In the Zone (Portland Storm 5)

by Catherine Gayle

  I couldn’t understand why she was still sitting here with me when she should be kicking me out of her apartment.

  “Garrett wasn’t gay?” she asked quietly after I’d fallen silent, other than some sniffles as I attempted to sort myself out.

  “No. Not as far as I know. He always had girlfriends.”

  “But Shane is.”

  I nodded, but then I wondered how she knew. I hadn’t said anything about that. I’d only been confessing everything to do with how I’d treated Garrett.

  I must have tensed in response, because she said, “I caught him and Cole kissing earlier, while you were out seeing everyone else to their cars. On the stairs. I backed away before they noticed me because I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  “He’s never told me, you know,” I said. My throat was raw after all the talking and crying. “Gran let it slip a while back. I can only guess that he was afraid to tell me because…” There wasn’t any need to explain why. Everything I’d told her to that point was reason enough. “I saw them making out tonight, too.”

  “Does he know?”

  “He looked right at me, daring me to react.”

  “But you didn’t, did you? You never meant any of the things you said to Garrett, and you’d never dream of saying anything like that to Shane.”

  “But I still said them.”

  “You did, because you were young and stupid and going along with peer pressure. We all make mistakes, Keith.”

  “But most people don’t make mistakes like this.” Most people don’t kill someone they love through making stupid decisions.

  “Do you know that there were no other factors playing in to Garrett’s decision?” she demanded. I tried to shrug it off, but she kept pressing. “There were rumors always flying around the ballroom community that he’d been suffering from depression for years. A lot of people who are highly competitive are depressed, you know. Especially if they always seem to fall just short of where they want to be. Val and I had been beating him and Monica a lot at that point. They came in second to us more than they came in first.”

  “If he was depressed, it was because of me.”

  “If he was depressed, it was because of a chemical imbalance in his body,” she argued. “Same as my thyroid issues. They screwed up my weight, my vision, my career… Depression is a disease, and external factors are only one part of it. They say it might run in families, you know. Has anyone else in your family ever been depressed?”

  My mother had been taking anti-depressants for as long as I could remember. I didn’t want to let myself off the hook that easily, though. I’d been carrying it all on my shoulders for so long, and now Brie was trying to shoot all that out of the water. Hell, I was probably depressed, too, but that only made sense after what I’d led my brother to do.

  “That doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “It does. And so do you.”

  Somewhere along the way, she’d pulled herself away from me, one hand still resting on my thigh, and now she was leaning back against the wall. She straightened her legs out in front of her, angling her feet in a stretch. We’d been on the floor too long; we weren’t kids anymore. I didn’t know how kids could sit on the floor all the time without aching everywhere. I started to get up, more slowly this time so as not to leave BC disgruntled with the way I dislodged him, and I reached down, offering my hand.

  She took it and allowed me to help her up. When she moved, the other cat ran off to hide in her bedroom again. We watched him go, Brie’s hand still in mine. I wanted to pull her into my arms and bury all the emotional garbage that had been dragged up today in making love to her. I wanted to drown myself in her scent, to lose myself in her touch. I wanted to forget about everything but me and her and right now.

  But then she let go of my hand and moved over to her sofa, and I knew she wasn’t ready to move back to that sort of relationship. She might not hate me for all that I’d done, but we were never going to have the sort of relationship that I wanted.

  I’d just laid it all out on the table, and I had been absolutely right. She didn’t want me.

  IT HAD TAKEN every ounce of restraint and willpower I possessed to keep myself from falling into Keith’s arms last night and taking him to my bed. That was what he’d wanted. It had been plain enough to see that in his eyes. And some part of me—not a small part, either—had been of the same mind.

  It would have been the easy thing to do, of course, but not the right thing. He’d finally started opening up and letting himself feel all the emotions he’d been trying to hide from for so many years, and his primary inclination was to bury it all again by falling back into our old pattern. Don’t wanna talk about it? Why not have sex?

  It would have been the simplest answer, but it would have set us back almost as far as we’d been before he’d finally started to open up about Garrett’s death. So instead, I’d put a little physical distance between us and kept the conversation going. Try as I might, I hadn’t been able to get Keith to admit his brother’s visit could possibly be an olive branch, an effort toward reconciliation. He was still determined to see himself as the bad guy, as someone his family would never be able to forgive, let alone love. I was more of the opinion that the only person in that family who hadn’t forgiven him and who didn’t love him was himself.

  He’d stayed for a long time, until well past the time we both should have gone to bed. He had a game tonight and should have been resting up for it, and I had a long session with Devin today to work on our piece for his show and start on the number for the music video.

  When Keith had finally gotten up and headed for the door, he’d asked me to come to his game tonight. I hadn’t had the heart to say no, and I had at least met some of his teammates’ friends and family at his party yesterday, so I’d agreed.

  Now I was second-guessing myself, wondering if I was sliding too quickly from friend to girlfriend. How was I supposed to make that distinction? When was it okay to step over that line in the sand that I’d drawn? Right now, it still felt too soon…but how was I supposed to recognize the signs that would tell me the timing was right?

  All of that was running through my mind as I rode the bus to the studio for my session with Devin. I sipped from my coffee cup and stared out the windows, watching Portland pass me by and worrying about what my next step with Keith ought to be.

  When I stepped through the door to Rose City, it was to find Devin leaning one shoulder casually against the doorframe to the office and flirting outrageously with Tanya. Based on the playful look in her eye, she was giving it back to him in kind. I had no intention of getting in the middle of all that.

  “Morning,” I said briefly, brushing past them and heading straight for the changing room. At least that way they’d know I was here so Devin could extricate himself whenever he was ready and we could get to work.

  I pulled on an oversized T-shirt and a long skirt made from a polyester-and-spandex blend, admiring the way the shirt hung on me now that I had the new bras. That only made me think of that package Keith had brought over to my place last night, though, and then my cheeks flushed.

  I’d taken a look through it after he’d left. There’d been a lot of silky, lacy things—teddies, matching bra and panty sets, baby-doll nighties, even a corset and garter—and it had been all I could do to keep myself from trying them on then and there. They were my size, but that didn’t mean someone my size ought to wear them. I’d shoved it all back into the packaging and left it on the coffee table, wishing I could forget about them. That didn’t seem very likely to happen at the moment, when simply looking at myself while wearing a properly fitted bra made me think of it all…and of the man who’d bought it for me.

  The only way I was going to get all that off my mind right now was to focus on something else—my work. I left the changing room and headed to the studio. I’d barely gotten through the doors when I stopped short. Devin wasn’t in there yet, but the room wasn’t empty. Far from it. The six membe
rs of The End of All Things were lounging along one wall, staring at me.

  My jaw must have been on the floor because Emery winked at me.

  “I guess Devin didn’t fill you in on the change of plans, huh?” he said. “We wanted to be with the two of you when you first heard the track so we could all talk about ideas before you got to work.”

  I forced my mouth closed, nodding, and attempted to prevent my eyes from bulging in shock at the band’s presence. “Great idea.”

  Devin came in, ready to work, with a look in his eye that left no doubt he’d just stolen a kiss or more from Tanya before joining us. He grinned at me. “All set?”

  I was as ready as I’d ever be, though that wasn’t saying much. I nodded and set my mind to the task at hand.

  COLESY HURRIED AFTER me when I left morning skate, rushing through the parking garage. “Hey! Burnzie,” he called out. “Wait up.”

  I slowed down so he could catch up to me.

  “I, uh…” He dragged a hand through his hair, looking as sheepish as I’d ever seen him. He looked all around us, as though making sure no one else would hear, but we kept walking toward my car.

  “I’m not going to say anything,” I assured him.

  There wasn’t a doubt in my mind what this was about. If he hadn’t seen me when I’d caught him and Shane making out on the stairs last night, he’d sure as hell seen me when I got home from Brie’s house and found the two of them half dressed in my kitchen. They’d come down for snacks after the first round—at least that was how it seemed. I’d grabbed a bottle of water and headed upstairs to my room without saying a thing to either of them. There were too many other things on my fucking mind at that moment to worry about what Colesy thought about me knowing he was gay. He’d left before I got up this morning.

  He’d been tense all through morning skate, screwing things up that he wouldn’t usually otherwise. I’d known exactly what was behind it, but that wasn’t something I could talk to him about with all the other guys hanging around and listening in. If he brought it up, that was one thing. I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—be the one to do that, though.

  “I figured it out not long after the season started and I haven’t outed you yet. I’m not going to change that now.”

  Colesy let out an audible breath of relief.

  Everything that had happened between him and my brother last night had only weighed on my mind the whole night when I should have been sleeping, as much as everything I’d told Brie about my relationship with Garrett. Shane might be here to find some way to get back at me, but he wouldn’t do something to hurt anyone else in the process. If he’d come here with the intention of finding some way to hurt me, what was he doing with Colesy? It didn’t line up in my head, making Brie’s assertion—that Shane wanted to make things right between the two of us—seem more plausible. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it, though, no matter how much sense it made.

  I didn’t know if he had any intention of forming a real relationship with my teammate or if it was just a vacation fling. Either way, my previous assumption that he was here to cause me trouble was proving pretty flimsy.

  Colesy set his jaw, as if he was chewing something over. “You already knew?”

  “Yeah, I did. But I doubt the rest of the boys know. You keep it under wraps pretty well.”

  He nodded, but he looked about as far from being convinced of that as we were from taking a swim on the surface of the sun.

  “Even if they do know,” I said, “who gives a fuck? That shit doesn’t matter, and if it does matter to someone, they can take it up with me.”

  He stopped cold then, and I turned to face him.

  “You don’t have to— I mean, I don’t expect—”

  “You’re a part of this team,” I cut in. “You’re one of us. Nothing else is important, and anyone who tries to make an issue out of it is going to have to answer to me. That’s all there is to it, Colesy. I don’t give a damn if you’re screwing my brother or if you dress in drag or if you’ve slept with half the gay men in Oregon or if you dye your skin pink. What matters is you’re my teammate and my friend. Now come on. Let’s go have lunch with the rest of the boys.”

  “Yeah,” he said, surprise coloring the word as it slipped out. But then he caught up with me again and climbed into the passenger seat of my car, and we went to meet the team at Amani’s.

  When I got home that afternoon, Shane was sitting in the living room with his laptop open, a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. All three of my dogs were surrounding him, Dexter and Shadow hanging out by his feet on the floor and Pepper curled up on the sofa by his hip, looking longingly at his lap. She wasn’t a fan of the laptop being where she wanted to be, and she had never been terribly picky about whose lap it was she wanted to be on. Never mind the fact that she was too damn big to be a lapdog whether someone had a computer sitting there or not.

  Shane looked up when I came in, shutting the lid of his computer. “Good practice?”

  I shrugged. “Good enough.” Actually, it had been awful. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep again, and I couldn’t get my mind off everything that Brie and I had talked about until well past midnight. Bergy had been all over me all morning, breathing down my neck as though that would clear my head.

  The only good thing about the practice was that it was the first time Nicky had gotten back on the ice with us in a while. He wouldn’t be playing tonight—the doctors still hadn’t cleared him for that—but at least he was starting to participate again.

  I collapsed back on the opposite end of the sofa, and Pepper took that as her cue to claim my open lap before it was otherwise occupied. I rubbed her head absentmindedly and scratched her ears, trying to ignore the similarities between how she was all over me and how Brie’s cat had been last night.

  “Did you have lunch?” I asked since I couldn’t come up with anything better to say. Shane and I hadn’t talked in the easy way brothers did in so long I didn’t think either one of us remembered how it was done. There wasn’t a fucking easy thing about this.

  “Leftovers from last night.”

  At least there’d been plenty of that, even though it was more snack food than anything I’d consider a meal. I nodded, letting out some sort of grunt.

  We sat in silence again, each of us looking at the other every now and then. At least he was as uncomfortable as I was. I’d prefer it if we were at ease with each other, but I didn’t know if that would ever be a possibility again.

  “You give Cole a hard time today?” he asked out of the blue.

  Or maybe it wasn’t out of the blue. Of course he would expect me to do that.

  “No,” I replied cautiously, looking down at Pepper’s blissful expression as I gave her love. It was safer to look at her because I knew how she would react. I didn’t have the first clue where my brother wanted this conversation to go, but I had no intention of saying the wrong thing. I wanted every word out of my mouth to be right. There were enough things in this life that I regretted already, and I damn well wasn’t going to add to the list today.

  “I told him his secret’s safe with me as long as he wants it to be a secret. And I told him that if and when the time comes that he doesn’t want it to be a secret any longer, he could count on me to stand next to him.” Not behind him. Beside him, or maybe even in front of him if it came to that.

  The same as I would do for Shane. The same as I should have done for Garrett.

  I finally got the balls to look over at him. He was studying me, much as he’d done last night when I’d come upon him and Colesy. Staring hard. Trying to figure me out as much as I was trying to figure him out.

  “You gonna give me a hard time today?” he asked.

  Those same fucking tears from last night choked me. I swallowed before I spoke, but my voice still sounded strangled when I said, “No.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Gran let it slip a few years back. She thought I knew,” I added. “She wo
uldn’t have said anything if she knew I was supposed to be in the dark.”

  “I didn’t want to keep it from you. I just—”

  “Scared I’d turn on you?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. I knew you never meant that shit. I just didn’t know how you’d react since you blamed yourself for Garrett.”

  “You blamed me, too,” I scoffed.

  “No, I didn’t. Never.” He was suddenly very sober, serious. “Mom and Dad don’t blame you, either, you know. They’re waiting for you to realize it wasn’t your fault. Waiting for you to be able to come home again.”

  “I come home every summer.”

  “You come to Nova Scotia every summer, but you never come by the house. You never call any of us. You keep to yourself and avoid anything to do with him—especially us.” He took a sip from his cup and carefully returned it to the table. “Look, I get it. It’s hard to go back there. It was two years before I could step foot inside that garage—”

  “I’m not afraid of a fucking garage.”

  “No, you’re afraid of what it’ll make you feel to go back there. But it’s time, Keith. You’ve spent too many years of your life trying to run from the past.”

  “I’m not running now.”

  “Maybe not. But you’ve still got your back turned to it.”

  “Which means I’m not hurting anyone.”

  “You’re fucking hurting yourself, Keith!” He stood up, pacing to the fireplace and back a few times. “And if you don’t knock that shit off soon, you’re going to hurt Brie, too.”

  I knew he’d been fishing for ways to use her or my relationship with her against me. I should have trusted my gut on that one. “Keep your nose out of things between me and Brie. Just stay the fuck away from her.”