CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Soon. Please let it happen soon. Let this day end any second. She stared at the clock on her wall, willing it to tick faster.
But the tortoise speed of the second hand was either a cruel joke or a reminder that Colin was right. He was all she thought about as she finished up some paperwork about the status of the center’s programs.
And since he was all she thought about, she was hot, she was bothered, and she was horny.
Great. Just fucking great to be parked at her desk, filling in information about the poetry nights and the hot meal plan, when her skin was sizzling from that morning encounter at his office.
She pushed back from her desk, walked to the ladies’ room, and splashed cold water on her face, then dried it with a scratchy paper towel. Ugh. The damn towel was rough. She made a mental note to look into new paper towel vendors, and as she left the restroom she gave herself a virtual pat on the back for having successfully turned off the latest bout of lust.
Good thing because when she returned to her office, Marcus was rapping on her door.
Tension crashed into her, but she reminded herself of her new approach. Be two people. With Marcus, she was only Center Director Elle. The other side of her ceased to exist.
“Hey there,” she said.
“Do you have a second?”
“I do.” She guided him into her office and shut the door. “Is this about…” she asked, letting her voice trail off in question.
“Yeah. You didn’t tell him, did you?” Marcus asked, terror in his brown eyes. For a brief moment before she answered, she studied his eyes. They were dark brown, like Colin’s. Another secret she had to bear—a small one that was folded into the big one. But still, she now knew they shared a family resemblance. That gnawing in her chest resurfaced, and she tried valiantly to swat it away. She clenched her fists and refocused away from Marcus’s eyes and back to his question.
“Of course I didn’t say anything. I told you I wouldn’t, and I meant it. Now, tell me what I can do for you?”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I know you wouldn’t tell him. I’m just…”
“You’re nervous,” she supplied, as she placed a hand on his shoulder. He was shaking. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Talk to me.”
“What if they don’t believe me?” he blurted out. “I’ll just be showing up out of the blue and saying ‘Hey, I’m your little brother. I was born in the pokey. We don’t even have the same dad, but isn’t it cool?’” He swung his elbows back and forth in mockery of a too-happy person. “I mean, my mom never told them. My dad never did. I don’t think they have a clue.”
“Show them your birth certificate. You have one, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I have a copy of it,” he said, his gaze drifting to his feet. “Says right there in black and white how I was born behind bars.”
“There’s no shame in where you came from. We all came from different places. My son came from an eighteen-year-old high school graduate and his father is dead from an overdose. I do not let him feel shame about any of that,” she said firmly. Marcus raised his face again. “So don’t let a few words on your birth certificate affect how you see yourself.”
“I just feel like I’m trying to hit them up with proof,” he muttered.
“But you are, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You need to be smart about this and be prepared, because it is hard. Maybe that’s why no one was home the other time you went there. Maybe the universe knew you needed to have all the evidence before you went.”
“I need to do it soon. The detective called about the reopened investigation. He wants to talk to me. I don’t want to talk to him, though.”
She held up both hands and backed away. “You shouldn’t tell me more on that. I can talk to you about the family stuff, but anything involving the case, I need to stay out of.”
He flashed a small smile. “I won’t. But thanks again. I think I’m going to rip off the Band-Aid. Do it next week.”
Next week. Each piece of information was another cut to the flesh.
When he left, she glanced at the clock. The good news was their discussion passed some time.
The bad news was she was going to need to go home and take a cold shower to wash off this new download of intel she wished she didn’t have to store in her head and her heart.
Both ached terribly.
* * *
A female Elvis impersonator with drooping breasts dangling out of her jumpsuit mugged for the camera on the street below. She draped her arms around two guys with sunburns and foot-long plastic drink glasses. With their free hands, both men mimed grabbing a breast. The Elvis outfit was made modest by pasties on her nipples.
The woman laughed, and so did the guys. Until one stopped laughing, started hacking, and promptly heaved into the nearby garbage can.
“And that’s all, folks, in today’s five p.m. Parade of What We Might Have Been,” said Kevin, Colin’s friend and mentor from his recovery group. The two of them stood on the elevated walkway at the corner of Bally’s, surveying the madness and mayhem of happy hour on the Strip. This was one of the many faces of Vegas—the city embodied glitz and glamour in its classy hotels, sex and sin in its nightclubs, beauty and class in the fountains of the Bellagio, but also the seedy in the late afternoon crowds weaving up and down the sidewalks, drunk as skunks.
Colin held up his iced coffee and toasted. “Here’s to my best friend. Coffee,” he said, since caffeine was the one “vice” he allowed himself to have.
“Hear, hear. May it never ever be banned,” Kevin said, swallowing the last of his drink then returning to the conversation they’d started before She-Elvis had arrived on the scene. “So, the meeting with the detective and talking about the past, did that stir anything up?”
“Not really,” Colin said quickly, glancing at his watch, calculating how much time until he saw Elle.
Kevin shot him a steely stare. “Really?”
Busted.
Colin forced his mind away from the anticipation of tonight, and back in time to his conversation with Michael at the base of the mountain after they’d met with John. He sighed, dragged his free hand through his hair, and shrugged. “Guilt. It brought back a lot of guilt.”
The other man nodded sagely. “That makes sense. But you need to keep working on letting go of that. Guilt—and I mean the misplaced kind—can eat you up. When you start to feel that way, the things that we think will take the pain away seem a helluva lot more appealing. Tequila looks a lot prettier the worse you feel.”
“Yeah. That’s true,” Colin admitted. The moments he’d been most tempted to crack open a bottle were when he felt the shittiest about himself.
“Just be aware that revisiting the past can mess with your head. So keep doing the things that make you feel centered. Your exercise. Your work. Your meetings. All of it. Okay, man?”
Colin’s gaze drifted to his arms, to the inked reminders of the man he wanted to be. The strong one, the kind one. The man who didn’t live a wrecked kind of life. Strength, love, passion, family, truth. They were his touchstones, his hallmarks, and his guides. “I will.”
“Because something this big could knock you off your game. Falling in love. Breaking up. Losing a shit-ton of money. Even good things, like landing a new deal. Hell, just learning something out of the blue. Anything can be a trigger. That almost happened to me a few years ago when I fell in love with my wife. You’d think falling in love would be this wonderful thing to keep me straight. But I very nearly popped the pills again because I didn’t know if she was feeling the same thing, and I felt so out of control.”
Kevin’s admission knocked the air out of Colin’s lungs. He’d never imagined falling for someone could have those kinds of consequences. “Seriously?”
Kevin nodded. “Love nearly kicked the shit out of me.”
“How did you deal?”
“I told her how I felt. I was honest with her. I spoke the truth, and she loved that I was open, and the rest is history.”
The words struck a chord. He’d delivered worlds of pleasure to Elle between the sheets, he’d proven he could show her one hell of a good time out of bed, and now there was one last thing to do.
Open his heart.