by Liz Crowe
“I see,” Kayla said as she observed the girl from a safe distance. “So what can I get you Mr. Fitz—?”
“Oh, Jesus, please do not call me that. It’s Brock. And I need a double IPA and a ginger ale. I’m running the beer up to Evelyn.” He smiled by way of covering his embarrassment at drinking ginger ale.
But her smile went a hair past ghostly as she pulled a to-go cup with a straw from under the bar and sipped. “I love the ginger ale myself,” she said, turning to pour his drinks.
Yep, he thought, as he held Rose on his lap and she giggled, grabbed the coaster and tried to cram the entire thing into her mouth. “Too many carbs, doll face.” He snatched the thing away from her and held it over his head while she worked her way into a snit. “Somebody needs a nap.” He tossed the half-masticated round of cardboard toward the garbage behind the bar, missing by half a mile.
Kayla picked it up and threw it away then put the two drinks on the bar, well out of Rose’s reach. “So, how exactly are you going to get two drinks and that,” she pointed her elbow at Rose, “up to Evelyn’s office anyway?”
“Easy peasy,” he said, slipping the girl back up to his shoulders. But she had other ideas and went stiff as a board, as her snit worked its way into a full-throated howl.
Kayla raised a dark eyebrow at him. He shrugged and pulled Rose back down, tucking her under his arm once again. “One at a time, I guess, unless I can convince your boss to let you take a few minutes away and give a guy a hand.”
She glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes had gone from light and amused to clouded and anxious during the time it had taken for him to speak. He frowned at the sight of what could be a bruise under her jawline. But then convinced himself it was a shadow. And either way, none of his business.
“I don’t know. I’d better not.” She ran a hand around her neck. Her nails were short, the edges red and inflamed looking.
A hot mess, he mused, as he imagined himself running his lips along her collarbones. His face flushed hot when she met his gaze again as if sensing his dirty thoughts. He cleared his throat and busied himself trying to calm the pissed-off baby.
“Go on,” Melody said, having emerged from somewhere. She patted Kayla’s arm. “He’s safe.”
Before he could mount a decent argument against that, Rose let out a screech that made the whole bar turn and stare. “Exit, stage left.” He hurried around the bar, holding the girl out in front of him like a hood ornament while she kicked and squawked, not even checking to see if anyone had bothered to grab his drinks and follow him.
But Kayla had indeed done that, and once he made it to the foot of the metal flight of steps up to Evelyn’s crow’s-nest-style office, Rose was calmly sucking her thumb, her sweaty head pressed into his neck.
“You’re a natural at that,” she said, waiting for him to ascend the stairs before her.
“Yeah. I’m as surprised as anybody about it, too.” Aggravation hit him then, right between the eyes. He was an almost thirty-nine-year-old man, reduced to running around at his brother’s beck and call, up to and including playing after-hour nanny to this kid. Forced to drink ginger ale and avoid women since he had no big-boy control over himself.
This kid you love, don’t forget that.
He smiled when his inner nice guy emerged, calming the devil that had attempted to escape. His usual evening battle. Nothing new to see here, folks. Move along.
He sighed and leaned against the wall, so exhausted that the thought of climbing the steps made him dizzy. Kayla waited him out, silent and observant, not offering to switch with him, he noticed. Another oddity for a female as the sight of the droopy, sleeping, blonde-haired little angel almost always brought out their inner mama hen.
But something about her presence calmed him in ways that no woman ever had. He felt himself relax, even as he got a closer look at her and realized that, but for her extreme thinness, she was an absolute stunner. “Okay, up we go,” he said to himself as he headed upstairs.
Evelyn glanced up from the spot where he’d left her, glaring down at electronic spreadsheets and futures reporting, her blue eyes bloodshot, her shoulders slumped. “Oh my God, can I ever use that.” She got up and stretched, then took the beer from Kayla, downing half of it in one gulp.
“Damn, now I’m really jealous of my stupid brother,” Brock said before laying Rose down on the couch and covering her with a small blanket. She shifted around and opened her clear blue eyes, smiling up at him.
“Bock,” she said, making little gimmie-gimmie motions with her fingers. Undone by this, he sat, brushing her hair back off her forehead until she dropped to sleep.
“Dude, you are a goner,” Evelyn said. He blinked as if emerging from a trance, mad at himself for not saying more to Kayla. But of course, she’d faded, vanished into the ether.
And a damn good thing, too, he reminded himself. The last thing you need is to fall for a fellow junkie. Besides, he had a date tonight.
He picked up his abandoned phone and typed out a reply to Caroline, not allowing himself to think about it, or for his logical mind to talk the rest of him out of it.
I’ll be there. But I need your address, and a time.
He hesitated, then sent it.
“You do realize that she’ll grow up and go out on dates someday, right?”
“Like hell she will,” he said. He rested a hand on the tiny girl’s chest, as dead serious as he’d ever been. “Her father and I will make sure that never happens.”
Evelyn chuckled and shook her head, finished the beer and sat back down while Brock stared at the messages emerging on his phone, telling him where to be, what time to be there and realizing that he might just have made a horrible mistake.
Chapter Four
“Are you sure about this?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Lay off me, will ya?”
Brock glared at his brother, who’d shown up right on time, as he was emerging from a long, scalding shower which had done exactly nothing to clear his rattled brain. “I never should’ve given you a fucking key,” he muttered as he toweled off his hair, baring his backside to Austin, who’d been draped across his bed, half asleep. “You really don’t have to babysit me.”
“Tell that to our mother, please,” Austin said around a jaw-cracking yawn.
“I will,” he said, rubbing some random white pasty product into his dark hair, something the hot chick who cut it every four weeks insisted he buy. “At our next intolerable family dinner, how about that?”
Austin groaned and dropped his arm over his eyes. Brock watched him a few minutes, his sympathy muscle flexing in a fairly healthy fashion, which was a good sign about his general state of mind.
“You’re gonna work yourself into a stroke, my brother,” he said before pulling on a pair of black boxer shorts and rooting through his closet for a pair of jeans.
“Uh,” Austin grunted from underneath his arm.
“Then I shall be forced to do the brotherly thing, I suppose.” Austin raised his arm. “And marry your smoking-hot wife for you.”
“Fuck you, loser,” Austin said, the arm back in place again.
“No thanks. That’s just weird.”
“You’re weird,” Austin mumbled.
“Dude, if you want to have a weirdo contest, why don’t we tell dear Virginia about the actual paternity of her precious grandchild, eh? Maybe at the next family dinner?”
“Go to hell,” Austin said.
“Lame. You really are tired.” He smacked his brother’s leg so he could sit and pull socks from the drawer next to his bed. He sat, elbows on his knees, hands dangling for a few seconds. The ants had been stupefied by the hot water, but they were gathering momentum again, ready to begin the Brock full-body march. The only thing that he’d found would stop them was sex. But the problem was, once he started down that road, he couldn’t stop, no matter what sort of pharmaceutical cocktail he’d ingest.
Exhaustion stole over him again and he flopped back next
to his brother, staring up at the circulating ceiling fan, willing the skin-crawling sensation to cease, desist, leave him in peace for one damn night. By the time he realized what was happening, his teeth were chattering and someone was covering him with a blanket. On reflex, he rolled onto his side, curled into himself as tight as he could and began mentally reciting the Serenity Prayer.
It didn’t help, but it kept his mind occupied for a while, so the moment could pass. When he emerged from the warm cocoon, groggy and head-achy, Austin was there, holding a glass of water and a fistful of pills. He sighed and threw off the cover, taking the water and swallowing the pills, wincing at the slimy taste they left in his throat. “Thanks,” he said, looking down at his lap.
“No problem,” Austin said, slapping him on the back. “But I’m on the record as against this little dinner party idea. You know I like Caro, Brock. That’s not the issue. You put that girl through so much…”
“Spare me the memory lane journey, please.” The ants were also groggy, but mustering again. He rose and stretched, relishing the soreness in his chest and arms. He’d hired a new trainer and demanded that the guy push him ever harder. The guy had done so, right to the brink of making him almost pass out a few days ago. He loved it and its mind-blanking numbness.
Fucking or other forms of exercise, he thought as he shuffled into the bathroom to brush his teeth. That’ll be the name of my sought-after memoir someday.
When he emerged into the main room of his condo, Austin was in the kitchen, drinking water and eyeballing his phone. “Go on, already. Beat it. Go home and service your wife or something.”
“I’m going. Hey, did Melody ask you about the lake house weekend coming up?”
“Yeah,” he said, splashing water from the kitchen sink up onto his still sleepy face. He’d forgotten about until now. “Whatever.”
“If you want, you could bring Caro. As a friend.”
He tossed the kitchen towel down on the empty countertop. It was a prop, just like every other damn thing in this room. He couldn’t cook to save his life but he made a mean PB&J and knew his way around a soup can when he didn’t have the energy for any other options. “Sure. I’ll do that.” Anger took over again. Fury roiled in chest, shoved its way up his gullet into his throat, filling his sinuses and skull. Choking him, as it always did. “Go home, Austin,” he said, glaring at his brother.
Austin met his gaze, his cool, steady, normal-guy expression striking a match to Brock’s smoldering nest of rage. “Stop fucking staring at me like I’m a god damned freak, will you? Jesus.” He stomped out into the living room and flopped down in one of the leather chairs his mother had delivered to this random, sterile, cookie-cutter condo. He buried his face in his hand, willing Austin to go so he could be mad in peace. It was another stage and he had to get past it before he left for Caroline’s little dinner party. He felt a hand on the top of his head. He ignored it and ignored it some more until the door clicking shut made him take a loud inhale.
The air filled his lungs, making his blood pump faster, so fast he believed he could feel it swooshing through his pulmonary system. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
He could picture her—not Caroline with her full, perfect curves and her thick auburn hair. But the other her. The new her. The odd bird, junkie her he’d met today.
Kayla. Dark hair, mysterious, haunted eyes, thin frame, nervous tics and all.
He groaned as his body responded in its usual fashion, hardening all over. He limped to the bedroom and took care of things, willing his mind blank and not full of Kayla the junkie, a.k.a. the last person on Earth he should be jacking off to right now. But he lost that battle and cried out into the darkening room, phantom tasting her skin, her full lips, her sweet pussy, coating his hand and the clean shirt he’d wanted to wear tonight.
With a grunt of disgust at himself he rolled off the bed and tossed the now sticky shirt into the hamper. As he yanked another one off a hanger without looking at it, he left his jeans unzipped, his still-hard cock exposed to the cool air in hopes it would soften.
It didn’t. But that was his life, wasn’t it? His fucking curse to be the twin who got the triple dose of pervy, the double dose of addiction, the quadruple dose of loser.
He stared down at his dick, thinking boring, unsexy thoughts, the way his therapist had urged him. But it took almost an hour before he felt equipped to go out in public, to his ex-girlfriend—hell, his ex-fiancée’s condo—for some kind of a lame ass dinner party with ‘friends’.
Chapter Five
Kayla lay awake, hearing the thuds and wails, the screams and groans, the gunshots and whatever the hell else all around her. It was almost soothing in its regularity, its familiarity, after a night spent slinging expensive beer and overpriced bar food to a bunch of rich assholes and their insufferable dates.
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, willing the vision of him out of her mind. Willing him gone from her memory banks. He was just another Richie Rich anyway. Just another asshole, eye-fucking her when he thought she didn’t know it.
But she always knew it. She’d spent her entire life knowing it.
The heat in the upper room where she was squatting pressed down on her body, forcing her to remain as still as possible as if by her stillness she might escape it. She took tiny sips of the wet, damp air. Reminding herself that she was lucky to have this illegal space at all. That she was lucky to be alive.
Lucky. That wasn’t a word she usually associated with her life. But it seemed to be shining a weak light on her the past few weeks, at least in relation to the shit she’d slogged through from the time she’d been thirteen. Lucky to get caught up in a drug bust, where she lay, dying from an overdose of pain pills and booze. Lucky to be so poor and nameless that the hospital had had to take her in, revive her, feed her a few days. Lucky that a nice lady doctor had taken pity on her and found her a coveted spot in a government-paid detox camp. Lucky that the camp had made her work so hard she’d almost forgotten her daily need for a hit, for a pill, for a drink.
Almost.
Not so lucky that one of the guards had caught her outside smoking an illicit cigarette one night and demanded that she blow him in exchange for her silence.
She sighed and let the sweat drip down her face, knowing that it would cool her skin and so resisting the compulsion to wipe it away. She rolled onto her side and let her legs dangle off the edge of the mattress. Her feet hurt, but in a good way, a hard-day-at-a-job-she-actually-liked way. It had only taken her a few weeks to get into the groove and flow of the place. And Melody, her rescuer, seemed to be pleased with her performance so far.
She had the day off tomorrow, which was not something she looked forward to like a normal person would. Hours to sit and stare at walls did nothing for her, so she planned to take a long walk, drop in at the library and read, anything to keep from having to be alone with her thoughts.
She’d put her foot down and insisted that she wasn’t ready to see Trent so Melody had agreed to keep her presence a secret as far as was possible. She’d enlisted Evelyn in this, too. And Trent was super busy working on some new massive real estate development deal anyway so he was hardly ever at the bar.
Her baby bro—the real estate mogul. She smiled into the stifling room while thinking about him, letting herself visit some of her oldest memories after a lot of years stuffing them under a pillow and smothering them out of mental self-preservation. She’d seen a picture of him on Melody’s phone and had been shocked at how tall and handsome he was. But the sight of his face had set her back a few days. Because he looked an awful lot like his father. The man not her father, but who’d stuck around long enough to drink away what money they’d had, slap her around a little, then take all of that a step further when she’d turned fourteen.
She squeezed her eyes shut, unwilling to go there right now.
With a groan, she sat up, letting her bare legs stick out on the floor in front of her. The pain in
her feet focused her for a few minutes, but the urge was back. The need to do something to release the intolerable pressure building in her chest, her neck, her head.
When her stepfather had made his first forays into her childhood bedroom, she’d been afraid, of course, but something in her, some innate positive creature, had reminded her that he must love her.
She’d been so stupid and weak, she’d sought him out during the days he’d been home without work. She’d bring him beers or sandwiches and he’d smile at her, pat her on the arm, kiss her cheek, tell her what a nice girl she was. So much nicer than her mother.
He’d come to her at night, make her cry, and leave her room with kisses on her forehead and cheeks and promises that if she never told anyone, he would love her forever.
She forced herself to her feet and stumbled into the adjacent room with the moldy shower, cracked toilet seat and leaky sink. Tears burned her eyes but she stopped them, calling on her training. Nobody likes a crier, he’d said to her. A lot.
She dropped to her hands and knees and pressed her hot face against the toilet seat, waiting for the inevitable. But she’d only eaten a few bites of soup and her body seemed determined to hang on to it for now. As she leaned back the room spun a few times, then righted itself. Which served to increase the pressure. Pressure under her skin so powerful she wondered how she didn’t just explode into a million pieces.
Gasping in pain, she stood, lifted the lid of the toilet tank, and found what she was looking for—a tiny ziplock bag with a few crucial items.
Not pills. Not anymore. She’d never go back to that.
As her fingers closed around the sharp, German-made blade, she sighed in anticipated relief. Just holding the cold metal between her finger and thumb calmed her racing pulse. The pain in her feet and hips faded in anticipation.
She pressed the blade to an old cut, ready to slice through the thick scar tissue, eager to release the horrific pressure under her skin, she recalled the man she’d met today. Brock. His handsome yet sad face. His deft touch with the little kid. His sweet smile.