In fact, it was exactly the opposite. He distinctly remembered her leaving and wanted to know if she’d been with the douche while he had been beaten to within an inch of his life. Not that he blamed her for this shit, but still. It was a matter of pride.

“Why?” he asked finally.

“Why? Because this is all my fault.”

“You hired two guys to beat me up and rob me?”

She groaned. “No!” she grumbled. Her spine straightened, and she seemed to come back to herself a bit with his joke. “But I should have left with you, and then this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Obviously, you should have left with me,” Clay said flippantly.

Andrea sniffled. “I know. I should have.”

“So…did you fuck him?”

“Clay, it doesn’t matter.” Andrea reached out and took his hand in hers. “I feel awful enough without recounting the rest of the night.”

“You’ve never felt bad about the game before.”

“It never resulted with you being in the hospital either.”

“Some assholes robbed me, Andrea. That’s not your fault. That’s not my fault. That’s not the game’s fault.”

She swallowed. “It feels like it.”

He crooked his finger at her. “Come here.”

Andrea leaned forward and softly pressed her lips to Clay’s. He wanted to breathe her in and take what belonged to him. He didn’t want to consider why she wouldn’t answer the question about fucking Bad Suit. It sent an unpleasant twist through his chest.

“Maybe we should stop,” Andrea whispered against his lips.

“No, I think we should definitely keep going.”

She laughed humorlessly. “Your ribs are cracked, so we definitely have to stop this, but I meant…the game.”

Clay’s eyes widened. “How hard did that gun hit me?”

“I’m serious, Clay.”

“We’ve had an open relationship like this since college, Andrea. It doesn’t make sense to stop just because of one bad incident. This works for us,” he earnestly told her. It always had. What would we do without our games? Without our open honesty about what we wanted from the other?

She looked down, as if considering his words. “You’ve never been…jealous?” she whispered the last word, glancing back at him.

Clay recalled the fiery anger that had built inside him last night when Andrea left the bar without him. But he just shook his head. “No.”

“Oh. Okay.” She looked uncertain as to how to proceed. “How about we just be us for New Year’s? As long as you’re okay to move around.”

“Don’t worry about me, baby. I’ll be on my feet today. Something like this can’t hold me down.”

He smiled confidently, but she didn’t look half as confident as he felt. It was unsettling, coming from her.

“Well, if you think you’ll be ready, then I’ll tell Liz that we’ll be with her and Brady and Savannah then. Okay?”

He gingerly brought her hand up to his lips and kissed her. “Okay.”

She cracked a halfhearted smile. Damn, she was taking this hard. Even harder than him. This wasn’t like Andrea at all. He’d never seen her shaken before. She was as quick with a snide remark and sexual gesture as he was. She’d been as into their agreement as he was…maybe more so. She had fucking initiated it after all.

Just when Clay was about to open up and ask her more about it, Brady stepped into the room. “Hope I’m not interrupting,” he said with a smile for Andrea’s sake.

Clay nodded his head at his older brother, the bright light that always overshadowed him. “Look who showed.”

“Sorry I wasn’t here earlier. I was on the phone with Heather, trying to handle some damage control. I didn’t think you’d want this getting out everywhere.”

Clay felt like this incident was another part of the political machine he was locked in.

He knew he should be appreciative that Brady had phoned his press secretary, Heather Ferrington. She was a hot fucking blonde, and Clay couldn’t figure out why Brady had never banged her.

“I’m sure,” Clay retorted.

With Brady in the room, Andrea sat up straight. None of the vulnerability she had just revealed to Clay showed through when she addressed his brother, “I’m going to go see how your mother is doing. Good seeing you, Brady.”

He nodded at her as she passed him to exit the room. Clay hated her absence but appreciated the fact that she knew he had to face Brady alone.

“Quite the predicament you’ve found yourself in,” Brady said. He walked to the end of the bed and drummed his fingers on the plastic footboard. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I need another dose of morphine.”

“Mom is looking into that,” he said dismissively. “Want to tell me how you ended up in that alley?”

“What are you? The fucking PI?”

“I’m simply interested in what happened, Clay. The doctor said your blood alcohol level was through the roof. It had to have been for you to wander the streets, away from the bar Andrea said you’d been in.”

“Fuck you,” Clay growled.

Brady frowned. “I’m not interrogating you. The police want to speak with you after this. They’ll do the interrogating I’m sure. I’m just trying to understand. Why didn’t you just call a cab?”

“Why don’t you go to hell?”

Brady’s politician mask fell away, and for a split second, Clay saw how shaken Brady really was. He just looked like his older brother again. Clay sighed, and just that easily, he dropped his own anger.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Brady said.

“Me, too,” Clay said.

“Seriously, if you want to talk to me about it, I’m here. I know we’ve had our differences over the years, but I’m always here for you.”

Clay clenched his hands into fists, grasping the covers and not meeting his brother’s eyes. “They said I was worthless and a piece of shit. Said that I deserved to die. They screamed it in my face while one held the barrel of a gun to my temple.”

“Fuck,” Brady said gruffly.

“I can’t describe what it was like.”

“Do you think it was premeditated? Did they target you?”