The Step Sister vs. Cinderella

Chapter 29

            Axton frowned as he watched yet another man stumble by the bonfire to the nearby bushes. He didn’t need to hear the sounds to know the man had become so intoxicated that he had to vomit. He wondered what the point of people here drinking so much that they threw it back up again was. It seemed an exercise in redundancy to him.

            “There you are!” He heard a giggling voice cry.

            He turned in time to catch Paige as she tripped over her own feet and fell into him. She giggled again as she looked up into his face, her hair falling forward so one eye was hidden. “You’re the best,” she cried, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly.

            He froze, one arm held away from her while the other was still around her waist to support her. He looked past her to where Jenna and Allison had just come to a stumbling stop. “What happened?” he asked, dropping his eyes to indicate Paige.

            Allison shook her head. “We have no idea. She said she was going to grab her other bottle of pop. By the time we got there she was already like this. I’d say she was drunk but Paige hasn’t been drinking tonight. And even when she does, she never gets like this.”

            Jenna frowned. “Maybe…I don’t know how closely Nicole was watching our drinks. I mean she and that guy were talking pretty much nonstop and well… it’d be hard for anyone to keep a constant watch on our stuff and you know how Nicole gets when she first meets a new guy.”

            Paige giggled again, twining one hand into Axton’s hair. “It’s soft,” she said, starting to stroke the back of his head.

Allison stared at her as her face slowly drained of colour. “If that’s the case, we can’t let her out of our sight.”

“What has happened?” Axton asked again, frowning as he looked at the two girls. The way they spoke was almost like a riddle, but the bit he understood left him feeling cold. “Will Paige be safe?”

Jenna nodded, eyes sober behind her glasses. “She’ll be fine as long as we stay with her. We think…well someone might have slipped something into her drink. We can’t be sure but…well Paige doesn’t act like this normally. I mean, yeah, she’s pretty peppy but she’s not… not like this.”

Axton’s eyes narrowed as he shifted his hold on Paige’s waist slightly, her moving around having made his grip on her slip. He also did his best to focus on the conversation at hand and not how Paige was stroking his head, cooing softly as she did so. “Why would someone put something in her drink?”

Allison and Jenna looked at one another for a moment, then came to an unspoken decision. The look in his eyes made them think if they told him what the normal reason for someone drugging a girl’s drink was, he’d start snapping people’s head off with his bare hands. “Someone might have mistaken her drink for theirs and put the drug in. Some people like taking things like E and GBH.”

He relaxed slightly. “If that is all it was then I suppose there is no help for it. I will keep a watch over Paige until she regains herself.”

“What about Paige?” Nicole asked, walking up to the group, eyebrows contracted over her eyes.

Jenna glanced at Axton before saying, “We think someone accidentally put something into Paige’s drink. She’s acting like she’s on E or something. What happened to your boy?”

Nicole caught the warning look Allison sent her and rolled her eyes. “Son of a bitch spends all of that time chatting me up, asking if I have a boyfriend an everything, only to end with, oh by the way, I have a girlfriend. I mean I’m glad he’s not going to cheat on someone, but seriously, he could have been less touchy and less…interested in my relationship status if all he wanted was a friend. I’d have been just as happy to talk to him. Screw boys. Sorry Ax.”

He shook his head. “No man should speak familiarly to a woman he is not courting, let alone touch her,” he replied. Then looked down at where he was holding Paige up, she having turned her attention to touching his ears. He flushed. “Under ordinary circumstances.”

That made the girls grin. “Here,” Nicole said, moving closer and grabbing Paige around the middle. “I can at least get her off you.”

Paige dropped one hand away from Axton’s ears to push at her friend’s arms. She tightened her grip on his neck with her free hand, pressing herself closer to him. “No. I’m staying with Axton.”

Nicole fought her for a moment then caught sight of the scarlet colour of Axton’s face and decided to leave her be. Paige’s response was another giggle followed by her wrapping her arms back around his neck and dropping her face against his chest. She rubbed her head against his chest, doing nothing to help the colour of his face.

“How long will she be in this state?” Axton asked, voice starting off high and strained before he got it under control.

Allison shrugged. “Depends on what it was and how much she got. We can pull her off by force if we have to.”

“I do not believe that would be wise,” he replied, feeling her arms tighten at the suggestion.

“Then it’d be best if we left. We can probably contain her if we get her to Karen’s. She said she left the back door open in case we needed to bail so we can head out now,” Nicole said.

“I believe that would be for the best,” he said. Then looked down. “Paige, we are leaving now. I need you to loosen your grip so that I may walk.”

She looked up at him and grinned. Before he could react, she shoved herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him squarely on the lips.