Collaring Chaz (Dante's Infernal #2) - Joel Abernathy Page 0,9

get all freaked out over nothing.

When I checked the bathroom and found it empty, I finally gave myself permission to freak out a little.

“Chaz!” I cried, stalking into his bedroom.

The lights were out, and the curtains were drawn even though it was twilight. When I saw the humanoid lump under the blankets, next to an open pill bottle on his nightstand, my heart plummeted into my stomach. I rushed over to the bed and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him hard.

“Chaz, wake up!”

He gasped sharply and his eyes opened, bloodshot and filled with confusion. He was barely awake, and whatever the fuck he’d taken was obviously still affecting him, but he was alive.

Holy shit, he was alive.

Okay. I could deal with everything else.

“Rafael?” he slurred drowsily. “What are you…?”

“You didn’t answer the door, so I came in,” I said, snatching the pill bottle off the bedside table. “What the hell is this?”

He sat up the rest of the way, running a hand through his tousled hair. He kept wincing when I spoke, so I knew he was hungover. Hence the Batcave, I guess. “They’re just sleeping pills.”

“Sleeping pills?” I read the label to make sure he wasn’t lying to me, but the name checked out. My mom had used those years ago, but she’d stopped taking them when she woke up a few days later to find a bunch of packages at the door for completely random shit she’d ordered in the middle of the night without even realizing it. The only drop of alcohol that ever touched her lips came from the chalice during Sunday Mass, so no telling what it had done to him.

“Did you drink with these?”

He rubbed his eyes, still half-asleep. “I don’t know. Maybe a little.”

“A little?” I grabbed the nearly empty vodka bottle sticking out from under his bed and sloshed it around. “Is this what you call a little?”

His brows knit together, and he seemed slightly more lucid than before, so I wasn’t sure I needed to rush him to the hospital just yet. “Why is it any of your business?”

I stared blankly at him, waiting for the punchline. We usually had the same sense of humor, but I couldn’t believe he meant that seriously.

“For one thing, I had to spend the day recording with a stranger because you bailed,” I reminded him. “And now I know why. You’re not sick, you’re fucking trashed. Is this a joke to you?”

“It always has been,” he muttered under his breath.

I frowned. “What?”

“Nothing.” He stood up and staggered a little before he got his footing. He was still wearing the clothes he’d been wearing yesterday, so I knew he hadn’t gone out or anything. He’d done all this by himself.

Shit, maybe Drake was right. Maybe he did have a problem. Dante had always been such a train wreck that I’d never really considered Chaz’s drinking an issue in comparison, but he’d never been like this either.

I watched as he groped the wall blindly for the light switch and when he finally found it, he grimaced and shielded his eyes like a creature of the night. “Fuck.”

I sighed and walked over to where he was, grabbing his arm to pull him out into the living room and onto the sofa. “Sit down. You’re too pathetic to lecture right now, and I doubt you’d remember it anyway.”

“What time is it?” he asked, rubbing his face.

“Way too fucking late for you to still be in bed,” I answered, going over to the kitchen. I was surprised the sink wasn’t overflowing with dishes, but when I looked in his fridge, I realized that was just because he hadn’t bothered to cook anything. “When was the last time you actually ate something solid? You know, food? Or drank something that wasn’t fifty-proof alcohol?”

“I don’t know. Tuesday? So like a day ago. I mean, I’ve been nibbling, but...”

I stared at him. “It’s Saturday.”

“...Oh.”

I growled my annoyance and opened the freezer. At least there were a few bags of frozen fruit he’d probably bought a decade ago, so I made a smoothie in an attempt to get some nutrients into him. “I hope you enjoyed the time off, because we’re going back on tour early. Drake’s flipping out, by the way.”

“What else is new?” he mumbled. When I looked over, he was peeling off his shirt and rummaging through a basket of unfolded laundry on the other end of the couch. He’d always been slender, but I could see more of his ribs than