Breaking the Rules

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN



Jenni, God, I’m so sorry,” Danny said as Izzy closed the bathroom door behind him. The other SEAL was on his knees, eyes tightly closed, bowing to the porcelain god, having just sacrificed his dinner into its murky shallows. Izzy helped them both out by reaching forward and flushing the monster.

“She knows that,” Izzy told this man who, despite trying as hard as he had, had never managed to become his friend.

Dan didn’t open his eyes. “Leave me the f*ck alone.”

“Yeah, well, small apartment, single bathroom,” Izzy pointed out. “I kind of need to go. Don’t move—I’ll just piss past your head.”

Danny did more than open his eyes at that—he actually hit the pause button on his current state of sheer misery as he turned to look at Izzy in disgust and disbelief.

Izzy smiled back at him as he hoisted himself up to sit on the counter of the sink. There wasn’t much counter, so he was half in, half out of the sink itself. Still it was the proper visual aid to reassure Dan that he was only kidding about that piss-past-your-head thing.

“I’m on Team Jenn for this one,” Izzy told Dan. “You’re not your father, Gillman. Never have been, never will be.”

Dan didn’t want to hear that—and he tried to slip back into his post-vomit, beat-himself-up state. “Seriously, Zanella, I don’t need your bullshit right now.”

So Izzy reached over with his foot and gave the man a not very gentle push, making him lose his balance and bump his shoulder into the wall near the toilet-paper holder.

“Hey!”

“F*ck you for the way you treat your sister,” Izzy told him. “You’re an a*shole and a total dick, and if you weren’t so pathetic with your I’m so tired and your I’m so jet-lagged and your Poor me, I almost lost my leg and now I have an ouchy boo-boo, and Don’t let me tear open the stitches because I still might bleed out and die, I’d kick your ass down to the street and pound you black and blue.”

And okay. Maybe that was too much, because now Dan was getting angry back at him and was about to issue a challenge for Izzy to just f*cking try it.

So Izzy pushed himself off the sink and did exactly what he’d threatened. He unfastened his pants and took a leak right there in the empty bowl.

And instead of standing up, Dan pushed himself even farther back into the corner, against the wall, to stay out of the splash zone. “Jesus!”

“There are times,” Izzy said, raising his voice a little to be heard over the pleasantly tinkling waterfall, “when I f*cking hate the things you say and do. But I do know that you would rather die than hurt Jennilyn. I know how much you love her—hell, I probably know that better than she does. And I also know, as flipping crazy as you drive me most of the time? You would never intentionally hit your woman. What happened was an accident. And I believe what you said—that it will never happen again.” He shook himself off, zipped up, flushed the toilet, and went to the sink to wash his hands. “In fact, I’d bet my life on it.”

Dan was silent, just sitting there, staring down at the floor as Izzy dried his hands on one of Eden’s mismatched towels. Given her tendency to be thrifty, she’d probably picked them up at some second-hand store. If she was still around by Hanukkah or Christmas or whatever she celebrated—Festivus?—he was going to buy her a really nice, really thick and fluffy matching set. And sheets that were criminally soft, and shit, maybe a whole new apartment’s worth of furniture.

“You’re an a*shole, Gillman,” Izzy repeated now, “but you’re an intelligent a*shole, and deep down you’re a good guy with a heart of f*cking gold. So if you’re really worried about it—maybe about what Eden said about the name-calling, which is definitely uncool, bro—then you should go in. You know, for counseling. It can’t hurt. That Al-Anon stuff, too, you know, for adult children of alcoholics? It’s a good idea. I read a lot about it back when …”

Back when Eden had first left, and Izzy had been certain it would only be a matter of time before she’d return. He’d wanted to be ready to help her, however he could.

“I read about it,” Izzy finished.

But Danny knew exactly what he hadn’t said. “You’re the one who needs counseling. What you’re doing? With Eden? It’s f*cked up.”

Izzy nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“I couldn’t do it,” Dan said, shaking his head. “Even just the thought of Jenn with other men … I mean, I don’t own her, either, but … I just don’t know how that could be even remotely okay.”

“Well, she’s not with them,” Izzy pointed out. “I have to admit that the look-but-don’t-touch rule plays heavily into it. You know, the making-it-bearable.”

And now Dan was looking at him as if he’d just spoken in Mandarin Chinese. “Look but don’t …” he repeated.

It was as if a cartoon lightbulb was switched on glaringly bright over Izzy’s head, at the exact same moment that a second one lit up over Dan’s noggin.

“Holy shit, bro,” Izzy said, “did you actually think—”

“Jesus,” Dan spoke at the same time, “I thought Eden was, you know, hooking, but—”

“Your sister’s an exotic dancer,” Izzy told him, getting the facts out there as quickly and efficiently as he could. “A stripper. On a stage. In a club called D’Amato’s. No one touches her. The bouncers are solid, the rules are absolute. I’ve been there. There’s no back room, although the parking lot is sketchy. But inside? What you see is absolutely all that you get.”

“Jesus,” Dan said again. “I thought …”

Danny actually thought his sister was a prostitute—and holy crap, no wonder he’d been so amazed at the idea that Izzy was down with that.

For two men who were both smart enough to become Navy SEALs, they were pretty freaking stupid to have failed to notice that, for the entire past discussion, they’d been talking about two different things.

Like Izzy, Dan was now sitting there, rerunning everything that had been said since Eden and Izzy had come through the apartment door.

Danny had called his sister a whore because he’d actually thought she was. A whore. Professionally. Because it was legal to turn tricks in parts of Nevada. And in other parts, like Las Vegas’s Clark County? The cops tended to look the other way.

Not that any of that made it okay. At least not for Eden, and Jesus, not for Izzy, either.

Out in the living room, Eden and Jenn had no doubt had a similar revelation, because there came a quiet knock on the bathroom door, then Jenn’s voice: “Dan? Danny? I’m sorry to bother you, but we were wrong. Eden’s a stripper. But even that’s kind of secondary to the fact that while she and Izzy were at the mall asking about Neesha, someone shot at them. With a gun.”

Izzy reached over and opened the door as Danny looked up at him, in disbelief. “Jesus Christ, Zanella,” he said, “what the hell …?”


“Neesha,” Eden called quietly as Izzy followed her through the door that accessed the stairs leading down to the basement, where the building’s laundry room was located, along with about a dozen storage spaces with garagelike metal doors that slid up and down and were secured with padlocks.

She didn’t like coming down here in the daytime—at night it was even spookier. But having Izzy with her was a real game changer.

“It’s me, Eden,” she called. “Ben’s sister?”

But there was no answer, no sound of movement, and when she looked inside, the laundry room was empty.

Eden watched as Izzy went down the row of storage spaces, checking that each lock was secure—in between glances back at her. No doubt to make sure she wasn’t about to crumble.

It had been a day and evening filled with more than its share of unpleasant and frustrating surprises, that was for sure.

“I can’t believe Neesha was here,” Eden said, now, because she just knew Izzy was about to start talking about Danny’s incredible disrespect, and she didn’t want to go there. Not now.

“Yeah,” Izzy agreed as he came back down the hall toward her. “It’s a pretty cruel irony.”

Apparently, while she and Izzy and Danny and Jenn were at the hospital, Neesha had used the key Ben kept hidden outside of the apartment to come in, take a shower, eat a meal, and commit petty larceny by stealing several items from Eden’s stripper clothes drawers.

Not that Eden wouldn’t have lent her what she needed, should Neesha have just asked. After all, she had an excess.

On her second day of work, she’d inherited an entire costume trunk from a woman who was exactly her size, who was leaving D’Amato’s to have a baby. She wasn’t planning on coming back and had given it to Eden in a pay-it-forward way. So Eden had ended up with far more stripper clothes than she’d ever need—two dresser drawers full—which Neesha had apparently found while snooping through Eden’s things last time she was here with Ben.

“While you were in the bathroom with Danny,” Eden told Izzy now, “Jenn said that Neesha came over to snag one of my stripper outfits. She said that’s at least partly why she and Danny thought what they thought, because Neesha said something to them about borrowing some clothes that didn’t make her look like a little girl, because she didn’t want to have to have sex with the freaks.”

“Really?” Izzy asked.

Eden nodded as they went back up the stairs. “Why do guys find that hot?” she asked. “The little-girl thing?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “because I don’t.”

She glanced back at him. “So, like, if I dressed up in, you know, a Catholic schoolgirl uniform, you wouldn’t like that?”

“Hmm,” he said. “That’s kind of a touchy question, considering a lot of people think you’re kind of permanently wearing a schoolgirl uniform, because you’re too young for me. People including your brother.”

“He’s an idiot.”

“He certainly is opinionated,” Izzy said evenly. “And some of his opinions are idiotic. But the math is the math. I’m eleven years older than you.”

“Ten and a half,” she countered. “And it’s not a problem for me. Your being so elderly.”

He smiled at that, as she’d hoped he would. “Good to know. And as long as we’re being honest here, your being nubile has never been a problem for me. And if you really got into the whole wearing-a-school-uniform thing, I’d muscle through. Although I’d prefer you waiting to don it until you’re fifty and I’m sixty-one.”

“So you do think it’s hot.”

Izzy laughed. “Sweetheart, if you wore a giant Hefty trash bag and asked me to wear bubble wrap around my head while we got it on, I’d find that molten-lava hot. You want to role-play and pretend we’re historical figures—I’ll be George, you be Martha? I’m there. I’m still reeling from the missed opportunity at the mall. I was totally ready to be Billy Bob to your Irma Lou.”

“I think Billy Bob was Irma Lou’s brother,” she told him, dancing out of his grasp.

“Oh, that’s so wrong,” he said, stopping there on the stairs.

“Yeah,” Eden said, turning to look down at him. She rarely saw him from this vantage point, and it was nice. He was extremely attractive from every angle, and the amusement in his eyes made her smile back at him, even though the information she was about to give him was nothing to smile about. “About as wrong as Neesha, who looks like she’s around twelve telling Danny that she’d stay only if he paid—and then giving him a crotch grab.”

“Whoa, did Jenn tell you that?” Izzy’d started up the stairs, toward her, but that stopped him short again. He laughed his disbelief as she nodded. “It’s been one hell of a night for Danbo, too, huh? Did his head explode?”

“Probably.” Eden smiled again despite her deep and growing concern for the girl. “Am I a bad person if I admit that I really wish I’d been there to see that?”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m a bad person, too.”

“Jenn said it really freaked him out.”

“Yeah, I bet.” He laughed again.

Getting grabbed like that had been Dan’s big surprise of the night—that and accidentally clobbering Jenn.

Of course, that had been Jenn’s big surprise. Getting knocked on her butt by her supposedly perfect boyfriend.

While Eden had been horrified, she hadn’t exactly been surprised when it had happened. And yes, Izzy’d since convinced her that Dan wasn’t the domestic violence train wreck Eden had instantly imagined, just waiting to explode off the tracks. Still, she knew for a fact that her brother had to learn to slow down and be more careful. Because even though accidentally decking your girlfriend wasn’t even half as awful as intentionally punching her in the face, it was still a very bad thing. And although Dan wasn’t quite as tall and as broad as Izzy, he was still a big and very solid man.

Eden knew, because she’d gotten in Dan’s way and been knocked over by him a time or two in the past few years. Never intentionally—that was true. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

As far as the evening’s other surprises went, Greg showing up at the hospital fell under the category of bad, while Dan’s continuing inability to reach Ivette was no surprise at all.

Getting shot at while at the mall—a big surprise for everyone, including Dan and Jenn when they’d found out.

After the complete story had been told, Eden had overheard Izzy and Dan talking about being better prepared—as in making sure the next time someone fired on them, if there was a next time, their only option wasn’t to duck and cover. She hadn’t pushed it, but she knew that they were cooking up a plan to get armed.

And then, of course, there was Eden’s surprise at finding out that her brother and his new girlfriend believed she earned her living on her back. It had been devastating, realizing just how little Danny thought of her.

Of course, he’d made it clear, after emerging from his bathroom conference with Izzy, that he didn’t think very highly of her choice to become a stripper, either. Yeah, she wasn’t selling her body for cash, but to him, it was damn close. Eden may not have been a whore, but in his eyes—it was so obvious—she was a whore-lite.

But it was possible that that was how he’d see her, even if she’d announced she was ridding herself of her worldly possessions, entering a nunnery, and devoting her life to try to out-Mother-Teresa Mother Teresa.

“You okay?” Izzy asked her now as they emerged into the courtyard. Eden was looking around to see if Neesha was there, and she realized she’d gotten too quiet.

She glanced over to find Izzy watching her with that look in his eyes that made her believe he already knew what she was thinking. Still, she nodded. Chin up. “Yeah.”

“Rough day,” he said, unwilling to just let it all go.

Eden nodded. “But Ben’s safe at the hospital,” she said. And that was the most important thing. “Right?”

Izzy smiled his reassurance. “He’s very safe,” he said. “The nursing staff’s on high alert. Even if our skinhead shooter finds out Ben’s there, he’s not going to get anywhere near him. Not in the pediatrics ward.” He paused. “But if you want, after we finish searching for Neesha, I could go back over there. You know. Just sit with him.”

“You’d do that?” she asked, even though he was standing right there, completely bullcrap free and totally sincere in his offer.

He smiled and tried to shrug it off. “It’s not a big deal.”

But her heart was in her throat, and all of the stress and emotion of the past few days was pressing against her eyes, making them flood with tears that she had to work furiously to blink away, because Izzy was with her. She wasn’t in this alone—for at least as long as she could keep his interest up.

He’d told her, back in the car, that he’d keep on wanting her, forever. But she’d learned the hard way that forever was a myth.

“Is it okay if I come, too?” she asked him, in a voice that didn’t quite sound like her own.

Izzy continued to look at her with those eyes that could see through her. “You really going to let your brother chase you out of your own home?”

“It’s not my home,” she said. “It’s just a … temporary place to … sleep.”

Eden had to turn away, because the way he seemed to be able to see inside of her head was just too disturbing. What if he realized she’d meant what she said in the car, that she really never had stopped loving him?

But he didn’t want to hear that, didn’t want to know. He didn’t want anything from her besides really great sex.

Which was more than she’d hoped for, but at times like this, when she was tired and feeling emotionally battered? It seemed heartbreakingly inadequate.

The courtyard was empty—Neesha wasn’t waiting for them there. No one was out there—at this time of night, the building’s residents didn’t linger. Besides, it was still unnaturally hot. In the desert it was supposed to cool off at night, but tonight the air felt like an eye-melting blast from an oven, which was particularly disconcerting in the darkness.

Still, Eden started to make a quick circuit of the place, heading out toward the street so they could walk completely around the building. The streets were mostly empty, too. The few cars that went past moved purposefully down the road—people heading home after a night of work.

“You know, he doesn’t know you,” Izzy said after they’d walked for a bit in silence. “Danny. So you shouldn’t let his disapproval—”

“You don’t know me, either,” Eden cut him off. He’d said those very words to her just a short hour ago, back in the rental car, in that parking lot. “Can we just move on to a different topic? I mean, if you want, I can tell you how this one ends. You say, yeah, well, I know you better than Dan does, and I remind you that you thought I might’ve been hooking, too. And then we fall into an awkward silence, because you can’t deny it, so then we both feel like crap. Or at least I do.”

“When did you last have one?” he asked, apparently choosing to forgo the awkward silence and feelings of crap and move back to their previous conversation. “A home that wasn’t just a place to sleep?”

Eden had to think about it, because the first thing that popped into her head was a crystal-clear memory of cleaning his apartment, in San Diego, right before she’d left. The space was all Izzy’s and yet … She’d never felt out of place there. In an odd way, she’d belonged. But, again, she knew he didn’t want to hear that. He’d think she was manipulating or playing him or just flat-out lying. So she tried to remember and came up with …

“New Orleans,” she said. “It was … rocky at times, but Dan was already in the Navy. We moved into a new house—new for us, I mean—and it was small but nice. There was a garden and … Ivette was with Charlie—he was this great big black man with this big laugh and I think she actually might’ve really loved him.

“Sandy was just out of rehab, and when she first married Ron—she met him at AA—things were pretty good. Ron owned the store—sporting goods—and we all worked there. Even Ben and me, after school and on weekends. It was the closest thing to normal we ever had.”

They’d almost felt like a family.

But Ron was an addict, too, and he’d relapsed first, then Sandy, not long after the store suffered smoke damage, after another shop in the same building had a fire. Ron’s insurance wouldn’t cover the ruined merchandise, and things quickly went to hell in a handbasket. Sandy and Ron lost their house in the resulting fallout, and moved in with them, kids and all, as they both struggled to reclaim their sobriety and get their business back on its feet.

Then Charlie had had a heart attack and died, out on the driveway. It was right around that same time that Eden had been so sorely deceived by John Franklin, with whom she’d lost her virginity. Danny had come home for the funeral and had heard John’s bragging about what had gone down in the back of his car—and ever since then her brother had treated Eden like she was some foul-smelling dog crap that had attached itself to the bottom of his shoe.

And yet all of that had been child’s play compared to Katrina.

Izzy was thinking the same thing. “Then Katrina happened,” he said, “and the shit hit the fan.”

Another topic she didn’t want to discuss.

Except Izzy couched it in terms of Ben. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he said, “but I heard you talking to Ben and … I just, um … I get it, you know? Why we’re still out here looking for Neesha.”

“He still feels awful about not saving Deshawndra,” Eden told him, because she could talk about that part of it. “I do, too. She was this funny little black girl whose family had lived in Orleans Parish forever, and she and Ben were always trying to get me to play some stupid game with them, but I usually didn’t and I should have, because when I did, I always had fun. She lived with her grandmother, and they both died up in their attic. And Lord, when I say it like that, it sounds almost peaceful, but it wasn’t, it couldn’t have been. They made it up there so they wouldn’t drown because the water was up to the roofline, but then they were trapped. It had to be two hundred degrees up there in the days after the storm—it was a hundred in the shade. The autopsy wasn’t clear whether they cooked to death or died of thirst—either way it was painful and awful and I know Ben’s spent a lot of time thinking about it, because I have, too. And Deshawndra’s mother—she was serving in Iraq. Can you imagine coming home to that?”

“I can’t,” he said.

“Deshawndra was smart and she was tough,” Eden said. “She wouldn’t take anyone’s crap. Never. Not even mine. And she could sing. She and Ben had this plan to go try out for American Idol as soon as she turned sixteen, and now—”

She broke off and focused on walking, on looking down the street for Neesha. But nothing moved on the sidewalks. There was no sound but the shush of the tires on the road as another car went past.

Izzy was silent, just waiting for her to continue.

So she did. “Her grandmother was a retired music teacher, and still gave clarinet and piano lessons to the neighborhood kids, including Ben. I swear, he lived in that house. After he found out they both died, he just, I don’t know. He shut down. We moved to Houston first—not by choice, but more because we ended up there. That was where Ivette met Greg—they were both in physical therapy. She broke her arm and he’d been in a car accident, and suddenly she found God—along with Greg’s big insurance settlement—and then they were married. Except, just like that, the money was gone—I still don’t know how they blew it—and the honeymoon was over, but we were moving to Las Vegas. And Ben kept everything locked up inside, partly because Greg is such a dick. Neesha’s the first friend he’s made in all those years. I think maybe he feels like … if he can help her, he can maybe forgive himself for not insisting Deshawndra and her grandmother get into our car when we left.”

“He was eleven,” Izzy pointed out. “Most eleven—or fifteen-year-olds, for that matter—don’t have a say in who does or doesn’t get into the car they’re riding in.”

“But he was driving,” Eden told him. “He was, then I took over, and … I should have stopped to get them. But I couldn’t. I …” She shook her head. She really didn’t want to talk about this anymore. She didn’t want to think about it.

“You were driving,” he repeated.

“It was Ron’s car—my brother-in-law’s.”

She and Izzy had made a complete circuit of the block and were back on the main road, where a bench sat at the deserted bus stop. She pointed to it. “Mind if we just sit for a few minutes?” she asked. “I want to give Neesha a chance to come out of hiding. You know, maybe if she’s nearby and she sees us …?”

“That’s a smart idea,” Izzy said as he sat down beside her. “So how come the two of you were driving? As if I don’t know?”

“Ron was high. Can we not talk about Katrina?”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “I just … I know what it’s like to lose a friend and …”

“Frank O’Leary.” She named the SEAL who’d died in the same terrorist attack that had left those grim-looking scars on Izzy’s chest.

He looked surprised.

“You told me about him,” she reminded him.

“I know,” he said. “I just didn’t expect you to remember his name.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked.

Izzy was looking at her with an expression on his face that she absolutely couldn’t read. But then he kind of laughed. “Because we talked about him, I don’t know, once, a long time ago?”

Eden glanced behind her, hoping that Neesha would appear. But she didn’t. Lord, she was tired, and she didn’t want to sit here, talking about things that made her want to burst into tears and throw herself into Izzy’s arms, and say things he didn’t want to hear. So she brought them safely back to sex—where they were both in agreement. “I remember all of our conversations. Including one you’d probably prefer I forget.”

Izzy definitely laughed at that, and she knew he knew that she was talking about a conversation they’d had on their wedding night, after she’d gone down on him for the first time, where she’d referred to his man-parts as “Mr. Big.”

No, Izzy had said, pulling sharply back to look at her. Nuh-uh. No way are you naming my dick.

Too late, she’d teased him.

No it’s not.

You can call him whatever you want, she’d said, and I’ll—

Great, he’d interrupted her. I’m going to get a little boring here and call it “my penis.” Not Mr. Penis, not mister anything. No him, no, thank you. With the understanding that I do appreciate the ego-stroking behind the whole big thing. I mean, you’re the mastermind behind Pinkie, so it could’ve gone in an entirely different direction. But here’s the deal, Mrs. Zanella, I have an absolute no-name policy for body parts.

As far as nicknames went, that Mrs. Zanella had made them both freeze with the eye-opening reality of what they’d just done at the little Happy Ending Wedding Chapel. They were legally married. For richer or poorer, for better or worse.

Ten long months later, even after spending all that time apart, Eden was still Mrs. Zanella—at least in the eyes of the law.

And despite the fact that she’d all but promised never to utter those words again, he was still Mr. Big.

“I know what you’re thinking, smart-ass,” Izzy said. “So stop it.”

Eden had to laugh, even as she leaned slightly forward to check if that really was a shadow that moved across the street, or just her tired eyes playing tricks on her. Come on, Neesha … “Okay, Amazing Kreskin. If you’re so good at reading my mind, what am I thinking now?”

“You’re still thinking about Katrina,” he said, “because you’re still hoping Neesha will show up, and thinking about her makes you think about everything Ben lost because the levees broke, even though you hate thinking about it. Eed, I have to confess that I’ve been thinking about it, too—for a long time. Ever since I knew that you were there and lived through it. I always wondered what you’d lost, and now I know a little bit more. I know you lost your home.”

Eden just shook her head. She’d lost so much more than that. She’d lost everything. She’d lost herself, for too many long, dark years.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it right now,” Izzy said. “But if you ever do …?”

She made herself nod, okay, but she wouldn’t say anything. Not now, not ever. Because Izzy really didn’t want to know. He thought he did, but if he ever found out …?

He wouldn’t believe her. Her own mother hadn’t.

And there it was. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to know, but that Eden didn’t want to face his disbelief.

Their silence stretched on as she focused on a passing car, watching its taillights moving down the street, hoping that when it disappeared, Neesha would come out from wherever she’d been hiding.

But the car turned a distant corner and nothing moved in the shadowy stillness of the night.

And Izzy let Katrina go. He went back to their earlier conversation, pre-Mr. Big.

“You know, I’m kind of like you,” he said. “A nomad. We moved a lot when I was a kid, and because I was the youngest, I rarely got my own room. They just kind of stuck me on the couch, wherever we lived. I was a post-vasectomy surprise—I ever tell you that?”

Eden shook her head.

“Obviously, the procedure didn’t work.” He smiled. “My brothers were all much older than me, and my parents were pretty much done with raising kids when I came along. I’m not complaining—it was an interesting way to grow up. Always sitting with the adults, never really treated like a child. At least not by my parents. My brothers could be pretty brutal, because I was always tagging along. School was optional—depending on whether or not my brother Martin was home. He was my Obi-Wan Kenobi, if you know what I mean.”

“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi,” she said. “You’re my only hope.”

“Exactly,” Izzy said.

“How many brothers did you have?”

“Four,” he told her. “Martin was the oldest—he was fifteen when I was born; then there’s Nick, who’s a year younger than M., then the twins, the Double D—Dougie and Don. They were two years younger than Nick, twelve years older than me. I was like the weirdest only-child ever, because they all left home and went to college or whatever, and then came back and lived with us at one point or another, sometimes with their wives or girlfriends and/or children in tow. But by then I was, I don’t know, nine? Ten? And suddenly I was kicked out of my room again, and there were infants in the house. Which got old really fast for my parents, but not for me. It was a good excuse to not go to school. I’m babysitting.”

“So you … just didn’t go?” Eden asked.

“Pretty much,” Izzy said. “But it was okay, because I was reading and doing math on a college level when I was seven, so school was really just a place to handle the boredom by getting into massive amounts of trouble. It was probably better for everyone when I didn’t show up. Although I prolly could’ve used the socialization skills—assuming I was capable of learning them. Which I’m not sure I was. Anyway, my point, when I started telling you all this, is because we moved so often—I’m talking at least once if not twice every year. My parents’ passion was to buy old houses—really old antiques—and fix them up and sell them, so it was chaos on all levels, living in a construction zone, always going—or not going—to a new school … So, it’s hard for me to think of any one place as home. I mean, right now I’m still living in that same apartment, but when I’m there? It doesn’t feel like anything special. It’s like it’s just a giant box that holds my shit. It’s where I sleep when I’m in San Diego.”

“I liked your apartment,” she said.

“But it’s not home,” Izzy told her. “I know all these people who are so wrapped up in having things, you know? And they buy a house and they get what they think is perfect furniture and … Jenk—you know Mark Jenkins? He and his wife, Lindsey, are having a baby, and he’s all about moving out of their condo into a house with a yard. The kid’s not going to be hitting a swing set for another few years—she’s only a few months pregnant …” He shook his head. “But the truth is, home’s an illusion. We try to create this place that’s supposed to make us feel happy or safe, when in truth it’s the people who are around us that matter. Where we are has nothing to do with it.”

“I’m safe right now,” Eden said. “When I’m with you, I feel very safe. Can I say that? Am I allowed?”

Izzy smiled at her then as he took her hand, interlacing their fingers. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll accept that as a fact. As a Navy SEAL, I tend to make people feel either very secure or extremely insecure.”

“I’m in the first subset,” she told him.

“Glad to hear it,” he said. “For the record? I’m personally feeling pretty happy right at this moment, so … Home, sweet home on a bus-stop bench, you know?”

And sitting there with Izzy, in the heat of the Las Vegas night, Eden did know. But she didn’t dare tell him so.


Jenn still had a reddish mark on her face where Dan had hit her, and the sight of it made him sick.

“You weren’t kidding when you said this was going to be hard for you,” she said, after Eden and Izzy went out to look for Neesha.

“I won’t blame you,” he said, “if you decide that you … should go.”

She was standing there, with her hair still rumpled from bed, wearing her pajamas, looking at him as if she were truly considering catching the next flight back to New York.

But then she asked, “Which would be harder? Doing what you’re doing here, with Eden and Ben, or learning how to walk and live your life with only one leg?”

Her question caught him completely by surprise, but the answer was obvious. “It definitely would’ve been harder to lose my leg,” he admitted. “Because this would’ve still been happening, only without me here to help. Yeah, right, I’m really helping. But still, I’d’ve been going crazy, plus dealing with losing … Jesus, everything.”

“Not everything,” Jenn said quietly. “You know, I came to Germany partly because everyone was saying the doctors were going to have to amputate, and I didn’t want you to have to go through that alone. I wanted to be there. For you. To help you, if I could. And I know I probably wouldn’t have—”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “It would’ve helped. It did help. Having you there.” To his complete horror, he started to cry again. “Jenni, Christ, I’m so sorry. I’m—”

“Shhh,” she said, moving into his arms and just holding him. She was so soft and warm and she smelled so good—like everything he’d ever wanted. Like happiness and laughter and the incredible peacefulness he felt, just lying with her in his arms. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. What if Eden’s right?”

“She’s not.” Jenn was absolute. “She doesn’t know you. Not the way I do.”

“I’m going to go in.” Dan told her what Zanella had suggested. “For counseling. Because, Jesus, that scared me …”

He felt her laugh. “Well, hey, you know me. I’m never going to try to talk anyone out of a little counseling—touchy-feely liberal that I am. But … Don’t go for me, Danny, go for you. Go, because what you’re doing here, with your family, is hard. And because everyone needs a little help when things are hard.”

Danny nodded and wiped his eyes as he made himself let her go. “God, you haven’t even met my mother and … Jenn, I really think you should go back to New York.”

“Back to that again, huh?” she said. “I guess I didn’t make my point. Danny, listen to what I’m saying: I was ready to hold your hand as you talked to your doctors about being fitted for a prosthetic leg. I was ready to help learn to care for your stump until it healed. I was ready for all of it, as hard as it was going to be. And I was ready for you to try to chase me away.”

And great, now she was crying, and it was getting him going again.

“And I wasn’t going to let you do it. I wasn’t going to be chased,” she said. “And this? Yeah, it’s hard. But it’s not half as hard as that. So why would I leave, when I know that you need me?”

Dan kissed her. “I do,” he said. “God, baby, I need you.”

And she kissed him back, and for that moment, with Jenn in his arms, he could almost believe that she was right and that everything was going to be okay.

At least until the next anvil dropped on their heads.