In the Zone (Portland Storm 5) (21 page)

I let out a humorless laugh. “It’s nothing like that.” If anything, he was too good in bed. That was one of many reasons that might make it difficult to end things.

“Then what? Poor hygiene? Bad manners? He wants to offer you up as a sacrifice as part of a ritualistic orgy with his satanic cult?”

“Who’s having an orgy and didn’t invite me?” said a deep male voice from directly behind me.

Well, crap. I’d know that voice anywhere. It had been saying deliciously naughty things to me in my dreams for months.

The look on Tanya’s face made it clear that my hearing hadn’t failed me. For that matter, I could practically feel Keith standing there, and the scent of his cologne filled my nostrils in a way that made me want to bury my nose against his neck and never move away. His heat radiated all over me. He had to be close enough that if I took a half-step backward, I’d bump into him.

I resisted the urge to do exactly that. My body was ready to betray me, though. It was a fight to keep myself from sliding toward him.

“Hey, Tanya,” he said cheerfully, and then his voice dropped down a notch or two, turning sensual and needy. “Hi, Brie. I thought I’d drop by and see what your lunch plans were since I knew you were here.”

“Ju-just finished eating, actually,” I stammered.

“But she’s got half an hour still before her next class,” Tanya put in oh so helpfully.

I shot her a glare.

Keith put a hand on my shoulder. His touch was barely there, but it was so hot he might as well have branded me. “Perfect. So will you sneak out with me for a bit so we can talk? I thought maybe we could go for a walk or something.”

There wasn’t any good way for me to get out of that, and I had never been one to shy away from confrontation. Generally, I’d rather face things as they came.

I took a breath to settle my thoughts, then turned to him. The sight of him—leather jacket hugging his muscular frame, amber eyes boring through me with unchecked hunger, lips curling in a smile that made Sex on a Stick seem entirely inadequate—made me nearly lose my nerve. I broke eye contact before I froze in that moment and couldn’t move. “Let me go grab my coat.”

When I turned to leave the office, he curled that hand on my waist in, drawing me close for a kiss—only a peck on the lips, but more than enough to throw all the thoughts in my head into confusion.

He winked as he released me. “I’ll be right here.”

When I got to the dressing room, I pressed my forehead against the cool metal of my locker for a moment, hoping it would put a damper on the heat that had started racing through me the moment Keith stepped up behind me. I needed to make up my mind, and fast, about what I was going to do. Go along as things had been and pretend it didn’t matter that he wasn’t able to share his past with me? Or make the move to protect my heart, telling him I couldn’t be more than a friend until he was ready to let me in?

I stayed as long as I thought I could get away with, but I still didn’t have an answer by the time I took out my coat and headed back to the office.

“Ready?” he said, his smile sinful enough to make me weak in the knees. He reached for me.

Not even close to ready
. I finished pulling on my coat and took his hand, mentally berating myself for my indecision.

“
Y
OU NEVER ANSWERED
me about tonight,” I said as we turned the corner around the building, heading toward a nearby park.

Her hand tensed in mine, only a tiny change in pressure but one that reverberated through me. So my assumptions had been right, then. When she’d only responded to last night’s text with a hasty message about being late instead of telling me if she would go out with me tonight, I’d gotten the distinct impression that something was wrong between us. Not that I had a clue what that might be. I’d come home from our road trip wanting nothing more than to see Brie and spend as much time with her as possible. I’d hoped that she would have answered last night, that I could have seen her then instead of having to wait until today. But that hadn’t happened, and now she was pulling away.

Talk later
, she’d said. Not
See you later
. Those two simple words seemed to carry the weight of a thousand implications.

“No,” she said at length. “I haven’t.”

“Does that mean you don’t want to see me?”

“Not exactly.” Her voice sounded strained. She obviously didn’t want to say whatever it was she intended to say.

I guided us onto the sidewalk that lined the park. With the cold front that had blown through while the team had been gone, there weren’t a lot of people hanging around outside today. A man walking two dogs was heading toward us, and a few walkers and runners were scattered throughout the area, but that was about it. No one could overhear whatever she might need to say. This was as private as we were likely to get, short of going to her apartment or my house.

“Then what, exactly?” I asked when she didn’t elaborate.

She took a few more steps and then gestured to a bench nearby, crossing her arms as though to ward off the chill. I nodded and followed her, taking the seat next to her once she was situated. I wanted to move closer to her, to press right up against her side like I had when we’d had dinner at Kells, but I knew better than to push her. If she wanted space, I’d give it to her even if it killed me.

“I think,” she started, but then she stared at a huge maple tree across from us and took a moment before continuing, her lips turning down in concentration. “I think we’ve rushed into things.”

My chest constricted, taut as a drumhead on the verge of breaking. “I thought things were moving along well.”

“In a way, yes. In others… We went about this all backward,” she said. “We started out in bed and tried to move from there, but instead of getting to know each other, we end up back in bed over and over again.”

“Because we’re good there.” That was only one of the many reasons we kept ending up in bed together, though. My lungs felt tight. Breathing didn’t seem possible. This had to be about Garrett—about my shooting her down every time she tried to get me to talk about the things I couldn’t talk about.

If only she hadn’t known him. Then she wouldn’t realize I was keeping all that to myself. But she
had
known him, and she
knew
he’d killed himself, and there was no way to take away that knowledge. No way for me to hide the past, even if I couldn’t confront it.

“We are,” she said after a brief but tense silence. She crossed her ankles and swung them back, her hands gripping the edge of the bench on either side of her. “I need us to be good elsewhere, too, though. I need to feel like I know you, the man on the inside, not only how you like to be touched.”

“Aren’t we getting there?” I asked even though I knew we weren’t, at least in that one way. And that was all on me, just like Garrett’s death.

“In some ways.” She tilted her head up so she could look me straight in the eye. A wry smile was on her lips, almost grim. “You’re getting to know me, at least. But every time I try to find out about your life before now—your family, your childhood—you clam up or change the subject. Why can’t you talk to me about that? About your brother?”

The longer she kept talking, the edgier I grew. Every bone in my body felt ready to shatter, my muscles ready to run. “There’s not much to tell.” Not much I
could
tell, at least.

“I don’t buy that for a second. Not with what I know.”

“Exactly. You already know, so what’s the use in dragging it all back up?” I could hear the hardness in my voice. Could feel my blood pressure rising. But there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to stop it.

“I know the parts that are public knowledge.”

Brie reached for my hand. I let her take it but left mine hanging limp within her grasp so that I wouldn’t let all the rage that was roiling beneath the surface come through and hurt her. It wasn’t about her; it was about me. I needed to keep it that way, too, keep all that hurt and anger and guilt and blame under wraps where it couldn’t hurt anyone else, no one but me. I’d already done enough damage.

Her touch was so gentle it nearly undid me.

“What I don’t know,” she said quietly, “is what led to it. How it affected you. What it’s done to your family.”

It had ripped my family apart at the seams, that’s what it had done to us. And it had left me a shell of a man. The only times I’d felt whole since the day I’d found Garrett hanging in my parents’ garage were when I’d been with Brie, when I’d been inside her, holding her, touching her.

“Will you talk to me about it?” she asked after a long moment.

“I can’t.” My voice cracked on the two simple words.

“You can’t?” She squeezed my hand, placing her other over the top of my knee. “Or you won’t?”

It was all the same in the end. I gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Then I need—” She turned her head away suddenly, reaching a hand up to her face as she let out a sniffle. “I need to take a few steps back.”

I felt as though the sand of an hourglass was drifting through my fingers. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to catch all the tiny pieces and put them back where they belonged.

I
’D BARELY WALKED
through the front door, herding all three of my dogs back inside with all their yapping and barking and dancing about, when my phone started ringing. I slammed the door shut, tossed my keys on the counter next to the unopened package from Hips & Curves, and whipped my cell out of my pocket, answering it without even looking to see the name or number popping up on the screen.

“Brie?”

“Not unless Mom and Dad have some serious explaining to do, although maybe that would make a few things easier to understand.” Shane, my youngest brother—no, my only brother now—let out a mirthless laugh that cut me to the quick after the day I’d had. “Who’s Brie?” he asked, half casual even though I knew he was just trying to pry.

The woman who broke my heart
. Not that I had any intention of telling Shane that. He had enough weapons to use against me already. I wanted to keep her separate in my mind, whether she and I were going to have the sort of relationship I wanted or not.

“Just a friend,” I finally said, echoing the words she’d said to me only a few hours before. She didn’t think she could be any more than a friend to me right now. Not until I was ready to face my demons. “What do you want?” I wasn’t in the mood for bullshit, and that was all I could expect from Shane these days.

“Oh, I don’t know. How about a ride to your place from the airport and a room to stay in through the holidays?”

I almost dropped the phone. “You’re coming to Portland? When?” It’d been seven years since anyone from my family had come to Portland during the season. Since Garrett had died.

“Now. I’m at PDX.”

“Now?” I definitely wasn’t keeping up. I still felt as though I’d been kicked repeatedly in the gut from my conversation a few hours ago with Brie, so I thought surely I had misheard my brother.

“I’m at baggage claim waiting for my suitcase to come down the chute. Get off your ass and come get me.”

“Wha—” I dropped the dogs’ leashes, and Pepper immediately took off chasing after Dexter, barking loudly enough the neighbors would probably start issuing noise complaints any minute. “Are Mom and Dad with you?” I asked, trying to wrap my mind around the idea of my brother being here.

“They flew to Dublin to spend the holidays with Gran. I had initially intended to go with them. Changed my mind at the last minute.” He let out a couple of grunts, probably getting his suitcase off the conveyer. “You did ask me to come for the holidays, you know.”

“Two years ago,” I said, dumbfounded.

“Yeah. And? I’m here now. Are you going to come and get me or what?”

“I—” A whoosh of air left my lungs, and I ran a hand through my hair. Shane was here. If I was ever going to have the chance to make things right between us, this was it. I grabbed my car keys from the kitchen counter, raced upstairs to deposit the package in my bedroom until I could figure out what I intended to do with it, and headed for the garage. “Give me twenty minutes,” I said.

Broken heart or no, this wasn’t an opportunity I could let pass me by.

H
E LOOKED EXACTLY
as I remembered, if only a few years older—almost as tall as me, fit, his dark hair cut short and neat, clean shaven. He had my eyes. Garrett’s eyes. There had been no way to miss the fact that the three of us had been brothers when we were growing up. We’d been practically identical, at least if you ignored the age differences.

Shane had his coat draped over his left arm when I found him at baggage claim, and he had on a fitted, short-sleeved red shirt, a few buttons open to reveal the black T-shirt underneath. The long, white scar on his right forearm was as visible as ever. It was an old hockey injury from back in major junior. He’d been fighting for a puck in the corners when a couple more guys joined in, bumping into him awkwardly and knocking him down to the ice. One of the guys trying to dig the puck out had stepped on his arm, and the blade has sliced straight through my brother’s jersey and into his arm. Shane had left a trail of bright-red blood from there all the way to the bench as he’d skated off for repairs. A full period and eighty-three stitches later, he’d gone back out for more.