punch.

I was across the room the second the glass touched his lips. He grimaced at the burn and I gently pulled the drink from his fingers, taking my own swallow of it. Where he hadn’t minded me stealing part of his drinks earlier, this time it earned me a glare.

“The hell are you doing?” he asked, snatching the whiskey back from me.

“Making sure you don’t do something stupid.”

Daniel’s eyes narrowed as he lifted the glass once more and then downing the rest of the beverage. He shuddered when he finished and then turned to grab the bottle again. Before he could pour himself some more, I grabbed it from him, placing it behind my back.

“Shawn...”

“Daniel...”

We stood there in a weird sort of standoff.

“Fuck, it’s fine. I don’t need you to fucking babysit me.” He lunged to grab the bottle from me, and I fell sideways, shoulder slamming hard into the wall and drawing everyone’s attention.

Chase’s eyebrows were in his hairline and Joe looked amused. “Well, that didn’t take long for things to go back to normal then,” Joe teased as he got up from the stool. He grabbed two bottles of beer from the fridge and took one to Aiden. Nathan groaned as Aiden beamed at Joe, getting up to follow him back to the kitchen.

The bottle was yanked from my hands, and I could only watch as Daniel opened the cap and poured another hefty serving in his glass. The look that danced in his eyes dared me to challenge him again, to ask him to slow down. But he’d won this fight. I’d worked hard to earn his trust, and I wasn’t about to fuck it up over something so small. Then again, hadn’t I already by offering to help him out with something financially?

If I had known that was all it would take to piss him off, I would’ve taken it all back. If I’d learned anything since meeting Daniel, it was that he was fiercely independent. Even when his parents had come to visit, I’d been able to sense that he was reluctant to let them do anything. And I’d gone and fucking inserted myself.

“With me, now.”

Fuck. Just what I needed.

Chase grabbed my elbow and dragged me back down the hall, Daniel glaring after us. Funny how he didn’t want me to help him, but he had no problem with Chase stepping in?

Fuck that noise. When Chase tried to pull me into a room, I refused. “The hell, Dawson. Don’t play guard dog. Daniel’s a big boy who can fight his own battles. I didn’t do shit.”

When Chase raised his hands in surrender, I wanted to push past him and go back to everyone else. Go back to having fun. Shit, this was supposed to be a party, and until ten minutes ago, it was a blast. Now it seemed like it was all falling apart.

I leaned in, lowering my voice so that only Chase could hear me. “I’m not going to yank him around. I know about what happened, and it’s fucked. No one should have ever made him feel that way. I want him happy just as much as you do.”

Like a weight lifted off his shoulders, Chase relaxed, giving me a nod. “I know. It was just hard to see him go through all of that. We were all each other had for the longest time...”

I held my hands out to my sides. “I get it. The last thing I want is to come between your friendship. He’s lucky to have you. I don’t know what happened. We were talking, and he shut down.”

Another nod. “Yeah, he’s...” Chase looked down the hall. No one seemed to pay attention to us. “He’s better. The fact he let you in at all is progress. Nathan still doesn’t know all the details outside of the arrests. The rest of the guys don’t even know that much. It took forever for him to tell me.”

I patted Chase on the shoulder, and we went back to our friends. Now that I knew he wasn’t going to rip my head off. Things seemed back to normal if you didn’t count Daniel sitting at the kitchen counter tossing back another shot of that whiskey. Damn, he was going to hurt later.

I wasn’t his keeper. Daniel made it loud and clear that there were some things he didn’t need my help with. The problem with having been hot and heavy so quickly was that there were still a lot of kinks we needed to iron out.