by Roni Loren
Shaw shook his head and dug a rubber band out of his pocket to pull his hair back. He didn’t have any chalk for his hands or ring grips, and cargo shorts weren’t ideal for flexibility, but he was just testing the things out, not doing a routine. He did a few quick shoulder and back stretches to make sure he was loose enough before reaching up. Rivers had set the rings lower than Olympic height so Shaw was able to jump up and grab them without assistance.
The rings felt achingly familiar in his hands as he hung from them, the scattered thoughts of the morning settling into singular focus as he adjusted his grip and made sure the apparatus wasn’t going to fall apart on him. Once he felt confident the rings would support him, he lifted his weight, his arms working to keep the rings as still as possible, and raised himself up until his hips were even with the rings and his arms were taut. After a few seconds, he exhaled and spread his arms out to form a T with his body, an Iron Cross.
The strength and focus required to keep his body and the rings steady in that pose were like the rush of a drug, every part of him working toward the same goal. Shaw’s muscles quivered with the effort, and he lifted himself again, tilting forward and swinging his legs behind and upward to invert the cross. He glued his gaze to a spot on the floor and tried to hold the upside-down position for as many seconds as his body would allow him. One, two, three…
“Damn,” Rivers said. “It kills me a little that we can’t market you. Former Olympic-level gymnast will personally train you on feats of strength! A photo of this alone would sell a shit ton of memberships. Hell, I could probably fill up our rosters with all my single friends…gay or straight. We could oil you up and let them pay to ogle.”
That made Shaw choke on a laugh, and it broke his concentration. His muscles gave up the good fight, and he swung down out of the inversion. He dropped to his feet on the mat beneath with a muted thump, out of breath, his muscles burning from the effort. “Stop flirting, McGowan.”
Rivers scoffed and tossed his shirt back at him. “As if you’d be so lucky. You’re not my type.”
Shaw caught the T-shirt and tugged it back on with a grin, not insulted in the least. “Too straight, huh?”
“Straight?” Rivers crossed his arms and lifted a brow. “Oh, you actually still have an orientation? I thought yours was monk.”
Shaw’s mouth flattened. “The rings work. We won’t kill anyone.”
He tried to move past his friend, but Rivers put a hand on his arm, halting him. “Come on, don’t be like that. I’m not trying to be an asshole.”
“You’re not doing a very good job of it.”
Rivers didn’t relent. “I’m just trying to wake you up a little. You’ve been here for months, and I have yet to see you do anything but go to your apartment and back here. Every time I ask you to come out with me and my friends, you have an excuse.”
Shaw had, in fact, gone to a bar last night, but Rivers wouldn’t count the Tipsy Hound even if Shaw told him. He’d gone in because he really wanted a drink, and the place was dark with loud music. Not a place to socialize. But somehow he’d ended up outside with a pretty woman, treading into way-too-dangerous waters.
The liquor had loosened his good sense, and he’d found himself drawn to the woman who’d sung her guts out and then run offstage, and not drawn to her for the obvious reasons. The woman was a knockout with her cloud of dark curls, black-rimmed glasses, and a pink blouse that had exposed just a hint of smooth brown skin at the open collar. She was all curves and quirky sophistication. Rivers would say nerdy hot. But Shaw didn’t think hot needed any kind of qualifier.
Despite all that, the thing that had drawn him to her was the way she’d sung onstage. She hadn’t opened her eyes the whole time, but once she’d gotten started, it was as if she’d opened a vein and let it bleed onto the floor in front of them. Her voice hadn’t been classically pretty. It’d been powerful and raw, with sandpaper rubbing the high notes. He’d felt each note of her song like she’d shoved the music directly into his chest, sending a shot of adrenaline straight into his system. He’d been sweating a little by the end. So when she’d stumbled by him, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out. He’d wanted to help her, but more than that, he wanted to know why she was running.
But he should’ve minded his own business. In those brief moments outside the bar, she’d nudged a part of him he’d thought he’d long ago cut the wires to—the part that said he should smile at her, flirt, and get her story. The part that said he could want the normal things a man could want.
What a fucking lie that was.
“I don’t do clubs,” he said to Rivers, shutting down the memory of last night, of him walking away from her like a coward who couldn’t even manage to tell her good night.
“Fine, go to a movie then. A bar. Whatever. You don’t need to do the monk thing anymore. I get why you shut yourself off from the social scene, but this is a big town. You have a new name. You don’t look like the guy from those old news stories anymore. Go out, have fun, take a roll in someone’s bed.”
“Riv,” Shaw warned.
His friend raised his palms. “All I’m saying is don’t rule out a simple hookup. It’s unhealthy not to get laid at least every now and then.” He gave Shaw an up-and-down look. “I don’t know if it’s wise to test out that use-it-or-lose-it theory, you know? What if you actually can lose it?”
Shaw’s fingers curled into his palms. “I’m going to make some calls to price out adding another AC unit.”
“Shaw.”
Shaw ignored him and shouldered past him. Use it or lose it. Right. Like his damn dick was going to fall off if he didn’t have sex. Ridiculous.
The thought sent a shudder through him anyway. He tried to shake off his irritation as he made his way to the office. Rivers meant well. The guy thought he was helping, but these types of discussions were off the table. Rivers didn’t get it.
Shaw had tried that road and had ended up getting serious with someone. The one woman he’d dated after the Long Acre shooting had acted as his confidant, had gotten him to open up about all the shit he was going through. Then, when things had gone bad between them, Shaw had made a dumb mistake, physically attacking a reporter who’d been goading him about the relationship. Shaw had gotten arrested, and the woman had gone to the press to confirm everyone’s worst assumptions.
An unnamed source close to the shooter’s brother, former Olympic hopeful Shaw Miller, says he’s drinking too much, angry, and a loner. Studies show that mental health issues run in families. Joseph Miller, the mastermind behind the Long Acre shooting, was reportedly suffering from…
After reading the stories, Shaw had thrown his laptop against the wall and broken it into pieces. He hadn’t read a news story about himself or touched another woman since.
Sex was amazing. He missed it at a level so primal, he couldn’t describe it. But no matter how good it could be, it wasn’t worth risking feeling that exposed again, that…violated.
Rivers didn’t get it. He couldn’t.
No one could know how it felt to be stripped down and no longer seen as an actual person but only as a news headline, a sensational sound bite to be sold and collectively hated. To be shamed. A name to be thrown around the dinner table and judged.
Mass murderer’s brother.
Fallen Olympic hopeful.
Shaw Miller was now just a name on endless web pages. A cautionary tale. A common enemy.
He didn’t get to meet a pretty woman at a bar and ask her out. He didn’t get to want the things normal people wanted. That life had been stolen the day his brother had ended all those others.
Maybe he should feel angrier about that loss.
He would.
If he didn’t know that he deserved to pay every bit of that steep price.
Chapter
Four
Taryn used her key to get into h
er parents’ house early Saturday evening, repeating her motions from the night before when she’d stopped by and found both her parents asleep in the living room. Her father had awoken at the noise of her heels on the wood floors and had told her to leave her mother be, that he’d take care of getting her to bed, and to stop by for dinner tomorrow instead to visit.
Like usual, he hadn’t asked if Taryn had other plans. Like usual, she hadn’t had any plans besides work. She’d spent the day compiling her stats and polishing a presentation. Now she was starved and hoping it would be a low-key evening with her parents.
She made her way into the kitchen, following the scent of Cajun spices. “Smells like dinner.”
“Hey, cher, I didn’t hear you come in.” Her father was at his spot in front of the mini deep fryer, his fingertips covered in batter and his thinning blond hair held back from his face with his cooking bandanna. “You’re early. Got all your work squared away?”
She smiled at her father’s familiar endearment. Though he’d lived in Texas for decades now, he’d never quite lost his Cajun accent from the small town in South Louisiana where he’d grown up. His cher came out like sha, and it sounded like home to her ear. She set her purse down and gave her father a hug as he lifted his messy hands out to his sides so as not to batter her like the fish. “I’m almost done, but my brain went on strike, demanding I feed it.”
“Ah, that happens,” he said, stepping back from the hug. “It just needs a heaping plate of fried catfish. Lucky for you, that’s just what we got on the menu.”
Taryn stepped over to the counter where the little fryer was bubbling away and took a whiff. “Awesome. Momma’s not going to fuss at you for making the kitchen smell like fish?”
Her father’s smile faltered a little bit. “I’m not sure she’s going to join us for dinner tonight. She’s had a rough day and said she’d probably go to bed early.”
Taryn’s skin prickled, the words setting off her sensors. How many times had she heard him say something to that effect over the years? Her military father could make everything sound small and manageable. A panic attack was bad nerves. Depression was feeling a little blue. Wars were skirmishes or conflicts. He thought if a person didn’t make a big deal out of things, they wouldn’t be. “A rough day? How rough?”
He rinsed his hands and then used tongs to poke at the fish. “It was about that film you were in last year.”
“What about it?” Taryn sat at the table, the muscles in her neck tightening. Last year, she, her friends, and some of the other survivors of the shooting had taken part in a documentary, one that would raise money for charity. It had been one of the hardest things Taryn had ever done, but she didn’t regret it because it’d brought her friends Liv, Kincaid, and Rebecca back into her life. But she had no idea what that had to do with her mother.
Her dad looked back over his shoulder, deep lines in his suntanned forehead. “Your mom was interviewed for it, too.”
“What?” Taryn’s fists curled. “Daddy, you know she’s not in a place to do that kind of thing. There are so many triggers…”
“She didn’t want me to tell you because she knew you’d say that, but she told me she thought it would help with closure,” he explained. “I went with her, and she actually did pretty well. She didn’t want to be on camera, but she shared our story. She cried, of course. Who wouldn’t?”
Taryn hadn’t. She’d had to do that interview with steel running through her veins. She’d seen what letting all that grief and emotion in could do to a person. She saw it take down her previously tough, brilliant mother and eat away at her like a cancer. But Taryn’s interview had also been brief since she’d told them she had few memories from that night. “But what does that have to do with today? That stopped filming a long time ago.”
He turned back to the fryer and pulled out a piece of golden fried fish bubbling with oil to lay it on a paper-towel-lined dish. “They sent her an early copy today. She watched some of it before I got home. I found her in Nia’s room.”
“Oh no. Was she—”
He turned to her. “No, it was okay. She was sitting with one of Nia’s sweaters in her hands. She fussed at me for checking on her. Told me she has the right to a bad day.”
Relief moved through her. “That’s good. If she got annoyed with you.”
“Right.”
If her mom had gotten mad, that meant she was probably all right. The bad times were when her anxiety and grief got so intense that the past and present blurred for her, flooding her with all the horrible memories or worse, putting her in a state of reality-altering denial. In the year after the shooting, her mom would go in Nia’s room and fix it up like her little sister would be coming home later.
She hadn’t had one of those episodes in a long time. Her medications seemed to be working, but thoughts of those episodes still sent dread cramping Taryn’s stomach. She could deal with her mother’s extreme protectiveness and her anxiety. But she’d been terrified seeing her strong, smart mother disappear into a confused mess.
Before the shooting, her mom had been the breadwinner of the family, a journalism professor and writer. She’d spent her early years before kids traveling the world as a reporter. That was how she’d met Taryn’s father. He’d been deployed to a location she was covering. She’d seen war-torn countries and countless tragedies and had faced down intimidating and difficult people without faltering. But losing her youngest daughter had been her unraveling. The once never-let-them-see-you-sweat journalist had dissolved into grief, losing more pieces of herself with each passing day.
Taryn had watched it all like a slow-motion horror movie. Her sister gone. Her friends killed. Her family falling apart around her. Taryn had been dissolving, too, but when she’d gotten hysterical at Nia’s funeral, her father had hugged her and pulled her aside. She’d never seen her dad look so old and desperate. You have to be strong, cher. Your mom needs you. I need you. You’re all we have now. We can’t lose you, too. We need to keep each other together.
At the time, she hadn’t known all he’d seen with her mother in those first few days after the shooting, but she’d felt his terror. In that moment, a new chilling fear had filled her, one that had changed her from little girl to woman in an instant. Her daddy, the strong military man who had told her all her life that he would protect her, was lost and terrified. He couldn’t help her. He couldn’t protect her from any of this. They were all hanging on the edge of the cliff, and he’d asked her to find some rope.
Her father handed her a plate. “Why don’t you bring her some dinner? I’m sure seeing you would cheer her up.”
“Sure.” Taryn took the plate of fish, hearing the message loud and clear. Go check on her. I’m worried. She grabbed a can of soda from the fridge and headed toward the stairs. When she turned the corner, the light from Nia’s room shone on the polished wood floor of the hallway.
Taryn took a deep breath, steeling herself for whatever awaited, and headed to the room, passing all the family photos that lined the walls—photos of a Before family that didn’t exist anymore. She peeked inside. Even though she’d seen the room a thousand times, the sight of the perfectly preserved museum that was her sister’s teenage bedroom still hit Taryn like a swift kick to the chest. Photos pinned haphazardly to a bulletin board along with flyers advertising the different theater productions Nia had been in. Mr. Jingle Pants, the stuffed gingerbread man her sister had slept with since she was four, was propped against the bright-purple throw pillows on the bed. And her prized collection of makeup was organized neatly on her vanity table, hot-pink polish dried into the sides of the bottle, last used on prom night.
Taryn’s throat felt swollen shut. She swallowed hard and glanced to the left where she’d found what she’d seen so many times before—her mother sitting in a chair and looking out the window. Her hands were folded in her lap, and there was a distant look on her face,
her brown skin smooth and lax.
“Hey, Momma,” Taryn said quietly, hoping not to startle her.
Her mother turned her head and smiled at Taryn. “Hey, baby. Sorry I missed you last night. I guess I was more tired than I thought.”
Relief loosened some of Taryn’s muscles. Her mother looked sad, but clear-eyed and calm. “No problem. I’m glad you got some rest.” She held up the plate. “Daddy said you weren’t up to having dinner, but I thought you might want some to nibble on.”
Her mom tsked. “I appreciate that, honey, but don’t bring that in here. The whole place will smell like fish. Nia hates fish. Leave it on the table out there, and I’ll get some in a little while.”
Taryn’s stomach dropped. “Hated, Momma, not hates.”
Her mother’s lips pressed together, a sharpness coming into her gaze. “I’m sure she still hates it in heaven, too, and wouldn’t appreciate us stinking up her room with it.”
“Right,” Taryn said and set the food and soda on the table in the hallway before stepping inside the bedroom. “So how are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” her mom said, tone clipped. “Did your father send you up here to check on me? I told him not to worry. It’s just been a tough day.”
Taryn sat on the edge of the bed, almost afraid to put her weight on it and disturb anything. Her mother liked everything in the room to be kept just right. “Yes, I’m sure Daddy sent me up here to check on you, but I also just wanted to see you. He told me you saw the documentary.”
Her mom smoothed a hand along the arm of the rocking chair and nodded. “They did a good job with it.” She glanced at Taryn. “You did well, too.”
Taryn looked down at her lap. “Thanks. I don’t think I’ll ever watch it. You probably shouldn’t have either. It’s not good for you to—”
“Can you believe they interviewed that Miller woman?” her mother asked, vitriol in her voice. “How dare she even set foot on those grounds again? What her son did…” Her mother made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “And you should’ve heard the things she said. Acting like she had nothing to do with how her kid turned out. Like it was just a bad roll of the dice.”