His Wicked Christmas Wager. Annie Burrows

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      She shook her head and handed me a piece of newspaper. I frowned. I recognized the letterhead as one from the local paper. I scanned it, and panic reared in my chest. Select words jumped off the page, lodging in my brain. Stonewood Gate Apartments. Twenty-one dead. Estranged husband. Drug and alcohol abuse suspected. Fire. And the headline: No Survivors.

      I dropped the article like it was burning.

      “Tucker.”

      I heard her say my name, but I was already on the move. People stared as I ran through the common area on our floor in nothing but pajama shorts and an ill-fitting tank top, but I didn’t care. I needed to get to something solid. Something that would solidify me. I needed to get to Mark.

      By the time I reached his apartment building—a squat, three-story building just a block away from my own place—I was shivering and sweating at the same time, and the tears were starting to come. I let myself in with the key that Mark had cut for me months earlier, and pushed blindly through the hall to his first-floor unit.

      “Mark!” I called in a quiet, desperate voice as I opened his apartment door.

      “What was that noise?”

      “Nothing, baby.”

      I stopped dead in my tracks at the feminine voice that asked the question, and at Mark’s casual reply. I inhaled deeply, catching a whiff of perfume, mixed with the dizzying sent of marijuana. I stepped more cautiously into the living room.

      I heard a choked sob come from somewhere deep in my throat, and a woman, sprawled on the sofa and clad in a satin thong, turned to look at me. Her gaze was angry and offended, as if I was invading her boyfriend’s house, and not the other way around. I felt the bile rise in my throat at the view. Mark was standing there naked, and his back was to me, but I knew every line of his body as well as I knew my own. I tried to look away, but there was nowhere for me to focus. A joint was burning in an ashtray on the table, and a satin bra was slung over a near-to-empty vodka bottle.

      “Mark?”

      My voice was very small, and held none of the fury I knew it should.

      Shock. The word came to mind, taking a life-size meaning it had never had before. This is what shock feels like. Numbness and sadness and madness that won’t come out.

      “Mark?” I repeated, a little more loudly, and he finally glanced my way.

      “Jesus, Tucks,” he swore. “What are you doing here?”

      “My parents died,” I told him.

      His eyes went wide, and I noticed he wasn’t wearing his glasses, either.

      “You never take them off when you’re with me,” I whispered.

      “What?” Mark stared at me stupidly.

      “I have to go.”

      I grabbed the vodka and fled the apartment, seeking solace in my own bed. I shoved off my roommate’s attempts to comfort me, and drank the liquor straight. I sobbed until I ached inside and out, and I didn’t know if the tears were for my mom and dad or if they were for Mark and me. It didn’t matter. I cried until all the fight went out of my body and then let sleep start to take me. My final thoughts were of the stark, heart-wrenching headline.

      No Survivors.

      In the morning, I knew I would pick up the pieces of my life as I had done in the past and move on. Because the headline wasn’t quite true. There was one survivor. It was me.

      Joey

      I couldn’t feel my face, and that probably wasn’t a good thing.

      “I can’t feel my face!”

      Saying it out loud to the room didn’t help, even when someone replied with a whooping cheer.

      “Gotta get some air,” I muttered, and tried to shove myself up off the couch.

      I couldn’t move, and I knew I was way past my limit, even though I was the kind of guy who could—who did—go hard most of the time.

      “You need some help?”

      I peered around, looking for the source of the voice, and finally zeroed in on the petite girl beside me. Her face was close to mine—inches away—and I couldn’t make her features focus properly. Why was she so damned close?

      “S’okay,” I slurred in her direction, and vaguely hoped that my breath wasn’t overtly noxious.

      I tried to make sense of what was going on. I could hear people all around me, still partying. I swiveled my head. The room was a little dark, but I could see the blurred outline of a couple making out against a nearby wall, and another pair dancing lazily near a tall speaker.

      “Wheremeye?” I muttered, and I knew it came out a garbled mess.

      “Joey?”

      I automatically turned my face at the sound of my name. It was the too-close girl again. What was she doing there, draped across me? Her legs were bare, and wrapped around mine. I gazed down at them, dragging my eyes across their tanned smoothness and up to her lacy underwear.

      Oh no.

      I could see she was wearing my oversize T-shirt, and I realized my own chest was bare.

      “Whadeyedo?” I asked.

      I flipped the girl off me, and I heard someone laugh as she hit the ground. I felt bad for a second, but then nausea overwhelmed me. I grabbed my keys and my wallet from the table, and I crashed through the house, searching for the door. I found it just in time to puke my guts up into the bushes. Which was better than into the pile of shoes in the foyer.

      I stumbled out to the street, searching for my truck.

      “Wherezstupidthing?” I mumbled.

      I finally spotted it, parked crookedly right in front of a hydrant. I lurched toward it, knowing somewhere in the back of my mind that I shouldn’t—couldn’t—drive, but wanting to get out of there bad enough to try it anyway. I shoved the key into the lock and turned.

      “Whoa.”

      A soft hand accompanied the word, and it tried to yank the key ring from my shaky grasp. I managed to hold on. Barely. I squinted at the woman attached to the grip. Dark hair framed a familiar face, and the effects of alcohol weren’t enough to block out the pain any longer.

      “Amber! I know you,” I slurred.

      “And I know you, Joey. If you get in that car, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

      “What’s it matter to you?” I demanded harshly, drunkenly.

      “We’re friends. Or at least we were before—”

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