In the Zone (Portland Storm 5)

by Catherine Gayle

  I shook my head, unable to stop myself from smiling at him.

  Once we got up to my apartment, I took off my coat and hung it in the hall closet. I turned around for his and caught him appreciatively eyeing my backside.

  “Knock that off,” I warned him, reaching for his coat. Damn if I didn’t nearly laugh when I said it, though. He wouldn’t take me seriously if I couldn’t keep a straight face.

  He handed it over to me and held his hands up in surrender. “No touching, like I promised, but I can’t help but enjoy the view. Please don’t ask me not to look because that’ll just about kill me. Have I ever told you how amazing your ass is?”

  My breath caught. He was bound and determined to flirt with me, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t prevent myself from reacting in kind. I closed my eyes for a moment while I was hanging his coat next to mine, trying to compose myself with the knowledge that even as I did so, he was staring at my butt.

  “You haven’t,” I finally managed to say, jumping slightly when something brushed against my leg, until I realized that it was only BC coming to greet me. “But that’s not what we’re going to talk about right now.”

  “Damn. Too bad.” Keith backed out of the way as I moved past him into the kitchen, BC racing me the whole way.

  “Something to drink?” I asked.

  “Whatever you’re having.”

  I grabbed two bottles of water, handing one to him as I made my way into the living room. BC came running after me again when I headed toward the couch, leaping up onto my lap when I’d only been sitting for about 0.024 seconds. I would never figure out how he managed to time that move, but he always executed it perfectly. I set my water bottle down on the coffee table so I could use both hands to rub on him. I’d been gone a lot lately, and both my boys missed me. I’d have to make it up to Richie later tonight, after Keith left. There was no chance he would come out of his hiding spot until then.

  Keith sat next to me, maintaining a safe distance and tossing the package on the coffee table. He looked at me funny, one eyebrow cocked in question, and then he sniffed a couple of times and laughed. “It smells like pickles in here.”

  I sniffed, too. Crap. Sure enough, there was a definite vinegar-and-dill scent on the air. BC must have actually knocked some of the pickle juice out of the jar without me realizing it the other night. I wouldn’t have noticed it then since I’d had pickle juice all over my hands and filling my mouth. “So it does,” I murmured.

  “You have a thing for pickles?”

  “Sometimes,” I said evasively. He didn’t need to know why I’d been eating them. Especially since he already seemed to think I ate like a bird.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Keith reached over, and for the briefest moment I thought he was going to touch me. For an even briefer moment, I thought I might let him. It turned out that he only intended to scratch BC’s ears, which my cat loved, of course. His purr motor kicked into high gear, and he closed his eyes in blissful surrender. BC was an absolute wanton for human attention.

  Almost as wanton as I was for Keith’s attention. Yet again, I needed to redirect my thoughts, and fast, or I was liable to do something I would regret—like tossing my cat to the floor and sliding closer to Keith so that he would pet me until my purr motor was in overdrive.

  He pointed toward the heavy, gray plastic package on my coffee table. “I, uh…I bought some things for you. Sexy things,” he clarified, and I felt heat race to my face again. “I ordered it before you said we needed to step back, but I thought you should still have them. Even if you never let me see you in them.”

  Sexy things. Things I had no business wearing. Ever. My thoughts immediately went back to that little lacy bra he’d pointed out when I’d been ordering online. Based on the size of the package, though, there had to be a lot more than just that. A few scraps of lace didn’t take up that much space.

  I shook my head. “Why did you order this for me?”

  “Because you deserve to wear something that makes you feel as beautiful as you are.” He hadn’t hesitated, not even for a fraction of a second. “That’s where we started out, you know. That first night. I wanted to help you find your confidence again, to believe in yourself. I still want that.”

  “I do believe in myself.” In some ways, at least.

  “Someday, I want you to believe in yourself as much as I believe in you.”

  I hadn’t brought him up here to talk about me. We’d already spent more than enough time on my body issues and all of that. Tonight, I wanted to see if I could get him to open up to me, even if it was only a small amount.

  “So why don’t you see your family much?” I asked. I was probably pushing my luck in asking him that, but I had to try. I wanted to understand him. I wanted us to have a future, to be able to share not only our bodies but everything about ourselves.

  He kept scratching BC’s ears, chewing his answer over—almost literally. He was grinding his teeth, and his forehead was drawn together above his nose. “It’s a long story,” he finally said. He hadn’t said it was a story he wouldn’t tell me, though.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You might not want to see me at all anymore—not even as friends—if I tell you.”

  I highly doubted that, but he seemed entirely sincere in his belief. “If it was that bad, Shane wouldn’t be in Portland right now.”

  “It is that bad. I still don’t know why he came to visit, but it’s even worse than that bad.”

  “Try me.” I let my fingers move closer to his, almost close enough to touch him while we both scratched BC’s head.

  “I’ve never—” He cut himself off, shaking his head. “I’ve never talked to anyone about it. I don’t know how to start. And I don’t think I can take it if I tell you and then you do loathe me, like I know you will. I really care for you, Brie, and right now you’re the one person in my life that makes me feel like I’m not alone.”

  Whatever it was, the pain of it was clearly ripping him to shreds on the inside. His eyes were dark and hollow, every muscle in his body ready to jerk into motion so he could run. I’d seen the fight-or-flight response enough in Richie to recognize it in this man before me. I never would have thought that Keith Burns was the sort to run from a problem; he seemed far more likely to confront things head-on. But right now, he looked ready to dart away and find himself a hiding spot just like my cat always did when he was afraid.

  And that, more than anything before now, made my heart ache for this man. I wanted to comfort him. To help him face his fears instead of diving for cover.

  I wanted him to let me.

  “You’re not alone,” I said. Against my better judgment, I put my hand over his, leaving BC to his own devices. “You’re not. I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere. You have to talk to someone about it, whatever it may be, so why not me?”

  WHY NOT BRIE? Because revealing what an ass I had been to my brother would be all it took to run her off as fast as lightning streaking across the sky. Brie was a dancer, for God’s sake, and everything I’d done and said to Garrett, all the things that had led to him taking his life, had been because he was a fucking dancer, and like the other kids I’d told him exactly how soft a choice that had been, even though I hadn’t really believed any of the things I’d said to him. The way we’d bullied him had been brutal. There was no explaining that away. No excusing it. She’d known him, and she was still pursuing the same path he had chosen, and he was dead because of me.

  She would despise me if she knew the truth. She might think I believed the same things about her that I’d said to him, even though watching Brie dance was as good as breathing to me. She came to life when she was dancing in a way that I rarely saw in her. Hell, I rarely saw that kind of expressiveness in anyone. There was a light in her eyes when she was dancing that didn’t appear at any other time, at least as far as I could tell. If I revealed everything, she might not give me a chance to explain, not that there was any explanation.


  But neither would she let me be with her—at least not in the way I wanted—if I continued to hide the truth or even attempted to hide it. I was stuck in a lose-lose situation. There wasn’t a reasonable way out of the mess I’d created, just like there wasn’t any way to undo the past.

  She slid the pad of her thumb over the back of my hand in a soothing manner, and BC butted his head up against our joined hands. She gave him a little nudge on the backside. “Go sit with Keith, buddy. He needs you more than I do right now.” As though he had understood what she’d said, the cat got up from her lap and walked a few steps, stopping when he’d settled himself on mine.

  With the hand Brie wasn’t holding, I stroked his back, and he arched up and purred, putting his face right up next to mine. He settled with his body stretched out all along my chest, almost in a hug. His long whiskers tickled my cheek. I didn’t realize that I needed a fucking hug until this damn cat gave me one. It was almost enough to make me crack, to break down everything I’d built around me to keep myself safe.

  What a fucking joke that idea was. Why should I be kept safe? Where was the wall to keep Garrett safe when he’d needed it? It wasn’t anywhere because I’d bashed it in when, as his older brother, I should have been his wall. I should have been the one to tell all those other guys to go fuck themselves, that if they had a problem with my brother or with dancing, then they could take it up with me. I should have rearranged their faces for daring to be such fucking idiots. That was what a good brother would have done. But me? I’d joined in so they wouldn’t say I was gay, too, and pick on me the way we all picked on him. Because I was a chickenshit. Because I didn’t have the balls to stand up and do what was right. I was trying to do the right thing now, but I knew it was too little, too late.

  In the here and now, the cat was still purring. He rubbed his cheek on mine, and he didn’t stop hugging me, and eventually I started to talk.

  “I haven’t seen my family much since Garrett—” I stopped as suddenly as I’d started, nearly choking on the words. Even that little bit was almost too much. The words died in my throat, and I felt sick to my stomach, as though saying one more word would force all the life left in me up my throat and out through my mouth to wither away into nothingness. That might be preferable, except for the fact that the truth wouldn’t disappear—only what goodness remained. If I said the words, they would probably reverberate in my mind forever, never letting me go, and I would be stuck being nothing more than a miserable excuse for a brother and human being for the rest of my life.

  Of course, that wouldn’t be any different than how things were already. I couldn’t let any of it go. Garrett couldn’t come back, he couldn’t live the life he’d been meant to live, so I didn’t deserve to be free.

  Maybe that was what was really behind me faltering in my attempt to tell Brie—the idea that if I spoke it aloud, I’d be letting myself off the hook to an extent, and I knew enough to know I would never be worthy of whatever small relief it might provide.

  “Since Garrett died?” she said softly. Somehow she’d moved closer to me, so close that the heat of her thigh was warming mine.

  I swallowed hard and cleared my throat. That didn’t seem to help much. “Right,” I said, and my voice cracked again. I sounded like a fucking bullfrog, not like a grown-ass man. Like I was going to start crying. I hadn’t cried since I’d found Garrett hanging from a belt in my parents’ garage. Not when I told my parents and Shane and the police and Monica what had happened. Not at his funeral. Not in the time afterward, when Shane and my parents cut me out of their lives. Not when Gran revealed that Shane was gay and I understood the true extent of why my family wanted nothing to do with me.

  She nodded, as though to encourage me to go on, and there was so much goddamn compassion in her eyes, and her cat rubbed his cheek on my jaw again, and I couldn’t take it. I didn’t deserve to be treated with that much fucking kindness. I tried to move the cat off my lap, but he didn’t get the memo; he climbed straight back into position, this time gently digging his claws into the fabric of my shirt. He had no intention of leaving.

  “It’s my fault.” Even as the words left my lips, I felt a hot tear streak down my cheek.

  “That you haven’t seen them?”

  I nodded. “More than that. It’s my fault he died.”

  “I…” Light as a butterfly, her fingers fluttered over my thigh and settled in place near my knee. “I thought he committed suicide.”

  “He did. Because of me.” My anger at myself taking over, I brushed the fucking tears away with the back of my fist, nearly punching myself in the eye as I did it. “He never would have done it if I hadn’t—” If I hadn’t, what? Treated him like a piece of shit? Acted as if I wanted nothing to do with him, was disgusted by him? I was the one who was disgusting.

  The more I revealed to Brie, the more I hated myself. Every second that passed increased the roiling in my gut, the heavy sinking sensation pressing down on my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I was covered in sweat, an even sheen covering every inch of my skin and bubbling up, spreading, drowning me. Drowning would be too easy.

  “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” she said.

  “It was.” I couldn’t sit here and do this any longer. I couldn’t let her comfort me. There was no one less deserving of her comfort than me.

  Brie reached to take my hand, and I jerked it away from her, nearly leaping to my feet in the same move. BC jumped out of my arms and flew halfway across the living room, hissing at me because of the sudden movement.

  I was halfway to the door when she said, “Don’t run from this.” She placed a hand on my elbow, her too-gentle touch stopping my progress. I hadn’t even recognized the fact that I was trying to run from it—I never ran from my problems—but Brie knew. She slid her hand down to mine, taking it between both of hers. “You’ve been insisting on helping me to see myself the way you see me, and I’m still not sure I can do that, but I’m trying. But you can’t keep running away from this. From your past. You have to face your demons, Keith.”

  What did she mean, I couldn’t keep running away from it? “I don’t make a habit of running from my life.”

  “Don’t you?” She inched around in front of me, blocking my path to the door. “Why haven’t you seen your family, then?”

  “Because they blame me. And they’re right.”

  “They don’t blame you. Shane wouldn’t have come here to spend the holidays with you if he blamed you. He wouldn’t have spent the whole night glued to my side, trying to figure out if I’m good enough for you if he blamed you.”

  “He was trying to figure out if he could somehow use you against me,” I argued.

  “No, he wasn’t,” she insisted. “He loves you.”

  “He might have…once.” I took another step toward the exit, and Brie backed up until she was pressed against her door, making sure I’d have to physically move her in order to leave. Her dual grip on my hand was firm, insistent.

  “So what did you do, then? What was so awful that the people who once loved you supposedly stopped overnight?”

  “It wasn’t overnight. It was years in the making.” Christ. Years. How long had I tortured my brother? Four years? Five? Once I’d left for college to pursue my hockey career and all of my so-called friends had gone off to do whatever they’d wanted, I’d stopped, but the damage had all been done by that point.

  After that, I hadn’t really seen him much. He was busy with dance; I was busy with hockey. When we had seen each other, our relationship was strained. How could it not be? Those family gatherings where we were forced together were tense, awkward affairs, and it had gotten to the point where I’d avoided as many of them as possible. I’d only been home for a day following my rookie season with the Storm when I’d found him in the garage, and the plan had been for me to stick around for at least a month. There was no other explanation for what he’d done, why he’d done it. He couldn’t bear the thought of spending that much
time with me. Ending everything had seemed preferable to pretending things were all right between us.

  Brie let go with one of her hands, reaching up to brush some wetness from my cheek.

  “Don’t.” I shook my head, backing away from her. She let me go, but at that point it was too late. Her compassion had opened the flood gates, and all the self-loathing and guilt and pain I’d been wallowing in for years, keeping bottled up inside me, it all came pouring out of me in a torrent.

  I collapsed on the floor, dropping my head to my knees and wishing I could make it stop. But the more I tried to get myself back under control, the more it came out of me.

  I don’t know how long I cried, how long I stayed there on the floor nearly in a fetal position. All I knew was that when it finally started to subside, when I became aware of anything beyond the pain wrenching my heart out through my eye sockets, Brie was on the floor beside me. My head was buried in her neck, and she had both arms wrapped around me. She didn’t say a word. She held me, stroking my head and back as my mother had when I was a little boy.

  If she really understood what an ass I’d been, she would never want to touch me. She would kick me out and never look back. That was what she should do, at least.

  So even though I didn’t know how I’d manage to get the words out, I started to tell her everything, waiting on the moment when her anger and disgust would prevail over her desire to comfort me.

  Even though it took me over an hour to get it out, and she had countless opportunities to separate herself from me, she didn’t. We stayed right where we were, on the floor of her living room, her arms pulling me to her. At one point, I realized that BC had come back and settled himself on my lap again. I stroked his head the same way Brie kept stroking mine. Having something to do with my hands eased the telling, somehow. Later, I realized that another cat had joined us, as well. He was curled up in the bend of Brie’s knees, one eye on me but not running away. I supposed he’d eventually gotten used to the sound of my voice as I’d droned on and on, recounting all the vile things I’d done and said to my brother, the things that had led to his death.