Page 5

“Um, I got lost. I knocked. But when you didn’t answer I got desperate and broke a window. My phone died when I was hiking and I don’t know how I ended up on this side of the lake and?—”

“Breathe, Goldyn,” he interrupted, an amused lilt to his words. “We’re not in a rush.”

Romeo scoffed at that, but said no words otherwise.

I cut him a glance and then refocused my attention on Sincere. “I’ll pay for the broken window. And the food I ate. And the tea?—”

“Whattea?” Romeo interjected, his brow hiked and demanding.

“The purple sweet tea that was in the fridge. I had a couple glasses after I ate.”

“Ah, hell,” Romeo muttered under his breath while Sincere’s dimples went missing for the first time since he’d introduced himself.

“Define acouple,” Lorenzo prompted, walking over to us.

“Two of these,” I answered, holding up my mason jar as a reference.

Why was everyone looking at me like I’d suddenly grown five heads?

Lorenzo stopped beside Sincere and mirrored his squatting position to stare up at me with probing eyes.

For someone surrounded by three unknown men twice my size, I didn’t feel the least bit afraid. Now that the gun was out of the picture, I even felt calm. But maybe that had more to do with my drowsy state than anything else. I was too sleepy to be scared.

“You had more than four times the serving size.”

“Oh.” I shrugged. “I probably needed the calories after the day I had,” I said off-handedly.

“It’s a sleep elixir,” Romeo added gruffly.

“What?”

“I’m an herbalist and I was trying out a new recipe. It wasn’tsweet tea, it was an herbal blend to help people with insomnia.”

“Oh,” I said again. “That explains a lot.”

I thought it’d been the Itis, but this made more sense. A lot more sense.

It definitely explained why I got sleepy so fast, slept through my alarm and could barely wake up even when I knew there was a gun to my head.

The three men stared at me, perplexed awe shone on all their faces.

“I’m gonna go.” My voice broke the awkward silence and prompted Sincere and Lorenzo into action.

“I think you should stay.”

“What?”

“Just for the night,” he clarified. “So Rome can check you out in the morning to make sure you’re good. Then one of us will drive you anywhere you want.”

I opened my mouth to object and then closed it when my jaw felt heavy.

“We have a guest room. You can take a shower, relax and sleep off the tea a little more.”

“I feel fine,” I protested.

“You’re slurring your words, mamas,” Lorenzo said, laughter apparent in his tone.

I couldn’t even react to the endearment because my head felt heavy again, and I knew they were right. I needed to sleep this off. And then I would wake up, go back to my van and pretend this never happened.