Page 20 of Off the Edge

“Is drunk?” the driver asked in broken English.

“No.”

“Yes?” Ren asked, then flopped back, his body mostly liquid at this point.

“He’s fine.” I leaned forward and spoke to the driver. “Do you know a hotel around here? Nothing fancy, three star . . . somewhere he can sleep this off?”

“Okay. You pay extra.”

“Yeah, okay.” I sat back and sighed at the wreck in the seat beside me as the cab got underway again. “What the hell happened to you?”

He raised a hand and flapped it, as though that explained everything.

I’d never seen him like this, didn’t know he had it in him. He was always so controlled. Never slipped up, never made mistakes. But he’d almost dropped Tamsyn and now this? Something was clearly going on.

“Hey,” I said, drawing his gaze my way. “You know I’m supposed to be the fuckup in this relationship, right?”

“We are not in a relationship,” he mumbled, then turned away to stare out at the falling snow and passing city streets.

This wasn’t about us. I was certain of that. He wouldn’t be coming undone a year and a half after we’d separated. I’d done my getting wasted and feeling sorry for myself phase with Saga and a crate of beers a week after Ren had left me in Montreal. And yes, he’d left me in the snow yesterday, made it clear he didn’t want anything to do with me, and had I been at home, I probably would have crashed out with Saga again. But not here, at the fucking Olympics. Even I didn’t unravel here. Whatever had done this to him had spiraled him off the deep end, hard.

“If he sick, you pay,” the driver said.

Our driver was an asshole. “He’s not going to do that,” I said.

“Might,” Ren said.

“What were you drinking?” I asked.

“Shochu.”

“The strong stuff, right.”

How the hell was he going to sleep this off for six a.m. training tomorrow?

“Hotel here.” The driver pulled the car to a stop outside a basic, no-frills looking building.

“Thanks.” I paid him and scooped Ren out of the car from his side. The snow fell hard now, which was impressive for snow. “Try not to look drunk, okay?”

“Alright.” He slipped and fell up the steps, almost taking me down with him, and snorted a filthy laugh. “I am not very good at this.”

“Congratulations, we found something you’re shit at. Now, if only being shitfaced was an Olympic sport.”

He laughed, so did I. It was that or cry.

The woman behind the reception desk frowned at us, but she let me book and prepay for a room. Ren slumped against the side of the elevator as it took us up three floors. Then I managed to hobble him along a short corridor to the room, waved the card over the lock, and marched him inside.

He sat on the end of the bed and buried his face in his hands before I’d flicked all the lights on.

I stopped and sighed. He looked . . . pathetic, sitting there. It hurt, seeing him so small and lost. He wasn’t supposed to do this. He was the strong one. The sensible one. He was the put-together one. I was not used to being the grown-up in the room.

“Hey, you know what?” I said, brightly. “We’ll get you fixed right up. Sleep it off. Nobody will know this happened.”

He fell backwards on the bed, hands still on his face, then dragged them down and blinked at the ceiling. “I know . . . You know.”

“We all fuck up. We’re human.” I shrugged off my jacket, tossed it over the one chair, and turned to face him. “Even you.”

His cheek twitched, teeth clenching.