Damn Good Reasons **DISCONTINUED - SEE NEW VER!**

Chapter 11 - Divergence

Dawn was gently lighting the room when I awoke with my head in a sedated haze. It wasn't a hangover but a hard week's worth of exhaustion. I was lying on one side of my double bed with a sheet over me, and I had slept in my underwear as I always did. Everything seemed perfectly normal except there was some annoying sound, quiet as a whisper, repeating somewhere near my ears. I woke a little more to realize that it was the sound of soft breathing. I opened my eyes and rolled over.

"Jesus!" I jumped up like I'd been poked with an electric cattle prod.

Ace murmured. He was lying on his stomach, looking too comfortable with both arms and his head stuffed under the pillow. The sheet was riding around his waist, and I could see he was still wearing his jeans, but his flawless, sun-kissed back was bare and splayed out before me. My eyes drifted from the small dimples just inside his lower hips, over the muscles on either side of his spine and all the way up to his broad shoulders. I wanted to run my hands over his smooth skin.

"What the hell are you doing in my bed?" I snatched the pillow he was using and whacked him across the back of the head with it.

"Sleeping." He snatched the pillow back off me and buried himself under it again.

"This wasn't part of the deal."

"I was too fucked to drive home last night."

"You could've slept in the spare room."

"It's taken."

"By who?" I said, wide-eyed.

He didn't reply.

"You could have slept on the sofa."

"It's taken."

"The floor then!"

"Taken."

I rolled my eyes at him and lay back down in a huff. "What time did you get to bed last night?"

"Around five..."

"Well, don't think you're gonna be sleeping here all day."

"What's the time?"

I looked over at the clock on my bedside dresser. "It's eight."

Ace yawned as he sat up and then swiped his T-shirt and his jacket off the floor before groggily trudging out the bedroom door.

"Eyeball," he called, banging hard on the door of the spare room before pushing it open. "Get your lazy ass outta bed. Let's go."

After a few resistant groans, Eyeball stumbled out of the room shirtless, and I let my eyes linger until his pulled his shirt over his head. "Good night huh?" he mumbled to Ace, looking half-asleep as they wandered down the hallway, out to the living room. "Always a good night when it ends in a lay."

Oh... no... he didn't think we... Oh God, no...

I rolled off the bed and pulled on the nearest clothing to my reach before high-tailing it out to the living room. I was about to set Eyeball straight, but he and Ace were busy waking up the rest of the guys. The lot of them were sprawled across the room - the sofa, the armchairs and the floor. Ace wasn't kidding about that.

"Billy," Ace said, flicking his ear with his fingers and startling him awake. "We're leaving. Move it."

I gazed around, expecting the house to look like a tornado had hit a landfill, but the place was pristine clean. There wasn't one alcohol can or bottle to be seen, and later I noticed that even the bathroom was sparkling and misty-fresh. Even Violet's expensive shot-glasses were all accounted for and had been put away in their little box. I couldn't believe it.