“Need you, Zee. Please, man, you’ve got to listen to me. Told you I’d gotten myself in too deep. I don’t know how I’m gonna fix this. They fucking know, they fucking know. I shouldn’t have said anything, but how could I not?” Paranoia bled through Mark’s tone.

Zee tried not to crush the phone in his hand as he pressed it tighter against his ear. Anger whirled around him like a windstorm. Howling and hot.

His teeth ground. “You really have the nerve to call me? After what you did? Because of you, I lost her. She’s gone. Julie’s gone.”

Everything tightened and squeezed, and Zee couldn’t breathe.

“I’m sorry. I fucked up, I know. I’d do anything to take it back.”

Zee choked out sour laughter. “Yeah, funny how I told her the same damn thing. Guess both of us learned the hard way there are some things you can’t take back.”

Marked stumbled over a sob. “Zee…I’m…I’m scared, okay? I need your help.”

A rise of disquiet bristled through Zee’s veins, that constant sympathy at odds with the hostility that flamed in his nerves. “And what is it you expect me to do?”

Zee heard Mark’s hesitation. It was no match for his desperation. “Need money…fifty grand.”

Zee laughed a hollow, disbelieving sound. He was so sick of this bullshit. So sick. So done. So hurt.

He could feel it all spiraling down around him. “Yeah, and I need my girlfriend back. Don’t see either of those things happening any time soon.”

* * *

Sitting alone in the vacancy of his darkened apartment, Zee tossed back another swig.

The bottle he’d cracked open thirty minutes before was half-empty, the dark, dark fluid sloshing down the sides as he attempted to balance it on his knee.

A fiery burn flamed down his throat, his stomach a pool of fire and venom.

He attempted to focus through bleary eyes, his head spinning against the weight of his heart.

Julie left him.

Mark threw him under the bus.

He didn’t have anything left.

Sorrow pushed against the anger bottled tight in his chest. So damned tight he could feel it getting ready to blow.

So he drowned it.

He lifted the bottle and gulped another mouthful, fighting the surge of fury, blinking as he tried to make sense of the sound hammering against his ears.

Groaning, he tried to ignore it.

More pounding.

He clambered to his feet, quick to grip the arm of the couch when the room spun, the bottle clutched against his chest like a lifeline. He looked toward the floor, sucking in air as his mind tripped through a muddle of confusion and doubt and regret.

I just wanted my brother back.

I just wanted my brother back.

Instead, his brother had stolen everything.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

Floundering for the door, he fumbled through the lock and somehow managed to free it.

He reared back, caught off guard by the face on the other side. Tears stained her dazzling face, her brown eyes bright and pleading, one rimmed in fading black and blue.

She wrung her hands. “I’m so sorry to bother you…I just…I needed someone to talk to.”

“Not sure I’m gonna be the best company right now.”

Her chin trembled. “I think you’re the exact kind of company I need.”

The words were out before he could stop them. “What happened to you?”

Her throat wobbled as she fought a fresh round of tears. “He—”

Rage. He didn’t know if he was feeling it for her or for the whole fucked-up situation. Either way, he couldn’t control it, the way it lined his veins like steel.

Fingertips touched his chest, nudging him back. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Grief constricted Zee’s throat, and he shook his head, too hard. It sent his world spinning again. Ground gone.

He tried to catch his breath.

“No…not okay.”

“Me, neither. He…he broke up with me, Zee. I don’t know what’s going on in his head. First you…then me.”

She edged Zee deeper into the hollow loneliness of his apartment. Her voice was a soft whisper of understanding when she spoke. “I can’t believe what he did to you. I’m sorry, Zee. You deserve so much better than that.”

Emotion clogged his throat and burned his eyes. “I just wanted my brother back. I just wanted to be there for him. And Julie…she just fucking left. Didn’t give me a chance to make it right. I can’t make anything right.”

It was all a slur of misery.

“Shh.” She caressed his shoulders. She gave a gentle shove, and Zee slumped back onto the couch, looking up at her with his heart in his throat and his stomach on the floor as he clung to that bottle.

She edged forward, and Zee shivered when she slowly straddled his lap.

“Let’s forget them. They don’t deserve us.”

A shudder ran through Zee’s being.

This time there was no question of her intentions.

And again, there was no stopping his body’s reaction as she fumbled with the buttons of his fly.

Veronica was right.

Fuck them.