Teague lay in bed, bare-chested, eyes glued to the nearly dark ceiling of his room. His brownstone was adequate, but not what a partner in a prestigious DC law firm could afford. However, he kept his own life simple. Expensive custom suits, because that was what people saw when they looked at him, but a seven-year-old BMW—yes, he still loved the German engineering—and an adequate house. He did it in part because it was what he was comfortable with, but also because he supported his mother these days, having bought her a house a few miles from their old apartment block in Chicago so she could still attend the same church and hair salon.

He’d made her quit her job as a nurse’s aide at the hospital, and now she was a woman of leisure, volunteering at the health clinic near his old high school, going to church committee meetings, and even taking a few trips with the church to participate in civil rights marches and humanitarian events. He was proud of his mother. She hadn’t wanted to accept his support, but once he’d pressured her into it, she’d found ways to put it all to good use. She was the happiest she’d ever been, and at sixty, she was healthy and vivacious.

And Teague was committed to making sure that she was guaranteed her current lifestyle for as long as she lived. So, he kept his own needs simple, and poured the majority of his money into her care and investments that would serve them both in the future.

And now here he lay, staring at the ceiling in his eminently practical brownstone, wishing like hell he didn’t still have a hard-on for Deanna Forbes. The hard-on in and of itself wouldn’t be a big issue—he had plenty of women he could call on to solve that problem—but it was combined with the knowledge that she was probably the one person in the world who could ruin the plans he’d very carefully been laying for the last decade.

Because Deanna knew that his brother wasn’t in fact, dead, as he’d been saying since he was seventeen, but in a maximum security prison in California.

Teague rolled to one side, punching the pillow before repositioning his head on it. His gut ached as he thought about that day when he was sixteen and his brother had come into their shared bedroom in the small apartment on the fifteenth floor of the public housing building they’d called home.

“Teague!” Roland had hissed as he shook Teague from side to side.

“What? What the fuck, man? It’s the middle of the damn night.”

“You got any money? I need it.”

Teague knew that his brother was a member of the Gangster Disciples, and that he both dealt and used drugs. He didn’t want to help Roland out, but Roland was a big guy, seven years older than Teague. If he decided that Teague was going to give him all his money, then that was what Teague would be doing.

“What do you need it for?” Teague asked, sitting up partway in his small twin bed that was positioned underneath the room’s one window.

Roland made a strange choking sound, then wiped his arm across his mouth. “I fucked up, man. I gotta get outta here before the cops find me.”

Teague was wide-awake then, reaching for a T-shirt as he flicked on the small lamp that sat on the milk crate next to his bed. “Shit, Ro, what happened?”

Roland blinked a couple of times in the new light. Teague could see the exhaustion in his brother’s eyes. Roland only turned up at home every few days, so Teague didn’t know how often he did drugs, but now he could see that Roland had lost weight, his T-shirt hanging loosely on his broad shoulders. They had different fathers, but they both took after their mother, and Roland had the same light eyes and high cheekbones that Teague did.

“It was an accident, T,” he said, sorrow in his voice. Roland wiped a shaky hand over his hair. “Chief sent me to do a deal,” he continued, referring to one of the lieutenants in the gang. “It was supposed to be the usual shit. We’d dealt with these guys before. They pick up product from us and distribute over on the West Side.”

Teague’s hands itched, and he could feel his palms sweating. Roland was never anything but calm, cool, and collected. A consummate soldier in the gang’s army. Whatever had happened was bad, Teague had no doubt about that.

“But when I got there, none of the guys I’d seen before were at the meeting. There were five of them, and they started circling me right away, saying they weren’t going to pay for the product.”

He turned his desperate eyes to Teague. “If I’d let them steal it from me, I’d have been a dead man walking.”

Teague nodded, knowing the truth in Roland’s words.

“I pulled my Glock—I didn’t have a choice, man.”

“Fuck,” Teague gasped. “Did you shoot one of them?”

“If I had, I wouldn’t be here getting ready to run, T. My boys would take care of that shit for me. There was a kid…” Roland broke down then, tears running down his face. “He came out of nowhere—out the doors of the building maybe, or around the corner. Fuck, I don’t know, but I was walking backward, my gun aimed at the guy who was the leader. I hadn’t fired a shot, but then one of the others pulled on me. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, and I just reacted, swung, and fired, three times fast. And then I saw the kid.”

He sobbed quietly, his face in his hands, and Teague sat across the tiny room from him, heart frozen in his chest.

“He was small, man, like five or six, and he just…crumpled. And then this chick started screaming, and the other guys took off. I didn’t know what to do, and this chick—the kid’s mom or sister or something—she kept screaming for someone to call 911, and I panicked. I ran.”

Teague swallowed, a fear like nothing he’d ever felt rushing through him. “We need to get Mom,” he said quietly, wishing his mother wasn’t working the night shift at the hospital.

“No! No way, and don’t you tell her about any of this.” Roland recovered his tough exterior in a heartbeat, standing and giving Teague a hard look. “Just give me whatever money you got and I’ll be out of here. But if anyone comes looking for me, you can’t tell them you seen me tonight.”

Teague nodded, knowing that Roland was only compounding a terrible mistake, but helpless to do anything about it.

As Roland stuffed some clothes into an old backpack, Teague gathered all the cash he had on hand from his job at the local grocery store. It came to about two hundred and fifty dollars and had taken him three months to save. He gave the majority of what he earned working four to seven after school every day to his mother to help with groceries. He knew he ate a shit ton of food, and whenever Roland showed up, he could clear out the entire fridge in a few hours.

As Roland stood at the door to the apartment in the dark, Teague handed him the money that he’d planned to use for their mother’s birthday present—a new vacuum cleaner so she wouldn’t have to sweep the carpets with an old broom anymore.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back, T,” Roland said, putting a heavy hand on Teague’s shoulder. “You keep doing what you’re doing, though. You’re a good kid. You’re going to get out of here. Don’t let anyone keep you from it.

“And stay away from the Disciples, man. They’ll come looking for me, but

don’t talk to them. And if they give you too much trouble, you go to my buddy Q. He’ll get ’em to back off. But don’t tell anyone, not even Q, what happened or that you saw me tonight, you got it?”

Teague nodded, finding it hard to swallow. He and Roland hadn’t been close in years, but he loved his brother, and he didn’t want him to leave.

Roland squeezed Teague’s shoulder, then pulled him in for a hard, quick hug. “Do the shit I’ll never get to,” he whispered, and then he was gone, out the door, into the dark and dangerous night of Chicago’s South Side, and away from the only home he’d ever known, and the only two people in the world who loved him.

Teague sighed into the warmer, safer DC darkness, wishing like hell he didn’t have to think about that night and the subsequent days at all. It had been nearly two full weeks before the letter had come from a jail in Los Angeles where Roland had been picked up for possession of methamphetamines with intent to distribute. He sent the letter to Teague, but Teague showed it to their mother. She cried for an entire day, and then she cleaned herself up and instructed Teague to pack up his belongings. A month later, they moved to a newer housing project, and Teague started a new school, a college prep charter school where most of the kids were from solid working-class families.

Once Roland was in the penal system in California, the state of Illinois was able to track him down and charge him with the murder of the little boy who had accompanied his gangbanger father to steal drugs from Roland and the Gangster Disciples.

Because he was already in prison, he was tried in absentia. The day he was sentenced to life in prison without parole, Teague’s mother didn’t shed a tear. But six months later, she sat Teague down and explained the lie that would follow him all the way to tonight, when his appointment to the United State Supreme Court hung in the balance.

“It’s too late for Roland. I know it and you know it. But I won’t let him ruin your life too. You want to be a lawyer. You want to be on the Supreme Court of the United States. Only two other black men have done it, and you’re going to be the third, but not if you have a brother in prison. It’s hard enough to achieve the things you want with skin like ours. A brother who murdered a child will be the end of your dreams.”

Teague had listened, heart in his throat as his mother reminded him that Roland had a different last name from him, and most of the people in the neighborhood who’d known Roland as a child had lost track of him long ago. Since he’d been tried in absentia, press at the trial had been minimal.

“Your brother is dead. You will never admit to another human being from this day forth that he is alive. He was involved with gangs. He died in prison. It’s a violent world you and Roland grew up in, and no one will question that story. That’s all anyone will ever need to hear from you.”

So for the next seventeen years, he’d cut off all communication with his brother, and his mother had too. They’d left Roland to rot in a California prison, and Teague had gone on to graduate valedictorian of his new high school, then attended Cornell for college, and Yale for law school. He had the knowledge, the resources, and the capacity to appeal his brother’s conviction, to get his sentence reduced, to make sure his civil rights weren’t being violated at one of the most violent and brutal prisons in the country.

And he’d done none of it. He’d never helped Roland once. Never visited. Never called. Never written.

It turned his stomach and left a bitter taste in his mouth. His mother had his best interests at heart when she made the decision. She was terrified. She’d lost one son, and all she knew to do was make sure that no matter what, she didn’t lose the second.

But it hurt. It was physically painful sometimes when he thought about his big, strong, sad brother. When he remembered all the times Roland had protected him while they were growing up. All the times they’d stayed alone while their mother worked a late shift, Roland reading him stories and making him mac and cheese for dinner.

It was a burden that he’d grown so used to, he almost didn’t realize he was toting it anymore. But in those first years, it had been hard—painful even, and because of that, he’d told one person. The one person he’d thought he’d be spending the rest of his life with—Deanna Forbes.

But, he should have listened to his mother. Because look what confessing to Deanna had gotten him—a journalist with the only information that could tank his appointment to the Supreme Court.

The rising sun lit Teague’s bedroom with a pink glow and chased away some of the anxiety that haunted him overnight. He wasn’t typically prone to worrying about problems so much as solving them. He obviously got that from his mother. He rolled up and sat on the edge of the bed, noticing that the clock said six thirty-one. Too early to go to Spar, the boxing gym he worked out at, but not too early to call his secretary.

“Janelle,” he said as she answered his call. “I need you to get me the phone number for a reporter—Deanna Forbes at the Washington Sentinel.”

* * *

Deanna had just walked into her cubicle when the phone on her desk rang. She dumped her briefcase on the chair and juggled the phone in one hand and her coffee cup in the other.

“Yes, this is Deanna Forbes.”

“Deanna.”

That was all he needed to say, and she knew it was him. After all these years, she still knew his voice with one word over a phone line.

“Teague. Hi. You’re at work bright and early.”

There was a pause, then his deep, throaty tones came rolling across her again. “Actually, I’m taking the day off, but I need to speak with you about something. Can you meet for coffee or lunch?”

She bit her lip as a whole swarm of butterflies fluttered through her midsection. “Um, let me check my calendar…” She flipped open the planner that sat on her desk, not really seeing what was in front of her, but wanting to at least pretend that she had a life to work around.

“I could do lunch—” Yes, lunch would be better. Give her time to get her nerves under control. “How about eleven thirty?”

“Sounds good,” he replied. “Why don’t I meet you at your building and we can walk somewhere?”

“Okay. I’ll see you in the lobby.”

After they disconnected, Deanna dropped into her chair. Her heart couldn’t take this. It was too much. She hadn’t expected to hear from him again, and certainly not just a few hours after she’d last seen him. She’d spent a good portion of the night lying in bed trying to decide how she could facilitate another encounter with him. She could ask to interview him, of course, but the idea of trying to broach their personal relationship while in the midst of a professional assignment didn’t sit right with her.

So she’d come up with desperate idea after desperate idea. Hanging out in the lobby of his law firm acting like she was there to see someone else. Finding out what gym he worked out at and getting a membership. The list of stupidity went on and on.

Simply calling him up and inviting him to lunch had certainly never occurred to her. And as much as she wished his invitation meant he wanted to see her, the tone of his voice had said this was going to be all business. She sighed and flipped on her computer. As her email opened up showing a red icon with a three-digit number on it, her gaze was immediately caught by the third email in her in-box. The sender was [email protected]forbeshealth.net.

Deanna wrapped a lock of hair around her finger and tugged on it in frustration. A decade and they still wouldn’t give up. She’d stopped opening the emails years ago, and every time she changed jobs, changed cities, changed her email address, she thought that maybe it would be the time that ended those messages. But it never did.

Her cursor hovered over the missive from her father as she paused, reminding herself of why she no longer spoke to them, why she’d been without a family for ten long years, why she was sometimes so lonely, she felt like her very soul was weeping. Then she clicked and dragged, putting the unopened email into the trash can, wiping away all record of a family she no longer had.

The morning crawled by, and as 11:20 rolled around, Deanna couldn’t stand the wait anymore—she checked her lipstick and hair in the restroom, then took the elevator down to the lobby, determined to people-watch the final ten minutes before Teague arrived. But when she stepped off the elevator, the first thing she saw was his tall, imposing back as he stared out the front windows of the marble-floored lobby.

She stopped for a moment and simply watched him, drinking in the slope of his shoulders, the way his dress shirt tapered to the waist of his expensive slacks. He had a leather jacket slung over one shoulder, hanging off one big finger. And before she could stop it, her mind flew to the talent those fingers had once expressed on her body. Teague was pure sex—seductive, smooth, and completely in control. They’d been like matches to tinder when they’d touched, and some nights it had been all they could do to catch two or three hours of sleep.

Deanna and Teague had been incendiary.

And judging by the way Deanna’s core throbbed at the sight of him, not much had changed on her end.

As if he could sense her watching, he turned, shocking her into action, her legs striding across the marble floors, heels clacking, almost before she could consciously think to move.

“Hi,” he said, his eyes serious as she approached.

She gave him a small smile. “Hi.”

“You have someplace in mind to go?” he asked, gesturing toward the doors.

“Thai?” she asked, remembering his love of Asian food.

“Good by me,” he answered, holding the door open for her. He’d always been a gentleman, surprisingly tender at times while still maintaining that in-charge, macho thing that was such a turn-on.

They walked the sidewalk in silence for a moment, obviously both trapped in thoughts that they weren’t able to share—at least not yet.

“It’s just two blocks down,” she told him as they reached a crosswalk. “And it’s quiet. I wasn’t sure what you wanted to discuss, but I figured it would be better to have some privacy.”

He nodded, putting his hand lightly on her lower back as they walked across the intersection. Even through her jacket and blouse, it heated her skin, sending frissons of electricity down to her core. And when they reached the opposite side of the street, she noticed that his hand didn’t leave until midway down the block.

When they reached the restaurant, the silence continued until they’d been seated at a booth in a darkened corner.

“So,” he said after they’d given their orders to the server. “The story this morning was good.”

“Thank you.” She’d spent twice as much time crafting the report on Teague’s nomination as she normally did, agonizing over every turn of phrase, hoping that she appeared impartial even as she knew she was anything but.

“I’d forgotten what a way you have with words,” he said, smiling at her and making her want to melt right into the vinyl bench.

“And I’d forgotten how potent your smile is,” she answered saucily. “Use that during your confirmation hearing and you’re a shoo-in.”

He laughed, rich, warm, and so familiar, it made her chest ache.

“Maybe if the committee were only women and Senator Andrews, but I’m not sure the rest of them would be all that impressed.”

“Touché,” she added softly.

A breath then, a shift in the molecules that surrounded them. His expression sobered before he spoke.

“I needed to meet with you to discuss something off the record.”

“Okay,” she answered, tightness gripping her lungs.

“It’s about my brother…”

Yes. His brother. Inmate number 70991-32 at San Quentin State Prison. Deanna had always kept an eye on Roland and his case, setting up notifications that would tell her whenever there was a change to his status. His sentence had been slogging through various appeals for a decade and a half, and his behavior in prison had been exemplary.

But she remembered how crushed Teague had been when he’d admitted his brother’s story to her all those years ago. It was a few weeks after they’d gotten engaged, and he’d felt that it was only right for him to tell her the unvarnished truth about his family. He’d explained that his absent father was a white man who his mother had met working at the hospital. Nathan Roberts was an orderly, they’d had a brief fling, then he’d gotten fired and moved on. Afterward, Teague’s mother discovered she was pregnant, and no, she didn’t bother to try to find Nathan. She knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t be any help, she’d told Teague.

Then Teague had confessed to Deanna about Roland. Quietly laying out the chain of events that had led to Roland’s arrest and conviction, and finally his sentencing to life without parole, at one of the harshest facility for any inmate in the country—a unique program that put lifers in solitary confinement as the regular course of action. Each man locked in a ten by ten concrete room with no natural light, and one hour of solitary exercise each day. Watching the man she loved suffer so much guilt, uncertainty, and pain had impacted her in ways she couldn’t even see back then.

And she’d never forgotten. So while she always knew that Teague couldn’t afford the risk of keeping an eye on Roland, she also knew that she could. No one would ever know that the reporter who wrote letters to him and interviewed him five times in ten years wasn’t doing it for a story, but for love.

“I’m not sure how much you remember of what I told you about him—”

“I remember all of it,” she said quietly.

He cleared his throat. “Dee—” He used his old nickname for her, and her gut clenched in memory. “You and my mother are the only two people in the world who know the truth about Roland. If it were to come out now…”

“It would ruin your confirmation chances,” she finished.

He nodded solemnly, his eyes raking over her face as he watched and waited.

“I’ve never told anyone,” she said, “and I never will.”

The relief that washed over him was crystal clear, and it made her angry for a moment. Had he really thought she would expose him? Do something that would cost him his lifelong dream? Didn’t he understand that no man had ever measured up to the memory of him? That she would rather be alone than be with someone who could only ever make her feel half of what he did?

That he was the love of her life?

No, she reminded herself. Of course he didn’t know all that. Because the minute things got tough, she’d left him. She’d walked away from one of the finest men she’d ever known because her family had pressured her, scared her, bullied her. They’d said that she would ruin her future family if she married Teague, and the irony of it all? That was what ended up happening anyway, because within six months, her life was a wreck. She’d quickly realized that her parents hadn’t actually cared about her, only about controlling her. And they weren’t actually worried about what her hypothetical children would endure, but what they would when their racist friends at the country club learned they had a black son-in-law.

So she’d left them. Left her family, destroyed by them the way they’d said she would destroy her children. The only difference was that she’d ended up with no family and no Teague. Hindsight really was twenty-twenty.

“I’m grateful,” he said softly, jolting her out of the sickening memories.

“You don’t need to be,” she snapped. “I made a mistake, I’m not a monster.”

His brows rose. “A mistake?”

Her gut churned, and she swallowed back the bile. “Yes. A colossal one, but a mistake all the same.”

The waitress interrupted then, setting down their bowls of pad Thai along with a large pot of tea.

“You care to explain what you meant?” Teague asked, his entire body still except for his hands that clenched and unclenched as they rested on the table.

She felt her face heat, and though she suspected there was a better way to do it, she couldn’t think of one at that moment.

“The day I broke up with you… The way I broke up with you…” She looked down at the napkin on her lap, a burn developing behind her eyes. “Hell, the fact that I broke up with you at all. It was a colossal mistake. I knew that virtually before you were out of the parking lot. It took me six months to set it right—or at least as right as it could be, but I knew it immediately.”

He cleared his throat, and a bitter chuckle escaped his throat.

“Six months, huh? And since I never heard from you, I’m having trouble envisioning just what you did to ‘set it right.’”

She sighed. “I cut my parents off. I haven’t spoken to them or laid eyes on them since I was a junior in college.”

His intake of breath was audible, and when his gaze found hers, she saw pity. Fucking pity.

“Don’t,” she snapped. “Don’t look at me like I’m broken. Especially not when you’re the one we wronged. I don’t deserve your pity, and I’m a hell of a lot less broken than I was when I allowed them to ruin the best damn thing that ever happened to me.”

She fought the tears then, fought them with everything in her, muscles tensing, throat working, biting down on her lip until the pain overwhelmed the onslaught of other emotions.

His hand slid across the table, and he took her fingertips in his. “Dee,” he said so quietly it was nearly a whisper.

She shook her head vigorously, because if he said one more word, she was going to lose the battle. Then she pulled her hand from his and stood. “Thank you for lunch. And please know that I would never do anything to harm your nomination.” She paused, watching his face, his gaze so hot and heavy on her that she nearly melted into the floor. “I’m so happy for you, Teague,” she whispered, and then she did the second hardest thing she ever had, and let him go again.