Page 14 of 300 New Year's Eves

“Eight!”

“I said, why can’t I get anything right today?”

“Seven!”

“Well, there’s always tomorrow.” Jeremy shrugs and offers him a bit of a smirk with an annoyed stare.

“Six!”

“See you later, Sergio,” Jeremy says and walks away with Allison, who wrinkles her nose at Sergio from his side.

“Five!”

“Yeah, maybe tomorrow,” Sergio says to himself.

“Four!”

He eyes the security team as they begin to close in on him and blindly grabs a glass of champagne off a server’s tray as they walk by.

“Three!”

He drinks it all in one gulp, not bothering to wait until midnight, then puts the glass down and braces for the incoming impact of the hotel’s security team.

“Two!”

“One! Happy …”

Chapter three

“Uncle Sergio! Wake up!” Henry shouts, kneeing Sergio in the balls and jolting him awake.

Sergio shoots up, confused and wincing as he grabs his aforementioned balls. Gus hisses and runs out from underneath the bed and bolts out the door. This is not the knock-down tackle he was bracing himself for. Though given the pointiness of Henry’s knee, it does perhaps hurt more than getting laid out by four hulking security guards. That said, they must have hit him pretty hard for him to wake up in his own bed and not remember anything that happened after midnight.

“Henry, my boy,” he manages to say through gritted teeth. “Good rule of thumb. Let adults sleep in on New Year’s Day.”

“That’s tomorrow, silly!” Henry laughs.

“No. That’s definitely today,” Sergio says, still wincing.I should know, I had a rough night last night. Which, now that he thinks about it, if he was drunk enough to black out and forget the rest of the evening, shouldn’t he be feeling worse than he does right now? Well, worse than he does outside of gettingkicked in the balls for the second day in a row by a five-year-old’s knobby knee. He really is going to need to talk to Henry about that if this is going to be his standard wake-up call for the week. Or maybe the solution is to lock his door. Too bad he hadn’t done that the night before.

“Come on, Uncle Sergio,” Henry pleads, pulling at Sergio’s arm. “Dad said to come get you. Breakfast is almost ready.”

“Is it another big spread like yesterday?”

Henry stops pulling and looks at Sergio, his face scrunched up in bewilderment. “You weren’t here for breakfast yesterday.”

“Yes, Henry, I was,” Sergio says impatiently. He’s in no mood for whatever little game Henry is playing. It would have been nice to be able to sleep in today before he goes on his apology tour for last night’s foibles. His focus is on Jeremy, but second, he needs to talk to Holden, who likely had to bail him out of jail if Chadwick decided to be an asshole and press charges.Oh, shit. Maybe it’s not Henry that’s confused. He pulls the kid in close to his chest. “How mad is your dad at me this morning?”

“Daddy’s not mad at you.”

“No? What about Mommy?”

“Mommy’s always mad at you.” Henry giggles.

“Okay, that’s true,” Sergio says, lightly laughing along with him. “Did you wake up your Uncle Adrien yet?”

“No.” Henry continues to giggle as Sergio tickles his side.

“Good. Go wake him up like you did me again, please,” he says, then remembering his brother quit on him the day before, adds, “Maybe put a little extra kick into him for me, would ya?”