Page 26 of Lumi

“Hey.” I squashed her to my chest, relieved to have found her, and then I peeked into the bathroom to make sure she was alone.

“Did the eejit touch ye?”

“I wanna go home,” she cried in my arms.

“Lumi.” I pushed her back to look at her. “Did he hurt ye?”

She was swaying on her feet, and her eyes told me she was drunk. “No. I locked myself up in here.”

“Good. Now show me the clown who bothered ye.” Taking her hand, I pulled her toward the stairs, but as we passed the room where the drunken lad was sleeping on the bed, I paused. “Wait one second.” I let go of Lumi’s hand and walked in to shake his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Lumi asked behind me.

“Making sure he’s not dying from alcohol poisoning. Hey, champ, wake up.”

“Leave me alone,” the drunk guy slurred and rolled on to his other side.

I left the door open on my way out and saw Lumi was already walking down the stairs. “Hold on to the banister,” I called after her and stood back when a girl came stomping up. Like Lumi, she was visibly intoxicated and placed a hand on my chest when she stopped to look me over.

“Howya doin’?” Her smile faltered when her eyes moved past me to the drunken guy on the bed. “I thought he’d be awake by now.”

I turned my head to look in the same direction as her. “How long has he been sleepin’?”

She shrugged. “Two hours, at least. He said it would be a short kip, but I might as well have come to this party alone.”

The girl moved on, and I walked down to Lumi, who waited at the end of the stairs.

“So, who was the bloke who scared ye?”

Lumi’s eyes darted around. “It was several, but it doesn’t matter. I’m safe now, and I just want to go home.”

My hands locked around her upper arms, and I stared into her eyes. “I’m not asking ye again. Point him out to me, Lumi.”

She swallowed and looked down. “The worst one was the one who passed out upstairs. He followed me, but I managed to hide in the bathroom.”

My eyes narrowed. “The one I shook before?”

Lumi nodded. “Yes. He wanted to dance with me, and when I said no, he kept pestering me. I couldn’t get him to stop.”

With confusion and annoyance in the pit of my stomach, I walked out of the house with Lumi trailing behind me.

A drunk guy called out to Lumi, “You can’t leave. We haven’t danced yet.”

“Get in,” I ordered when we got to my car.

There was complete silence in the car as I drove her away from the party.

“Are you angry at me?” Lumi asked after five long minutes of silence.

“Yes.” I kept my eyes on the road. “That guy upstairs didn’t touch ye. Either ye’re protecting the bloke who did or ye made up the whole thing to get me to come and fetch ye.”

Lumi fiddled with the hem of her dress but didn’t answer me.

“Look, ye know that I’d drive to the other side of the country if ye needed me, but don’t invent things to fool me. Megan and I are already havin’ a hard time.” Lumi’s lie set me off because all the way here, I’d thought about worse-case scenarios and known that if I walked in to find a man raping Lumi, I would kill him with my bare hands.

A sideways glance showed that Lumi was looking at me.

“Can you pull over?”