“What did your LC tell you, buddy?”
“She told me a story about her daughter. She said when her little girl was learning to walk, it scared her a lot because sometimes Lexi falls. Lexi is the baby,” he explained. “And she wants to hold Lexi’s hands all the time so Lexi doesn’t fall and get hurt. It’s because she loves her.”
“But if she’s holding her hands all the time, Lexi won’t learn to walk,” I said roughly.
“And she won’t ever learn to run either. That’s what Kayla said. My LC,” he added. “Kayla said that when Thea says she loves me too much, it’s like she wants to hold my hand all the time so I don’t fall. LeVan, you look like you’re mad… Are you mad?”
“No. Well, yeah, but I’m mad at myself, Nicky.” I looked at him and then did a slow turn, taking in the living room and what else I could see of the apartment. “My man, I think I went and screwed up. I hurt your sister’s feelings.”
“Why did you do that?” Nicky glared at me.
“Because I’m a dumbass.”
The spaghetti was actually pretty good, even though it sat like lead in my stomach after I’d swallowed each bite. I made myself clean my plate and although I texted Thea five times, and called her twice, she wouldn’t answer.
I went to her apartment.
She didn’t answer when I knocked, although I knew she was in there.
I could feel her on the other side of the door.
Resting my forehead against the smooth surface, I said, “Thea…let me in. I need to talk to you. I fucked up, okay?”
But the door stayed shut.
Turning around, I braced my back against it and slid down. If she opened it at any point, I’d end up sprawled over the doorstop and then I’d just roll over onto my hands and knees, the proper position to be in, considering I needed to be doing some serious groveling.
If I ended up getting her foot in my face at first, then I’d just keep on groveling.
But the door stayed firmly shut.
I knocked every fifteen minutes for the next four hours and my back was on fire by the time ten o’clock rolled around.
But that fucking door stayed shut.
“You look like shit.”
Mac eyed me up and down as I dropped into the seat across from his. We had a private lounge in one of the bars at the hotel, a place where we came to share a drink, play cards, unwind after our performances and even though it wasn’t my night on stage, I sure as hell needed to unwind. I could also use some advice.
Sly gave me a sideways look. “Trouble in paradise already?”
“How did you guess?”
He grunted. “I’m the only one of us who is regularly engaged in relationships with the opposite sex. It wasn’t hard to figure out the look on your face.”
“Sly, the only relationships you engage in are of the physical variety. The second it even starts to move past fucking, you end it,” Mac said easily.
“Fucking is still a relationship.” Sly hitched up a shoulder. “And I don’t tend to fuck women I can’t talk to. There’s a relationship there even if it’s just physical.”
“And you respect all the women you’ve fucked.”
“Pretty much.” He looked like he was pondering it, then he nodded. “I sure as hell doubt they’ve all respected me, especially by the time it ended, but I had respect for them. Other than the fact that they were messed up enough to let the likes of me between their legs.”
“Stop.” I gave him a hard look. “Other than the fact that you’re a prime asshole, you’re not too bad a guy, Sly.”
He’d never believe it.
He winked at me. “Sure, you go on and tell yourself that, Lev. So…what’s your troubles with the girlfriend? Been so long since you been in the sack you forget what’s the top and what’s the bottom? I can give you some pointers.”
“Go fuck yourself,” I said, but it lacked heat. I’d already directed all the anger I had in me at myself and now I was just…empty. “I screwed up, guys. And when I say I screwed up, I mean…” I smacked the table with the flat of my hand, hard enough to make their highball glasses rattle. There was a third one, just waiting for me and I grabbed it, and the bottle of Glenfiddich, pouring myself a healthy two fingers—then two more.
“I texted you about High Crest—I never did read your answer,” I said, slanting a look at Mac.
He grunted. “It’s an independent living center—some sort of teaching facility for people with disabilities.” His mouth started to form the question, Why…but he stopped, leaning back in his seat to study me.
“Thea got her brother in there,” I said neutrally. “I didn’t know what the place was.”
“Oh, fuck,” Sly muttered. He got up, grabbing his glass and the mostly empty bottle. “You’re a dumbass, Lev.”
That it came from him surprised me.
Mac was giving me a sympathetic look.
I liked Mac’s reaction better.
Shooting Sly’s back a dagger of a glare, I said, “I believe I’ve already said this once, my man, but fuck you.”
“Oh, kiss ass,” Sly said, pouring the rest of the whisky in his glass, then tossing the bottle. He got another one from the private stock we kept in the lounge for our use, then turned back to me, highball glass in one hand, whisky bottle in the other. His red hair stood up in crazed, stiff peaks from the gel he always used when he was going onstage. He was still wired from his performance and now all that energy was focused on me. “You spent too much time thinking with your dick, Lev, then your brain got in the way. You’re the one who was about ready to throw down with me earlier today because I just implied she was wimping out and letting her mama grind her into the dirt. Both of you were pretty damn quick to set me straight, if I recollect rightly.”
The western twang was coming through loud and clear now. He paused, tossing back the whisky before coming back to the table in a loose-hipped gait. He looked like he had come fresh from the Irish farm but he moved like a Texas cowhand. And he talked like a sailor.
“Now, I’m going to do my own fucking mentalist act and you tell me how close I get, okay?” He winked at me. “You meet her at High Crest—let me think…you two probably had plans for dinner. You sure as hell were in a rush to get out of rehearsal even though you were late.” He shrugged, as if to say, no big deal, although he’d razzed me hard about it. “You had plans for dinner, I’m thinking. Maybe some place romantic or something, which…yeah, that’s your style, Lev. Bet you two didn’t do a whole lot of talking last night, and knowing you, you had things to say. You pick her up…since you asked about High Crest and you clearly didn’t know much about the place, I’m assuming you picked her up there. How am I doing so far, all-seeing LeVan?”
“You’re an asshole,” I said.
“That’s what you keep telling me. And I’m guessing I’m on the right track.” The humor dropped from his face. “You made an assumption. Shit, man. That’s fine for the stage, because you base all that shit on cues and facial expressions, accents…hell, whatever else you use. But this isn’t the stage, it’s real life. What were you thinking?”
“We’ve established I was being a dumbass.” I grabbed the whisky and tossed it back, too fast to really appreciate good Scotch whisky, but needing the drink all the same. “I just reacted.”
“You never just react,” Mac said. “What gives?”
“I don’t need it from you, too.” I glared at him, then shifted the look to Sly. “And I’m surprised you give a flying fuck. You don’t know Thea and the only two people you give a damn about are in this room.”
“That’s not true.” He saluted me with his glass and gestured to the opaque glass at my back. “I love our bartender. I’d marry her but she scares me.”
Under normal circumstances, it would’ve gotten a laugh out of me, the thought of a woman scaring Sly. But I was getting pissed off again—at him and at myself—and I was still trying to figure out what to do about Thea.
“I st
ill fail to see why you give a damn,” I said sourly.
“Because I don’t like seeing nice women hurt.” He shrugged and tore open the foil seal on the bottle of Glenfiddich, then popped the top. As he splashed some of the amber liquid into his glass, he continued, “And either she’s a weak woman or she’s a nice one with balls of solid steel to have put up with what she had to put up with. Been doing some thinking about it this afternoon and I figured she had to be the latter—you couldn’t have spent all this time pining for a weak woman. She’s nice…and she’s got balls.” He flashed me a smile. “I’d almost be tempted to go after her myself if it wasn’t for two things—one, she’s yours. Two…I don’t do nice women.”
I stared him down, almost ready to go over the table after him even though I knew he was just yanking my chain.
He raised his glass. “Cheers, my friend.” He tossed back the whisky and reached for the cards. “Are you in?”
“Fuck. Whatever.” I grabbed my glass.
“Tell me something,” Sly said as he started to shuffle the cards.
I could tell he was distracted because he kept it simple and straightforward—when Sly didn’t show off, even for us, then he had heavy thoughts on his mind.
He slid me a look, eyes pensive. “You wouldn’t have thought she’d do such a thing a few years back, would you?” He cut the cards a few times, gave them one more quick shuffle, then started to deal. “I mean, if you’d come across the same situation, would you have asked? Or just…assumed?”
I stared at the cards as they piled up in front of me, not liking the answer, or the direction of Sly’s thoughts. “I would’ve asked—I wasn’t sure I would’ve agreed to the whole setup, but once she explained…hell, Nicky was happier than I’ve ever seen him.”
Not that I’d gotten to spend as much time with the kid as I would’ve liked. Melody had always been in the way. In a way, I guess she still was. My disgust with her and how things had gone on the past few years had poisoned how I was looking at things, and I knew it.
“You two aren’t the same people you were back then,” Mac said, gathering up his cards. He gave them a quick look before focusing on me.
I’d yet to pick up my hand. I didn’t know if it was worth the trouble. Keeping up with Sly when it came to cards was a feat even when my head was on straight. I could kiss the idea of doing so tonight goodbye. Meeting Mac’s eyes, I said softly, “I love her. She loves me. None of that has changed.”
I knew that much.
“Trust me…” Mac’s voice was dry. “We could see the…attraction the other night. I can’t say I know shit about love, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it can’t. Nothing does. You’re eight years older and you’re not the same person you were eight years ago. Neither is she. Shit, would she have even been willing to let her brother go to a place like that without her?” He grimaced and I knew where his thoughts had gone. “I get that it’s for the best—I’ve been out to High Crest a few times and they do good work. But it has to suck. It’s like she’s given her job over to someone else. Would she have been able to do that eight years ago?”
Considering what her mother had been threatening? What her mother had done?
Swallowing, I looked away. “No.”
And it made what I’d done that much worse, I decided. She’d done something that had to be impossibly hard. And I’d laid into her for it.
“You two basically are going to have to start over,” Sly said, now sounding unconcerned. “I mean, if this thing between you two is going to work.”
I slanted him a look.
He shrugged. “Hey, I’m not much for relationships. But I figure if you held a candle for eight years…this ain’t going away.”
“No. It’s not.” It wasn’t going away. “But how do I fix this?”
“You’re asking the wrong people, Lev,” Mac said. “The Knights are good at a lot of things, but women…hell, I’d say even you aren’t particularly stellar in that department if today is any example.”
I flipped my fellow Knights off. “Thanks for nothing, assholes.”
But Mac had given me…something.
An idea, at least.
33
Thea
I lost track of how many times he knocked. In the end, I turned on music, ran a bath, and turned on the jets so the noise would drown him out.
The condo I was renting had floor-to-ceiling windows in the bathroom, the glass treated so that while I could look out over the lights of the strip, nobody in the buildings across from me could see in.
Huddled in the bathtub, I tried to block what had happened earlier that day from my mind.
I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think about what he’d accused me of, what kind of person he’d believed I must have become.
Melody’s daughter.
Brooding over bubbles and the bluesy tones of a wailing saxophone coming from the speakers hidden in the walls of the condo, I couldn’t decide what bothered me more. The fact LeVan believed I could be like my mother…or the fact that I worried about it myself.
I wasn’t my mother. I knew that. But how much of her was in me? Leaving Nicky at High Crest had been hard, but had it been hard enough? I barely even missed him. Sure, I saw him every day, which was more than I’d been able to manage in college. As Melody’s condition worsened, I kept him away from her. He couldn’t cope. Or maybe I was the one who preferred for sick Melody to exist outside of Nicky’s universe.
My business had suffered while her health went downhill, and now I was busy reinvesting time and money into it. I had several shows coming up, and clients who had been patient with me, but if I wanted them to remain clients, I had to invest time in them.
I didn’t have time to breathe, but I had time to miss LeVan.
Why didn’t I have time to miss my brother?
Why didn’t I have time to worry if maybe I was doing the right thing?
“You’ve seen it,” I told myself, hating the doubts that had resurfaced all in the past few hours since LeVan had looked at me with such anger in his normally warm eyes.
I hadn’t even tried that hard to defend myself.
Why hadn’t I tried harder to defend myself?
Was it because he was right?
“Stop it,” I said. I grabbed the glass of wine I’d poured for myself earlier. It had grown warm and I had only taken a sip or two. Now, I tossed it back like it was pure moonshine and I needed that burn to save my life.
It was a terrible way to treat a good Shiraz, but I needed a drink.
Actually, what I needed was out in the hallway, but I couldn’t stand the idea of facing him with all of this doubt…and recalling the look I’d seen in his eyes, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face him even if it was for an apology.
It was foolish, but when I opened the door the next morning and he wasn’t there, I was disappointed.
I told myself I was being stupid—and I knew I was, but that lingering disappointment, the part of me that had ached all night, despite my own feelings of doubt, guilt, and misgiving, that part was miserable.
Shoving it all aside, I willed myself to stride to the elevator—stride, not mope, and I fixed a smile in place when I was joined by several other building tenants. I was going to get some coffee, then get to the workspace I was renting temporarily while the real estate agent I’d hired hunted down something more suitable—and permanent.
All I needed to get was some caffeine in me, then some work in front of me, and I’d be able to block out how shitty last night had gone. Work had been my salvation for the past eight years. It would prove to be so once more.
I was wrong.
Work wasn’t an escape today.
I kept having to force my attention back to the gowns I was designing for a charity event in New Orleans.
Too many times, I had to go back to the images the show’s coordinators had sent me for the inspiration behind their idea.
Fortunately, they weren’t wanting any
haute couture, because that wasn’t my strong suit anyway and my brain definitely wasn’t capable of focusing to that degree today.
But just going with the elegant, simple lines of the Grecian-inspired designs they’d requested was proving to tax both my creative drive and my patience. I kept going back to what LeVan had said, then my mind would traipse along a path into the past. Fights I only vaguely recalled between my mother and father—he’d been adamant that Nicky only be cared for by family. He hadn’t even wanted a nanny hired because he’d known what Melody would do—abandon her child.
But she’d done that anyway.
What would Dad think of what I was doing now?
Would he be disappointed?
Or would he see that I was just pushing for Nicky to be as independent as he could be?
My mind spun in those circles so long and hard, I got dizzy from them.
It was a welcome reprieve when the phone rang and it proved to be Nicky, calling from the cell I’d bought him not long after Melody had died. “Hi, Nicky,” I said, some of the tension falling away.
“Hi.” Nicky, though, sounded…odd.
The normal bright and happy voice I’d come to expect from him was oddly subdued.
“What’s wrong, Nicky?” I asked, sitting up in my chair and putting the sketch I’d nearly finished aside.
“Um…nothing, but I can’t see you today, Thea. Don’t be mad,” he said in a hurry. “I just…I have plans. I made plans with a friend. You… Is that okay with you?”
“Plans,” I said weakly. “Who’s the friend? Anyone I know?”
“It’s someone here at the center with me,” he said. And again, his voice was…subdued. “Don’t worry. I talked to the LC, just like you always want me to do when I make plans. And the LC says it’s a good idea. But I needed to let you know.”
“What do you plan on doing?” I tried not to let the disappointment I felt show in my voice. Nicky shouldn’t have to feel the backlash of my guilt. I’d been looking forward to seeing him smile and tell me about his day, but if he was making friends, making plans, who was I to take that from him? This was what I’d wanted.
Risk Me (Vegas Knights Book 2) Page 19