CHAPTER 25
Shane wasn’t at the Armory. He wasn’t staying in his room. He wasn’t on the job. And he definitely wasn’t answering his phone. Cecily knew all this because she hadn’t heard from him in two days. Not since they’d made love on the garage floor.
Or maybe she’d got it all wrong. Maybe they’d just fucked.
They’d gone from zero to sixty and back again. More than sixty, since it was Shane. Sure, he’d once told her that he wasn’t a long-term play, but everything they’d shared since, the things he’d said . . . he couldn’t still mean that.
Missy didn’t know where he was. Rothgar might know, but no way in hell was Cecily going to ask. Dex said he’d try to track him down if she wanted, but he hadn’t come back to her with anything.
So, she was in Missy’s room, her thoughts spiraling down along with the tears on her cheeks, waiting for a man.
So, so stupid, Cecily. Didn’t you learn anything?
The phone rang. Cecily grabbed at it. “Shane?”
There was a pause. “I can’t protect you,” Shane said over the line. “And I don’t think I can live with that.”
Cecily gripped the phone. “What are you talking about? You protected me from James.”
“Lucky I was there.” His voice sounded hollow. Detached. “I’m not always around.”
She knew then. She knew he was going to make a point of it. Not being around.
“Nothing scares me anymore. Nothing.”
What was he talking about? “Come back and talk to me in person, Shane Sullivan,” she ordered, her voice shaking.
Silence.
“We were finding happy!” Cecily yelled into the phone. “Why are you doing this?”
There was nobody on the line to answer that question.
After an excruciating night that saw Cecily alternately clutching Bun-Bun and her cell phone for comfort, Dex stopped by the next morning, looking like he was forcing himself to do it.
To his credit, he handed over a box of bonbons. Pale-orange apricot ones and pink-covered coconut ones. Cecily knew that the orange ones were apricot and the pink ones were coconut because they were her favorites, and she generally only ate them with a slightly revolting wild abandon when something had gone wrong. She’d eaten a lot of them in the last couple of months.
Thank god you could get them in New York City.
“I messed up again,” she whispered to her brother. She knew her face looked puffy and red.
“I thought I’d feel better about this not working out,” he said. “I really don’t.” He tipped his head to one side and opened his arms wide. Cecily shuffled over, and he closed her in a bear hug. “Sorry, Sis.”
“Me too,” she muttered into his shirt. “But I’ll be better soon. Because bonbons. Thanks.”
“It’s kind of a peace offering,” he said.
“I know. It’s a good one.”
He smiled, and Cecily stepped back to grab another apricot sweet from the box and sunk her teeth in. She chewed, studying her brother’s face. “Did you talk to him?”
“He called. It was brief. Just told me you were done.” Dex scratched his face, looking uneasy.
“It’s a little crazy Shane bothered to tell you. You probably got more phone time than I did. How very . . . Hudson Kings. Did he—”
“Um . . . you guys should really talk directly to each other. Listen, Sis . . .” Dex started in on a gentle speech about how things would be better soon and that this was probably for the best and now she could concentrate on really moving forward, blah, blah, blah. She stopped listening and focused on eating.
When he was done, Cecily pushed the box of bonbons away and simply said, “I know.”
He cocked his head. “I thought you were more into him.”
“Actually, I was falling in love with him.”
Dex reeled back. “Whoa . . .”
“Yeah. So, I’m finishing up my meltdown, and I’m finishing up an entire box of candy—thank you, very much—and Missy’s got some sort of Manhattan cure up her sleeve, or so she said, and then I’m coming home to cap the day off with some hot cocoa, and then I’m going to go to sleep and wake up and just . . . well, go have a life. A normal life where I don’t make colossal errors about which men I spend my time with.”
Dex opened his mouth a couple of times as if to speak but wasn’t sure how to respond. “You were falling in love with him?” he finally asked.
Cecily looked at her brother, who was clearly feeling so awkward it was adorable. She would have answered, really, but she just couldn’t get the words out without tears.
Dex’s forehead furrowed. “Never should have sent him.”
“You were having surgery. It’s not your fault. You sent him to get me out of there. That’s a good thing. The rest is on me.”
His gaze moved across her face. “You cried pretty hard.”
“He made it seem like we were something special, and then he just ended it,” she whispered and then shrugged. “So, yeah, I cried pretty hard.”
“But you’re gonna be okay?” Dex was turbo gnawing that nail now.
“Focus on your work, big brother. I’m heading for normal.” Where nothing ever happens, and nobody’s going to make me cry.
Cecily watched him work through that idea and then watched as his face changed and he started getting pissed. “This is really . . . you know . . . I’m not sure what to do here . . .”
“There’s nothing to do,” Cecily said. “He played me. He’s done playing. That’s it.”
Dex scratched his scruffy chin. “Listen, maybe it’s not quite—”
“My favorite brother-sister team!” Missy chirped, pushing through the door.
Dex didn’t shift his gaze from Cecily.
Missy raised an eyebrow.
“When you said he told you it was something special and, um, ‘played you,’ are you saying . . . ?” Dex asked. He made a vague wriggling motion with his fingers that Cecily could only assume was meant to indicate sex.
Oh, no. No. My brother is not asking about my sex life. No. Uh-uh. We are not. Just . . . not.
A massive silence filled the space.
Missy cocked her head, her hands on her hips. “She’s really blushing. She’s really blushing a lot.”
“I’m right here!” Cecily yelped. “Not to mention . . . whose side are you on?”
Dex’s face was the definition of stormy. “I’m gonna go now,” he said, still frowning as he turned and walked away.
Missy closed the door behind him, noticed the bonbons, and beelined to the box. “Nice.”
She held up a set of keys, and with a mouth covered in pastel sugar announced, “Get dressed. Today, we ride.”