Shame flinched as Con tossed the words out, half-sick at the thought that somebody out in the hall might here.
“Con, just—”
“Don’t just anything at me, bro,” Con bit off, cutting a hand through the air. Then, head cocked and eyes narrowed, he said, “You know, I’m curious. What are we going to say at your funeral? When people want to know how you died?”
“I’m not having a fucking funeral.”
“You made out your will already?” Con looked almost comical as he gaped at him with wide-eyed sarcastic skepticism. “Dude, I never realized you were that forward thinking.”
He opened his mouth, then snapped it closed.
“Have a funeral, don’t. I’ll have a memorial service at the pub and all your ladies can come and mourn you. Charli can give your eulogy.” Con’s brows shot up, dark anger edging everything he said. “Riley and I will stand there so we can help her when she starts to cry, because you know she’s going to cry over you.”
“Stop it,” Shame said, voice raw.
“How much of this is because of whatever happened between you two?”
Shame slammed him with a hard look. “That’s none of your business.”
“If you’re choosing to die because you don’t like the way things ended with my sister, I think I’ve got a right to know. And if I don’t, she does. She already just about cried herself sick!” Con closed the distance between them, all but shaking with rage. “If you weren’t already flat on your back, I’d put you there myself. I could beat you senseless for what you’re doing to her—what you’re going to do to her with all this.”
“I gave you a chance,” Shame reminded him.
Con sneered at him. “You think I mean because you slept with her? You dumbass, the only reason that’s a surprise is that it took so long. She’s been in love with you for years, and you feel the same damn way about her.” Con paused, then started to laugh. “What’s that look for? Did you think I didn’t know?”
Turning away, Con man started to pace. “Shit, man. I know you better than you know yourself half the time. You were probably in love with her before she was in love with you. You’re putty in her hands and always have been.” He turned back to face Shame, challenge in his eyes. “You were the one who damn near scared all her boyfriends away in school, not us. They couldn’t take the way you looked at them and eventually Charli stopped bringing them around the house. Not that she ever had many. Hard for the girl with the genius IQ to find a guy who isn’t intimidated by her...not that you ever were.”
Oh, Charli intimidated him. She scared him senseless. But it wasn’t her IQ that did it.
Shame kept his mouth shut, glaring at Con.
“How can you even think about giving up?” Con stared at him, a million emotions running through his turbulent eyes.
“The bigger question is why would I even want to bother?” The words tore out of him. “Don’t you get it? I live with it all the time, what he did. And you can tell me all you want that it wasn’t my fault, but that doesn’t change how or what I feel inside, Con. I’m...fucked up. I’m dirty. I’m twisted and broken. And...shit. You’re right about Charli.” He sat up in the bed and swung his legs off the side, staring outside. “But I don’t have any right to her. None. Nobody as fucked up as I am has a right to somebody like her.”
He dragged in a pained, choked breath, wishing he could just expedite the process and get it all over and done with, but while maybe he was okay taking the easy way out, he wasn’t going to full-out cheat and quit early.
Behind him, Con was silent.
For the longest time, he was silent.
Then, finally, he walked around the bed and stood in front of him.
He had a phone in his hand and when Con met his eyes, he held it out.
“Your sister’s been talking to me lately. She wants to try to fix things with you...wants you to get to know your nephew. Maybe you should just tell her that you’d rather check out instead. And hey, while you’re at it, maybe you should just get the ten-year-old boy on the phone and tell him that he’s filthy and doesn’t deserve anything good in his life, either.”
Something in Shame snapped and he reached out, knocking the phone from Con’s hand. It landed on the bed behind them, but Shame barely noticed. “You son of a bitch.”
He came off the bed, adrenaline fueling him.
He swayed, but stayed on his feet.
Con jutted his chin up.
“What’s the matter? It’s okay for you to feel that way, but that kid can’t?” Head cocked, he challenged, “Maybe it’s because you’re here sick and in the hospital. Is that why? Maybe you think you deserve this?”
Shame flinched. Did he? Did some part of him think he deserved it?
“Come on,” Con demanded. “Let’s call your sister and let her know it ain’t gonna be possible for any sort of relationship between the two of you. Let her know you can’t help her figure out how to help her son.”
“I don’t know how to help him!” Shame shouted.
“Of course not! You’re too busy feeling sorry for yourself to see the people around you who’ve tried to help you for half their lives!”
Shame swayed and Con caught him, hands gripping his upper arms. “Sit your ass down before you fall down, you hardass.”
Shame was tempted to flip him off, but decided he’d be better served sitting down before he fell over.
“What in the fuck do you want from me, you son of a bitch?” he muttered as Con guided him over to a chair. Once he was seated, his head stopped spinning around like crazy and he was able to focus on Con’s face.
“I want you to fight, you bastard,” Con said, his voice cracking. “I want you to think about the people who love you, the people who need you.”
Shame shook his head. “I’m tired of fighting, Con. Sometimes, it just...hurts.”
They stared at each other for a long, long moment.
Finally, Con pulled away. He opened his mouth, then closed it. After a few more seconds, he turned on his heel and walked away.
Shame wanted to call him back.
But what in the hell was he supposed to say?
“MAX...NOOOOO...”
Her ragged groan reached his ears, but he was more intent on wringing every last bit of pleasure-pain from her that he could. He’d told her to stay out of there. She hadn’t listened.
So now she’d see just what the room was for.
Stretched out on the sawhorse, her arms tied overhead, Charli shuddered as he twisted two fingers inside her ass, stretching her. “Max!”
“You know how to make me stop,” he reminded her.
He fisted his free hand in her thick hair and tugged, forcing her spine to arch.
She whimpered and wiggled, inching away from the invasion taking place behind her.
But she didn’t say stop.
She didn’t say the one word that would end this.
Not even when he spread the cheeks of her ass and began to impale her. She cried out, the sound laced with pain and shock and he dragged her back on his cock, the give in the ropes allowing him to move her just enough.
“Tell me to stop, Charli,” he said, staring down at her, watching as her ass flowered open around him, yielding to him slowly.
“Max...” She whimpered and shuddered, her spine arching as she worked to take him.
He withdrew and surged forward again, rocking deeper. She’d taken more than half of him already. The next thrust had her bouncing up onto her toes and he grunted in pleasure as she clenched down around him.
“It hurts,” she said on a low moan.
“Then make me stop. What do you say?”
But she shook her head.
He withdrew, held himself poised at the entrance, the head of his cock barely tucked inside her. “Last chance, Charli...”
“Max...”
He drove home, burying himself completely inside her. She screamed, the sound breathless and tight—and in a weak,
weak voice, she whispered, “Wait...Max...”
“MAX?”
He jerked awake, the echoes of the dream falling to shreds around him, leaving him in a state that was torn between arousal and self-disgust.
Wait...Max...
But he hadn’t waited. He hadn’t stopped. He brought her to a keening, wailing climax. But once hadn’t been enough. He’d needed more.
A few days later, when she told him that she needed more, he’d pushed her away.
“Max?”
He tensed at the sound of his name, looking around the dim room, eyes struggling to adjust.
“Who’s there?” he asked, not quite able to make out anything beyond the small pool of illumination cast off by the light over the head of the bed.
“It’s Elaine.” There was a brief pause, and a shuffling in the shadows over by the door.
He finally locked on her form just as she said, “Your sister.”
“I know who my fu...” The cuss word died on his lips as she stepped forward, a young boy at her side. He gamely swallowed it back and finished with, “I know who my sister is, thanks.”
The boy blinked up at him, his eyes the same icy blue as Shame’s, his face holding echoes of the boy Shame had once been.
They looked alike. Why hadn’t Shame ever noticed that?
The boy’s face was a little softer, his chin rounder, a nod to his father’s genes. But the boy was definitely a Schaeffer. Poor kid.
“Hey,” Shame said uncomfortably.
Elaine summoned up a nervous smile and rested a hand on her son’s shoulder. “Alex, say hi to your uncle...” She hesitated. Clearly she knew what name Shame preferred.
But he could tell it wasn’t a name she wanted to give her son.
Awkwardly, he said, “Call me Max.”
“Hi, Uncle Max,” Alex said obediently. And he watched Shame with wide, curious eyes. Eyes that hid a thousand secrets.
Shame could see them all and he wondered at them.
Elaine pressed her lips together, then looked over at Alex. She reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet, fishing out a few bills. “Do you remember where the coke machine we passed is? How about you get yourself a drink, maybe a bag of chips?”
He solemnly accepted the money and turned on his heel. But at the door, Alex paused and looked back, staring at Shame with uncertain eyes for a long, lingering moment.
“I got a call from your friend, Connor earlier,” Elaine said, without waiting a moment once Alex was out of the room. “I don’t think he meant to call—you two were fighting. I was able to piece together enough to figure out you were sick. When I called him back, he wouldn’t say much but he did let me know you were here.” She did that thing again, pressing her lips together as if to stem a flow of words she wasn’t ready to let out. “Max...why are you here?”
Fuck, he wasn’t up to doing this again. Three times in one day?
“Are you sick?” Elaine persisted.
“I’ve got cancer,” he said after a few seconds, turning his head to look at her.
She reached out, grasping the bedrail and squeezing it as she closed her eyes. “I had a bad feeling...” She blew out a breath, then opened her eyes. “Is it treatable?”
He jerked a shoulder. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not messing with it.”
“I— What?”
At that moment, Alex appeared back in the door, carrying a bag of chips in one small fist and a soft drink in the other. His eyes sought out his mother and he smiled nervously. “Did you want something, too, Mom?”
“No...no, baby. I’m fine. I just...” She waved at the seats before turning turbulent eyes back her brother. “He’s been wanting to meet you for a while. I held off because I wasn’t sure how you felt about me. And I was ashamed.”
Shame glanced toward the kid, puzzled. “Why would he want to meet me?”
“Because you were there in court,” she said simply. She looked over at Alex.
So did Shame. Now Alex was focusing on the task of carefully pulling the bag of chips open, but when he sensed their attention, he darted a glance up. It was a shy, nervous look and he focused back on the food quickly, but Shame had seen the expression in Alex’s eyes.
It was a look he recognized.
There was a unique sort of loneliness he’d felt in the years after he’d escaped his father’s torture.
It had never dawned on him that his nephew would feel it, too.
“I’d hoped...” Elaine stopped, lifting her face to the sky. “I guess that’s pointless. I have no reason to hope for anything from you, after abandoning you the way I did. I just...seeing you in court, knowing you were there for my son, I’d hoped maybe...” Her eyes were wet when they met his. “But I guess it doesn’t matter.”
She pulled away and held out a hand to Alex. “Come on, Alex. Max is sick.”
“But I...” Alex looked back at Shame.
And Shame felt it—that ugly, miserable knot of self-disgust curing in his gut and spreading outward like a disease. “Wait,” he said in a rough voice as the two of them headed for the door.
Elaine kept walking.
Alex glanced back.
“For fuck’s sake, Elaine. I told you to wait,” he snapped.
And his sister stopped, looking back at him.
Chapter Twenty-One
Charli
“I SAW SHAME TODAY.”
Charli glanced at her brother over an order of garlic-parmesan fries, pausing for a moment before plucking a fry from the basket. The small restaurant located in Jeffersonville, Indiana, just across from Louisville, Kentucky had some of the best fries she’d ever tasted, and their drinks were top-notch. She was almost wishing she’d settled on this side of the river rather than in Germantown, but she did love her little train-car apartment.
After nearly two months, she’d almost adjusted to living away from the small town where she’d grown up.
She’d almost adjusted to the fact that she didn’t see Max a few times a week.
But she hadn’t adjusted to the fact that he’d chosen to forego treatment for a treatable kind of cancer.
Calmly, she met her brother’s eyes. “Con, I’ve told you. I don’t want to talk about him.”
Max had made it clear to Con and her that he wouldn’t treat his cancer and that left Charli with only one choice.
She’d had to leave town.
She’d lost too many people, and she wasn’t going to watch him die.
Maybe he was tired of hurting and part of her understood that. He’d dealt with too much shit in his life, and instead of ever getting help for it, instead of the adults around him encouraging the boy he’d been to get help, he’d bottled it all up. As an adult, he’d dealt with his issues through drinking, fighting and a sex life that would probably appall most sane people.
Charli chose not to think about the women he’d been with.
They had been...therapy, in a way.
He purged himself of the poisons his father had filled him with, and if the way he needed to purge himself was via sex with other women, Charli would let it go. They hadn’t been together at the time, and she’d convinced herself that once they were together, she’d be enough for him.
She’d lied to herself for so long, she’d believed her own lies.
But she was done with it now, and done with him.
Now, meeting her brother’s eyes, she stared him down and waited.
Con opened his mouth, then stopped, shaking his head. “You know, when you decide you’re done, you really are done, aren’t you? You’ve had a thing for him since you were a kid and then just like that, you cut him off.”
“He doesn’t want me, Con,” she said simply. “I can’t make him take me into his life, and I’m not going to stay around just to watch him die.”
Con held up a hand. “Look, I know how things have been between you two, but—”
“No.” Charli shook her head. “I’m done,” she said softly, but intensity made
her voice shake. “I would have given up everything for him. Everything. But that bastard isn’t even willing to live for me.” She scoffed, wishing she could drink, but she’d agreed to meet her brother on her lunch hour and going back to work after having a drink was kind of...well, wrong. Since alcohol wasn’t an option, she opted for calories and dove into the fries in front of her. “The bitch of it all— You know what the real bitch is, Con?”
“What’s the real bitch, Charli?” he asked obediently, leaning back in his chair.
He didn’t even try to take any of the fries. He was a good big brother.
“The real bitch...” She heaved out a sigh and looked away. “I know he loves me. I can feel it. I feel it in the way he looks at me. I feel it here.” She touched a hand to her heart before letting it fall away. “I know he loves me, and if he’d let me, I could help him fix all those broken places inside him. But he doesn’t want to let me try. So...I’m done. I can’t let him break my heart anymore.”
BECAUSE SHE ABSOLUTELY believed that, when one of the hospital’s newer surgeons, a sexy piece of work with an Australian accent and the name Ryder, came sauntering up to her a day later with a certain look in his eyes, Charli didn’t give him the frosty glare that had sent dozens of men scurrying in retreat.
Dr. Ryder McKade was beyond delicious and Charli was female enough to appreciate that fact.
She was even female enough to appreciate the boyish grin he gave her as he asked to join her for lunch.
She was enjoying the few minutes she had off her feet before she had to be back on the floor, and normally she preferred to spend them alone. She was the youngest intern at the hospital and experience had taught her that age didn’t always come with wisdom. More than a few of her compatriots had given her the cold shoulder, and switching hospitals hadn’t changed that. There were actually more people from her graduating class here than there had been at the hospital back home.
She should have been prepared for it, but she honestly had had other things on the brain.
Dealing with people’s inferiority complexes, despite the fact that they’d all passed medical school and were all in the same residency program, was more crap than she wanted to put up with, so she just didn’t bother.
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