Zee laughed a hollow, disbelieving sound. He was so sick of this bullshit. So sick. So done. So hurt.
He could feel it all spiraling down around him. “Yeah, and I need my girlfriend back. Don’t see either of those things happening any time soon.”
Sitting alone in the vacancy of his darkened apartment, Zee tossed back another swig.
The bottle he’d cracked open thirty minutes before was half-empty, the dark, dark fluid sloshing down the sides as he attempted to balance it on his knee.
A fiery burn flamed down his throat, his stomach a pool of fire and venom.
He attempted to focus through bleary eyes, his head spinning against the weight of his heart.
Julie left him.
Mark threw him under the bus.
He didn’t have anything left.
Sorrow pushed against the anger bottled tight in his chest. So damned tight he could feel it getting ready to blow.
So he drowned it.
He lifted the bottle and gulped another mouthful, fighting the surge of fury, blinking as he tried to make sense of the sound hammering against his ears.
Groaning, he tried to ignore it.
More pounding.
He clambered to his feet, quick to grip the arm of the couch when the room spun, the bottle clutched against his chest like a lifeline. He looked toward the floor, sucking in air as his mind tripped through a muddle of confusion and doubt and regret.
I just wanted my brother back.
I just wanted my brother back.
Instead, his brother had stolen everything.
Pound. Pound. Pound.
Floundering for the door, he fumbled through the lock and somehow managed to free it.
He reared back, caught off guard by the face on the other side. Tears stained her dazzling face, her brown eyes bright and pleading, one rimmed in fading black and blue.
She wrung her hands. “I’m so sorry to bother you…I just…I needed someone to talk to.”
“Not sure I’m gonna be the best company right now.”
Her chin trembled. “I think you’re the exact kind of company I need.”
The words were out before he could stop them. “What happened to you?”
Her throat wobbled as she fought a fresh round of tears. “He—”
Rage. He didn’t know if he was feeling it for her or for the whole fucked-up situation. Either way, he couldn’t control it, the way it lined his veins like steel.
Fingertips touched his chest, nudging him back. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Grief constricted Zee’s throat, and he shook his head, too hard. It sent his world spinning again. Ground gone.
He tried to catch his breath.
“No…not okay.”
“Me, neither. He…he broke up with me, Zee. I don’t know what’s going on in his head. First you…then me.”
She edged Zee deeper into the hollow loneliness of his apartment. Her voice was a soft whisper of understanding when she spoke. “I can’t believe what he did to you. I’m sorry, Zee. You deserve so much better than that.”
Emotion clogged his throat and burned his eyes. “I just wanted my brother back. I just wanted to be there for him. And Julie…she just fucking left. Didn’t give me a chance to make it right. I can’t make anything right.”
It was all a slur of misery.
“Shh.” She caressed his shoulders. She gave a gentle shove, and Zee slumped back onto the couch, looking up at her with his heart in his throat and his stomach on the floor as he clung to that bottle.
She edged forward, and Zee shivered when she slowly straddled his lap.
“Let’s forget them. They don’t deserve us.”
A shudder ran through Zee’s being.
This time there was no question of her intentions.
And again, there was no stopping his body’s reaction as she fumbled with the buttons of his fly.
Veronica was right.
Fuck them.
Chapter Forty-Six
Alexis
Overcome, I dropped to my knees in the middle of my living room. I held both hands against my chest as if it might keep the torment from pouring out.
Since the moment Zee had come into my life, I’d thought I could feel something building every time I was in his space. The way that intensity had mounted and grown, continually gaining speed.
I’d thought it was propelling us forward. Forcing us in a direction that was good and right. Where the walls that had fought to separate us would be obliterated.
Turned to rubble.
Now I was left wondering who he really was. If everything had been a lie.
Tell me this isn’t cheating.
Hadn’t I felt it then? An unease warning me to take caution?
I just didn’t understand how he could hide something so important from me. Something intrinsic to him. Why didn’t he trust me? That was the one thing I’d asked of him.
Had he been hiding another girl all along?
The thought nearly crushed me.
Broke me in two.
A sob tore up my throat and my chest heaved. Why did every time I got close to my dreams, they got ripped out from under me? Why couldn’t I ever make anything better?
What good was belief when there was nothing left remaining to believe in?
My doorbell rang, and I gasped in surprise, rocking back on my knees. A spray of late afternoon light slanted through the room, lighting up the edges.
Nudging me with hope.
With the desperate need to find reason.
Answers.
I just needed to see his face and know I’d been right to believe.
I jumped to my feet and raced for the door. Without thought, I jerked it open.
I shouldn’t have. I should have been so much smarter than that.
Apparently Chelsey was right.
I had no self-preservation.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Zee
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel of my car, anxious as I inched through the late afternoon traffic that crawled at a snail’s pace.
It was kind of crazy how you feared the consequences of something so much that you carried an inordinate amount of dread as you waited for it to be revealed, all the while praying that moment would never actually come to pass.
Now that the time had come for me to pull it from the shadows, to take the stand and shine light all over my sins, I couldn’t wait to finally lay it out.
To purge the weight.
To give it to someone else and beg them for the chance.
Praying that maybe she’d get it. That she might share it with me.
I zigzagged across lanes, trying to pick up time and distance. Worry needled at my senses.
I couldn’t help but worry for Liam. I prayed the little man was fine. No question, he couldn’t be in better hands than those of my family.
They would embrace him. Accept him. I knew they would.
He was every bit a part of this family as any one of us.
Funny how my entire focus shifted the second the total responsibility of something so utterly important was placed in the care of my hands.
Keeping him that way was gonna be a fight.
A fight I was willing to battle to the end.
That worry needled deeper at the thought of standing in front of Alexis and confessing everything.
Every sin.
My mistakes.
The secrets.
It would be a lot for anyone to take.