by Cassie Wild
I didn’t bother trying to go back to sleep.
By noon, my eyes were gritty, and fatigue pulled at me. I was tired enough to nap, but if I gave in to the urge now, I wouldn’t sleep tonight. I’d much rather sleep the night hours away than grab a nap during the day.
I headed into the gym I’d put up in Isabel’s studio a few months earlier. For the longest time, I’d just stand in the door and brood, staring at the barre that ran the length of the wall, thinking…remembering.
I didn’t know why I’d let Declan talk me into putting in the weight bench, then the punching bag. But bit by bit, I found myself using the set up more and more, then adding on to it.
On the nights when the noise in my head was too much, I came in here and climbed on the treadmill or attacked the heavy bag or set into a grueling weight workout until my muscles felt like nothing more than mush. It didn’t always quiet my mind, but sometimes, it made me tired enough to sleep, and that was what mattered the most.
It probably wasn’t the ideal thing to do as tired as I was, but I couldn’t concentrate on TV, and I’d long since given up trying to read to kill time. It had been months since my dad or brothers had attempted to talk me into coming back to work.
Not even twenty-five years old, and I already felt like I was over the hill and useless.
Ten minutes into my run, someone knocked on the door.
I ignored it.
Two minutes passed by on the treadmill. Two more knocks came and went. Whoever it was must have given up.
Good.
“Sean?”
I half stumbled, then righted myself, hopping off and turning just as Briar came into the gym.
Tension slammed into me. I couldn’t help it. Anytime I saw her, the clock seemed to wind back, and it was that day all over again. Cormac was holding me back as I struggled to get to Isabel.
Only days before that terrible evening, that very same man had rushed into my father’s office and shouted about a bomb. We’d only barely gotten clear of the patio outside Dad’s office before an explosion had rattled the very foundation of the big old house.
The two events were tied together—Cormac and Isabel were tied together.
And Briar was tied to Cormac.
But she was my sister, and I knew she loved me, so I didn’t bite her head off and ask her what the fuck she was doing there. I already knew.
“Hi,” I said shortly. Turning away, I grabbed the towel from the bar on the treadmill and swiped the sweat from my forehead. “What are you up to?”
“Oh, just out running around.” Briar’s tone was light, but I wasn’t fooled. My big sister rarely did anything without having a purpose. “I’m off today, taking care of errands and such. I was in the area and thought I’d come by and see you.”
Throwing the towel down, I picked up my water bottle and took a drink. “Okay.”
Her lids flickered. Briar was too…contained to show hurt, but I knew my sister, and despite the fact that I couldn’t quite let myself warm up to her, even knowing she still loved that bastard after he’d been spying on all of us, I hated myself a little more for hurting her. Again.
She didn’t let it stop her. She came farther into the gym and put her purse and coat on the weight bench closest to her. “Any chance you’d like to shower? Maybe go out and get some lunch?”
Fuck.
“I already ate,” I lied. “About an hour ago.”
“Oh.” She smiled and shrugged. “Guess I should have called.”
“Maybe next time.”
“Yeah.” She moved over to the big window that filled the entire eastern wall, showing a panoramic view of the city. “Are you going to join us for Thanksgiving?”
What a loaded question.
I took another drink, buying myself a few seconds. When I lowered the sports bottle, she was watching me, her dark blue eyes big and solemn…and knowing.
She already knew what I was going to say before I said it.
“I haven’t thought one way or the other about what I’m going to do,” I said, sidestepping the question.
A humorless smile curled her lips. “You’ve never been a good liar, Sean.” Pinching the bridge of her nose, she stared off at nothing, then looked back at me with a gaze that held a mix of frustration, grief, and anger.
I knew the anger was partially directed at me.
“Would it make it easier for you if I didn’t go?”
I scowled at her. “If I want to have dinner with my family, I will, Briar.”
“And having Cormac there makes you not want to do it,” she retorted. “But I’m not giving up the man I love because my brother can’t yank his head out of his ass.”
I threw my water bottle down.
She pointed a finger in my direction. “Don’t,” she warned me. “Don’t you give me that aggrieved, wounded, victimized look. All of you better remember one crucial detail…I got sucked into this mess because of the lives you all chose to lead. And I’m trying to make the best of it. But I will not give Cormac up.”
“It’s nice you got the fucking choice,” I snarled.
She grabbed her coat and pulled it on, staring at me with a weary expression. “You all had lots of choices, Sean. When it comes to this shit, I didn’t have any, except the ones I make now. So, stop it with the guilt trips. Cormac did not kill Isabel.” Her lower lip trembled for a few seconds before she got control. “You selfish son of a bitch. She was my sister-in-law, and I cared about her. Even if you don’t think much of Cormac, I would have thought you had some modicum of respect for me.”
Her words hit home, hard enough to knock the wind out of me. She turned and walked out. My legs were numb, every part of me frozen, and until the door slammed, I couldn’t break the strange spell of indecision.
By the time I did, I got to the hall just in time to hear the gentle ding as the elevator doors closed.
“Fuck,” I muttered, collapsing against the door frame.
Was there anything in this world I didn’t screw up?
Ten
Tish
“Thanks so much for always coming in to help, Tish.”
Tracy, the woman who ran the grief support group I’d been attending, smiled at me as she rubbed her heavily pregnant belly, pressing her back flat against the wall. She still had two months to go, but I thought she looked ready to pop. It probably didn’t help that she was unbelievably tiny, just an inch or two over five feet, and if she weighed much more than a hundred pounds, it had to be because of the baby.
Her belly poked out against her dress like somebody had shoved a basketball under it.
From time to time, as we talked during group, you could see her belly start to move. I wasn’t the only one fascinated by the display. I’d seen other people stare in rapt fascination.
Tracy had picked up on it too. More than a couple had approached her and asked if they could feel the baby kick, and she was always happy to indulge.
I hadn’t done it—yet—but I was curious.
I smiled at the petite woman. Because she’d told us, I knew she was seven years older than my own twenty-four, but she didn’t look it. She looked my age, maybe even younger, with her caramel-gold skin, tight, kinky curls that she almost always wore up in a tight ponytail and warm brown eyes.
LaMarcus, her husband, was a science teacher and football coach at a local high school, and she taught art at a private school. She’d been taking classes part-time too. “Up until our little oops,” she confessed to me one night with a grin. She wanted to be a therapist, specializing in art therapy. The grief support group was a way of keeping a hand in until she could get back to school.
“Are you ready for your last Thanksgiving as a couple?” I asked her, grabbing another folding chair and hauling it to the circle. A quick look at the clock told me that I only had a few more minutes before the first wave started to trickle in, and if I paced it right, I wouldn’t have to worry about any of the personal questions she always tried to slip in.
She wrinkled her nose. There were freckles there, shades darker than the warm gold of the rest of her skin. “Well, when you put it that way…hell if I know.” Tracy shoved off the wall and made her way over to the armchair one of the other therapists had scrounged up and brought into the center for her, insisting she use it. Otherwise, she’d hurt his tender, manly feelings. Those had been his exact words. I’d been standing there when he told her.
She groaned as she lowered herself down into the worn old cushions, lines of strain crossing her face. “If I’d known I’d be celebrating my last Thanksgiving as a couple this year, I would have gotten extra wasted last year.”
I couldn’t help it. I broke out laughing. “That doesn’t sound very therapist-like.”
“Pregnancy hormones have made me cranky.” She winked at me. “Don’t tell.”
The door squeaked before I could answer, announcing the first arrivals for our group. I mimed zipping my lips and throwing away an invisible key. “Secret’s safe.”
“What secret?”
I looked over at Matt, one of the other regulars, as he came in carrying a big box of donuts with him. He owned a bakery a few miles away. He’d started it with his wife not long after they got married. Two years ago, she’d been diagnosed with cancer. Eighteen months later, she lost the fight. He’d been talking about giving the place up when he first started coming in. But lately, he seemed to be having a change of heart.
I gave him a solemn look. “I don’t know. What secret?”
“You’ve got a smart-ass hiding somewhere under that nice persona you put on for the world.” He grinned as he came closer, popping open the box for me. “Want one?”
I bit my lip as I studied the yummies he had inside. So, so many yummies. I selected a plain glazed one instead of the custard I wanted. “Thank you.”
“No problem. What about you, Tracy?”
“No. I wish.” She heaved out a glum sigh, looking at the box with greedy eyes. “I’ve finally admitted that eating after seven or eight gives me heartburn something awful at night.”
“Maybe take one home? If you microwave it for five seconds in the morning, it will taste just as good.” He winked at her. “Don’t tell my customers I said that.”
She laughed. “Okay, you talked me into it.”
By the time I was done eating my donut, most of the group had arrived, and I was sitting in my customary seat across from Tracy, sipping on a cup of coffee loaded down with cream and sugar. Tommy, another regular, almost always made the coffee, and I knew from experience it was strong enough to keep me wide-awake until midnight, at least, which wasn’t a problem. But I desperately needed something to tone down the motor-oil viscosity of it.
As eight o’clock approached, people gathered around the seats and settled in.
We started on time, for once.
Save for one person, everyone there was a regular. The new person was a red-eyed woman with pale blonde hair pulled back in a neat bun, a suit that looked like it cost more than I made in a month, and sensible flats that told me she probably spent a lot of time on her feet.
Tracy introduced herself, and since we had the new woman, she asked everybody to go around and do the same before she focused her gentle smile on the blonde. “What’s your name?”
“Amber.” She tried to smile, but it fell flat.
“It’s nice to meet you, Amber.” Tracy gave her an understanding look before continuing. “You don’t need to say the same. Nobody walks through the doors because something wonderful happened. I walked through them myself seven years ago after my twin was murdered by her boyfriend.”
I’d already heard this story. So had all the others, save for Amber.
“I still blame myself, in the darker moments.” Tracy leaned back in the seat, folding her hands over her belly. The baby kicked, hard enough that anybody looking could see it. “And the dark moments do still come. I’ll see somebody we went to school with, and there are a few who haven’t heard. They’ll ask…and I have to decide if I tell the whole story all over again, or just say that she passed away.”
Amber’s voice broke as she asked, “Does it ever get any easier?”
The raw pain in her voice made my chest ache.
“The pain will always be there,” Tracy said. “It’s like a deep wound. But after a while, you form something almost like a callous over that wound. It…buffers the pain a little. And you come to accept it. But it takes time.”
Tommy, our resident coffee maker, asked, “Do you want to tell us who you lost?”
Amber shook her head rapidly. “I can’t. Not yet.”
“That’s okay,” Tracy said.
Amber jerked her head up, staring at her. “It is?”
“We all have to come to it in our own time.” I was surprised to hear myself talking. So were others. It had taken me nearly two months in group to say much more than my name or hi or bye. Nerves tightened my shoulders, but I kept going. “I think I was here three months before I told anybody my story.”
Amber’s gaze slid to me. The morbid curiosity was there. It’s a natural thing, something I’d finally come to accept. And it was reflected in the eyes of two others, people who’d joined the group after I’d come and started to talk more. Although the nerves were still all but screaming now, I took a deep breath.
“I moved here from Oklahoma in April. I was looking for a new life…something away from all the people I knew.” With a pained smile, I shrugged. “I couldn’t leave my apartment without somebody asking me if I was okay or how was I getting along…and almost every guy I knew told me they’d have a talk with my ex. We split up a month after…” I had to clear my throat before I could continue. “A month after we buried my parents, we broke up. He just couldn’t understand what I was going through. Nobody did, really.”
I looked around the circle at the people who’d listened to the secrets I’d shared, the people who’d shared their own secrets with me. “Not until I found this group anyway.”
“What…” Amber licked her lips, then cleared her throat. “What happened to your parents?”
“There was a fire.” My voice cracked, forcing me to pause long enough to pull myself together. “They owned a bookstore, and there was some sort of electrical problem, and the wires shorted out. The books were old. Antiques. They went up like kindling.”
Tears blurred my eyes, and for a few seconds, I couldn’t speak.
Taking a deep breath, I went on, “The investigators think my mom saw something and was rushing to warn my dad, but she must have tripped and hit her head on the desk in the office. She died from smoke inhalation. My dad, though…he might have had a chance to get out, but he wouldn’t leave without her. He died trying to get to the office. They didn’t have a chance, really.”
Eleven
Sean
“I know who you are. You’re one of the rich Downing fuckers. Going to be nice to lock you up. And boy…resisting arrest?”
I ignored the cop leaning in through the door, staring straight ahead even though the flashing red and blue lights were giving me a fucking headache.
Actually, I’d given myself the headache when I slammed my forehead into the other officer’s face, smashing his nose. I’d played dumb right until the last second, then reacted. I should have held off and timed it until I got this bastard, though. This one actually deserved it.
“Hey, wait a second…you’re the youngest one, aren’t you?”
Try as I might, I couldn’t keep my shoulders from tightening. That tone in his voice was one I knew too well. I still didn’t respond, just kept staring straight ahead.
“You are him. Damn shame about that wife of yours. She was a fine-looking piece of ass.” Slowly, I turned my head and stared at him. A smug grin curled his lips. “Of course, married to a piece of shit like you, and coming from a family like that, it was just a matter of time, wasn’t it?”
Calculating the distance between us, I tried to decide if my head was st
eady enough for me to do him any damage. I’d had nearly a fifth of whiskey earlier, and contrary to what these assholes were saying, I hadn’t been driving drunk. I’d been drinking and driving, yes, but I’d pulled over before I’d gotten drunk and decided I’d rather drink than drive and had tossed my keys into the back seat just to remove temptation.
“Whalen!”
The officer in front of me didn’t move.
I continued to stare at him, already seeing his face a mask of blood. In a cool, methodical manner, I lowered my gaze to his badge and took note of the number, then looked back into his eyes. “Whalen. Officer Whalen. I think your partner wants you.”
It was mildly satisfying to see the lines around his eyes deepen and even more amusing to see him swallow back whatever comment he was about to make as his partner shouted his name again, louder this time.
“Better hurry. He’s yanking your chain, Whalen.”
Whalen’s lip curled, and he jerked back, slamming the door.
I sank back into the seat and closed my eyes, the throbbing in my head enough that I thought I might be sick.
It might have been maybe ten minutes before the driver side door opened and the first cop ducked inside, practically folding in half just to fit his massive frame behind the wheel. He glanced back at me, and I caught sight of his swollen lip. “Lucky for you, Mr. Downing, I found your keys in the back seat, right where you said they were.”
He looked away, and I watched as his eyes tracked movement around the car. I realized what he was looking at after only a few seconds. “Your partner’s an asshole,” I told him. “I should have busted his face instead of yours. Sorry.”
Something that might have been surprise flickered in his eyes before he looked away. The passenger door opened a few seconds later, and I lapsed into silence, turning my head to stare out the window.
The entire drive there, Whalen threw verbal jabs, mentioning Isabel more than once. I all but bit my tongue through, but somehow, I managed to stay quiet. The only reason was because I knew he was doing it just because he wanted to see me lose my temper.