I love you, I’d told her once, just to get her legs open. Or that’s what I told myself. Because thinking any other way, entertaining any other possibility, might make me back out. Might change my mind. Might fuck up all my plans to get even with the man who’d used my mother until she was dead, and then traded in her memory for a younger model.
My father inspired a rage so strong in me that sometimes, I couldn’t see straight. Feeling anything for Iris, anything at all, was a threat to that. Because every time I even thought about the idea of those feelings, my vision got blurry in an entirely different way.
And that just wouldn’t do.
“Get out,” my father said. Despite how low his voice was, it seemed to shake the room. “Get out of here, Slade. And don’t you dare come back.”
Iris withered as I withdrew, covering herself with her arms and legs while I pulled up my swim trunks. I risked a look in her direction and my stomach sank. Those eyes were wide again, but not with pleasure or sweet naiveté or even shock. They were wide with pain. Wide with rage.
How could you? her gaze said to me. I just gave her a shrug and watched her eyes get wet.
It didn’t matter how hurt she was. The fact of the matter was that Iris was better off without me. I would have told her as much, if she’d have listened. If my father would’ve let me stay in the same room with her for one second more. But I knew neither of those things were going to happen now, so I’d just have to say it to myself: Come on, Iris. This is the best thing that could’ve happened to you. Years from now, you’ll look back and see. Splitting our parents up was something I had to do. For me. For my mother. And in some ways, for you.
‘Cause being related to Slade Jarvis? Now that’s a hell I wouldn’t put my worst enemy through.
My father moved to let me pass without so much of a word. I thought I saw a few gray hairs glinting in the sun, right around his temples, where there hadn’t been a single one before. I held his gaze and my cocky grin, savoring my triumph, knowing that I’d done what I set out to do. That I had won.
I didn’t let him see it in my eyes or in my swagger, but at the same time, I wondered to myself: if I’d really beat my father, once and for all, then why the hell did I feel so shitty?
Why the hell couldn’t I get the look on Iris Walker’s face out of my head?
~ ONE ~
Iris
SEVEN YEARS LATER
“Dad, come on. You know it’s the right thing to do.”
My stepfather looked down his nose at me, the wire frames of his glasses dangling precariously close to the tip. He looked like he’d aged ten years in the past three days. Ever since Kellan left home, our house had practically become a morgue.
You would’ve thought my younger brother died, and maybe for Dad, that was, in a sense, true. He certainly wasn’t the kid we once knew.
Dad shook his head and fixed his gaze outside the breakfast nook window again, like staring at the front lawn would magically make Kellan appear there. This was part of the Waiting Game, the one our family always played whenever Kellan took off on one of his benders. He was never gone for more than a week at a time—apparently, that was how long it took for him to run out of drug money and come crawling back home on his knees, begging for more. Or he’d call us from the drunk tank at the police station to plead for bail money so he wouldn’t have to spend the night.
Whatever the case, my little brother had a self-destruct mechanism set for seven days. No matter what else he got himself into, we could rely on him to end up at our door a week later, just like clockwork.
Until now.
Three days ago marked one week since Kellan left the house. He’d used his usual ruse, promising Mom he was going to a job interview or the Army recruiter or whatever it was this time. Kellan used the guise of bettering himself as an excuse to relapse, and when his cellphone went straight to voicemail that night, we braced ourselves for another week of the Waiting Game.
But now ten days had passed, and still no one could reach Kellan. Not even me. And I had one hell of a bad feeling about this.
“We don’t have any other choice,” I continued, even as my stepfather looked away from me to his newspaper. “Not one that I see, anyway. We’ve already called all the hospitals and police stations. And I doubt you or Mom are going to be able to smoke him out. We need a bigger gun.”
My stepfather snorted. “Fine choice of words.”
I sighed and closed my eyes. It had been seven years since my parents caught me and Slade in the pool house, doing… what we’d done. Dad had sworn me and Mom to secrecy, along with Slade. Kellan was never to hear a word of it, and when Dad kicked Slade out the next day, he used Slade’s going off to Harvard as the perfect excuse. Still, for all his talk of secrecy, he was so obvious with his disdain for his own son that everyone knew how he felt. He thought Slade was an asshole. Dangerous. And maybe he was.
But he was smart, too, and capable. And there were times were he had been incredibly sweet and kind to me. I hated the idea that it was all just an act to screw me, literally and figuratively, just to get back at his father and my mother. When he first left I clung to the belief that those were true parts of him, and that what he’d done at the end had just been him acting out in… whatever. But over the years, after never hearing from him again, I’ve all but lost that hope. Maybe he was the complete jerk that his dad seemed to believe him to be.
One thing is for certain, Kellan had never stopped looking up to him, even when Mom and Dad basically forbade us from even mentioning Slade’s name. I knew my little brother felt abandoned, like he’d lost one of the most positive male influences in his life almost as quickly as it arrived. He’d never been the same after Slade left. That day marked the beginning of Kellan’s downward spiral.
Slade might be the only one of us who could bring Kellan home. Knowing that was one thing. Convincing my parents it was true was another.
My mother sat down at the table with us, two mugs of coffee in her hands. She handed one to my stepfather and said, “Kellan’s life is enough of a mess as it is, Iris. Adding yet another unstable element to the mix… I just can’t see how that would make things any better.”
“Exactly,” Dad said, kissing my mother’s cheek before taking a sip of his coffee. “Kellan needs roots. He needs someone who can set a good example.” His eyes darkened and his brow creased. A shadow of a memory flitted over his face. “Not someone who forces himself on his own family.”
“He didn’t force me,” I mumbled, and not for the first time. This was a regular argument, once upon a time, but over the past few years it became obvious he was never going to change his mind. I saw my stepfather start to open his mouth and quickly added, “And anyway, that’s not the point. The point is Kellan doesn’t know about that. All he knows is that the big brother he looked up to more than anyone else in the world just disappeared from his life one day, and that you wouldn’t even let him ask why. He’s not going to come home if either of you go after him. It’s obvious who he needs.”
My stepfather leaned close to me over the table, lowering his voice and squeezing my mother’s hand so tight I saw his knuckles whiten. “If you think I’m inviting that… person into my home, after what he did to us, to you…”
I furrowed my brow in disbelief. “He’s your son,” I reminded him. “And he’s a doctor. You don’t know what kind of trouble Kellan’s into. Mom found pills in his room just the other week. Who knows how long that’s been going on? He needs treatment, Dad.”
My stepfather sat back and his face fell. He eyed my mother through his periphery. “Is that true?” he asked her. “About the pills?”
I looked at my mom. She averted her gaze. Shit. I didn’t know she hadn’t told him.
When she failed to answer, my stepfather let out a long sigh through his nose. He looked out the window again at the empty drive, at the absence of my brother’s car, at the clouds moving in over the horizon. A storm was coming. Maybe in more ways than
one.
As much as my mother and stepfather didn’t want Slade here, I didn’t want him around even more. It wasn’t because he’d “forced” himself on me—I was a willing and eager, albeit naïve, participant in what happened between us. But being played for a fool, having my heart torn open, being used just to settle some kind of score Slade had with our parents? I never wanted to see his smug, arrogant face ever again. No matter how handsome it was.
Slade was the walking, talking embodiment of everything I’d tried to forget for almost a decade now. I’d done a lot in the past seven years. I’d graduated from college, started my own business as an interior designer—no, screw that, I had a thriving business, and that was even more impressive than just starting one. I was a smart, beautiful, self-possessed young woman who didn’t take shit from anybody, and Slade Jarvis was everything I wanted to leave behind.
But he was exactly what I needed—what our family needed—right now. And I’d do anything for Kellan if it meant keeping him safe. Surely, my parents felt the same way?
“Slade stays out of this,” my stepfather said, and my shoulders slumped. “He’s done enough damage. And if Kellan needs saving, he’ll get it. Just not from my degenerate son.”
I looked to my mother, pleading with my eyes, but she only shook her head. My stepfather’s word was law, one of the many reasons I’d moved out right after high school, and probably one of the many reasons Kellan dropped out. There was no arguing with him once he’d made a decision of this magnitude. It was his way, or the highway.
And we all knew what Kellan thought of that.
I leaned back in my chair, glancing out the window at the coming storm. Great. Once again, it was up to me to make the sacrifices and be the adult. Once again, I would have to put myself on the line, and knowing Slade, I’d be the one who would have to live with the consequences too.
I had to find my stepbrother, the last person on earth I wanted to see. I’d have to do it without our parents knowing, because if they found out, there would be hell to pay. And when I did manage to find Slade, I’d have to hope that he was different. Selfless. Grown up. And hopefully not so hot anymore, either.
Because that part of me that wanted answers, the part of me I’d spent seven years trying to hold at bay? Yeah, that part of me would wake right up with just one quirk of Slade’s full, soft lips. Lips I knew way too well.
Lips that, if I was being honest with myself, I still dreamed about.
Here’s hoping this doesn’t turn into a nightmare, I thought as I mentally prepared myself for what I was about to do. One thing was certain: I was going to need a plane ticket, and balls of fucking steel.
~ TWO ~
Slade
“Mister Velazquez, what seems to be the problem?”
The man lying sprawled on the stretcher in front of me was barely out of his teens, his face still retaining that boyish glow of youth despite how gaunt and withered he looked. Every inch of him was covered in sweat, drenching his clothes and making them cling to his frail body.
“Stomach’s hurtin’ real bad, doc,” he said sluggishly, gripping his abdomen and pulling at the fabric of his dark, long-sleeved shirt. I watched as he labored for breath, his chest rising and falling as though it took everything he had just to inhale.
“Temperature?” I asked, turning my attention to the nurse standing just off to the side. She didn’t meet my gaze, her lips drawing into a thin line before she even bothered to answer. It was hard to keep up with which nurses I’d fucked over the last few years, and clearly this one had had the pleasure—though from the way she looked at me, parting clearly hadn’t been sweet sorrow. “Nurse?”
“Ninety-eight point six, Doctor,” she said, adding just a little bit of a bite onto that last word. I did my best to hide my smirk. Either she had a bone to pick with me, or she was looking for a good old-fashioned hate-fuck. I’d never refuse the latter.
“All normal there,” I murmured as I focused again on the scant few pieces of paper that would pass for Mr. Velazquez’s medical chart until he managed to get admitted upstairs. So far, nothing actually seemed to be wrong with this patient, which was either a good thing, or a very, very bad thing.
ER doctors—and doctors in general—we don’t like surprises. We like routine cases, night after night, with little variation to bring any undue excitement to our wards. There’s a saying in med school: “If you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.” So either Mr. Velasquez here was a horse whose trouble was probably a case of gastroenteritis, or he was a zebra. And I fucking hated zebras.
“Did you ingest anything out of the ordinary, sir?” I asked him, almost dreading the answer. Don’t be a zebra. Don’t be a zebra.
Mr. Velazquez stared at me for a long time, mouth open, but offering no reply. He blinked slowly, as if fighting to stay awake. He scrunched his nose.
“Antonio,” I said, snapping my fingers to break him out of the stupor he’d fallen into. “Did you eat anything different today?”
“Nah,” he said, his voice slow and drowsy, “I ain’t had nothin’ all day.” Then he grinned lazily, one side of his face tilting up way more than the other. “Think I can stop at McDonald’s?”
I frowned, taking a step closer to the bedside, tilting the young man’s head back so that I could get a better look into his eyes. He was disoriented, his breathing labored, and his skin cold to the touch despite his apparently normal temperature. I didn’t like this one bit.
“Nurse, do you have a flashlight?” I asked, looking down into Antonio’s sunken eyes. It was hard to get a fix on his pupils—I needed to know how big they were.
“I have my cell phone, and it’s got a flashlight,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “But the problem isn’t with his eyes, it’s—”
“Hand me your cell phone,” I said, glaring at her as I held out a hand. “I’m not asking.”
The nurse’s eyes widened briefly before she dug into the pockets of her scrubs, pulling out her smart phone and placing it in my open palm. I swiped the home screen and pressed the stylized light-bulb that turned on the built-in flash on the back, which made a serviceable light source.
“This is going to be bright, Mr. Velazquez,” I warned, though I gave him almost no time to prepare. Using my thumb and forefinger, I pushed both his upper and lower eyelids up and away from his face, shining the bright light directly into his eyes.
“Shit,” I whispered, looking down into a pair of unreactive, pin-point pupils. “He’s ODing.”
“What? But we didn’t—” The nurse started to say, but her mouth snapped shut as I turned toward her. I pulled up the sleeve of his shirt, exposing a pock-marked upper arm, the scars of needles past.
“I don’t care what you thought,” I growled. “You’re going to get me two milligrams of naloxone in a five percent dextrose solution, and you’re going to do it in the next thirty seconds.”
She stared at me, jaw still sagging. “Doctor Jarvis, we aren’t approved to administer naloxone yet. We have a wait before we can use—”
“Either you’re going to go get me those meds or I’m going to get them myself,” I shouted, drawing the eyes of everyone in the ER. “One of those options will ensure this man is going to asphyxiate on his vomit in the next few minutes, and it sure as hell isn’t the first one. Now go!”
As the nurse ran out of the room, I grabbed Mr. Velazquez and turned him onto his side, making sure I had plenty of access to the IV port in his forearm. The man was so skinny I was surprised the needle hadn’t gone straight through his arm when they put it in, nor did I understand how he managed to shoot himself up, for that matter.
“I’m not…” the patient mumbled, his protests interrupted by the sounds of his own heaving and retching as he began to vomit. I shook my head in exasperation, keeping the addict turned on his side to prevent any of his stomach contents from going down his windpipe.
“Sure you’re not, Mr. Velazquez,” I said patronizingly, though I knew he wa
sn’t even listening. “All that heroin in your system totally got there by accident.”
A few moments later, the nurse finally returned with a bag of fluids and a syringe in hand. I took both from her, slipping the needle into the rubbery injection port near the bottom of the bag and pressing down on the plunger, watching the subtle eddies whirl inside of the IV bag before I shook it to distribute the medicine more evenly throughout the dextrose solution.
The nurse tore open a sealed bag, unraveling an IV line from the sanitary plastic wrapping and handing one of the ends to me. Working quickly, the two of us connected Mr. Velazquez’s IV port to the bag as I squeezed on the fluids, forcing the mixture down the line and right into his veins.
The effect was just short of immediate as the naloxone worked its way into Mr. Velazquez’s bloodstream. His vomiting halted in a matter of seconds, and soon his breathing was back to normal, as well. I felt confident in putting him onto his back again as he started to groan.
“I think you can handle it from here,” I sighed, looking over at the nurse as she took Mr. Velazquez’s vitals. She barely even turned to me as I made my way out of the room, though I couldn’t help sneaking a glance at her pretty, round backside just before another group of nurses rushed into the room.
Too bad they already missed the show, I thought.
After all that excitement, I took the first chance I could get to duck out of the ER for a minute, gladly handing over what few cases I had to one of the residents. Not too long ago I was the one who had to take crap like that—other doctors shoving their cases onto me and calling it a “learning experience.”
It feels good not to get stepped on, I thought, chuckling as I stopped at the elevators to head down to the cafeteria. Saving lives was hungry work, especially when you were as good at it as I was.
“Hey there, stud,” came a sultry purr from near to my ear. That husky voice was accompanied by the sensation of nails gently raking down my back. “Last night was fun.”
Kellan Page 17