“Hey. I have a question, Trey. About last night…”

I stop eating, look at her, and she’s the Harley I’m crazy about. I should just kiss her again. But I don’t know if everything changed last night, or nothing. I don’t know if we’re coming or going. Harley is both my best friend and my biggest fear. I need to put my armor on, protect myself from her. But I don’t know where I left it.

“Yeah?” I raise an eyebrow. Waiting for her question. Hoping she’s going to say she’s done with Cam, done with her past, and she wants me as much as I want her. If she said that, I’d tell her. If she told me I was the only one, I’d chuck all the damn rules, and tell her I think about her all the time, and it’s not obsession, it’s not addiction, it’s something.

Something real.

“You said you had three brothers, Trey. You never told me that before.”

The moment slips out of focus and the room blurs.

That’s not what she’s supposed to say.

That’s not what I’m supposed to hear.

That’s not what anyone’s supposed to know.

Because we don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about them.

The floor starts spinning, and my stomach plummets to the ground. There’s a ringing in my ears, and it spreads through my whole head, rattling hard against my skull. I said that? What the fuck is wrong with me? Why the hell would I have said that?

“What do you mean?” I ask in a strangled voice, as if there are rocks in my mouth.

She reaches for me, touches my shoulder, rubs gently. “I asked you about your tattoos.”

I close my eyes, shrug off her touch. No fucking way I said that. This can’t be happening. This moment is a stitch in time, a hiccup. A massive fucking mistake we’re all going to forget in seconds when it’s undone. Because there is no way way I am standing here in yesterday’s clothes with this girl who was with her pimp last night, then with me, and then I told her about the three brothers I never knew. My family that no longer exists. The reason why I became all sorts of fucked up.

I open my eyes, shake my head, adopt a false smile. “That’s crazy,” I say wishing I were an actor so I could pull this off.

She shoots me a worried look. “Crazy? Why?”

“Seriously, Harley. You should not believe the shit I say when I’m drunk.”

Then I grab my phone, check the time, and shake my head. “I gotta jam. I’ll be late and I have ton a of shit to do. I’ll catch up with you later. At the meeting or whatever. Thanks for the bagel. It’s awesome.”

A breeze blows through Michele’s open window, and it feels like a crime that there’s a gentle, warm wind right now. It should be sleeting, hailing, lashing cold, cruel rain at me, like a punishing.

“He died in my fucking arms. My little brother. He died in my arms. How do I tell her that? How do I say that?”

“Like that,” Michele says in a kind, calm voice. “Just like that.”

I drop my head into my hands. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t fucking relive it,” I mutter. I don’t look up. I don’t want to look up. She’s the only person I’ve told, and it’s hard enough to look at my shrink when I talk about them. But I had to see her. I called in late to work and tracked down Michele for an emergency appointment. “It was so awful. Knowing he wasn’t going to live. My parents letting me hold him. And it wasn’t the first time it happened.”

“I know,” she says quietly. “It’s incredibly hard.”

“And I could never say that to her,” I mumble into my hands because they still cover my face.

“But you’re saying it to me. You’ve told me. You can do this, Trey.”

I raise my face. I bet I look like hell right now. A pathetic man. Boy. Man-boy. I don’t even know. “Because you don’t know me. Because I pay you. Because you have to listen.”

“I want to listen. That’s why I’m a therapist. I want to help.”

“You probably think I’m a loser,” I say, and I don’t know why I’m egging her on or fishing badly for compliments, but maybe it’s because my compass is off, the needle all skittish, pointing this way and that way, and I desperately need to right myself. I need an anchor. I need her to be that right now.

“I don’t. I would never think that. I think you are a bright, sensitive, caring young man, and I want to help you believe in yourself, and feel better about all the possibilities. And I know you want that too. That’s why you called in late to work. That’s why you asked to come in. Because you aren’t willing to settle for less from yourself. You want to grow and learn. And the possibility I want you to consider is what would happen if you told Harley?”

I shake my head, narrow my eyes, and run my hand roughly over my chin. I need to shave. I need to get my act together. “I’d fucking break down and cry. Because I would feel it all over again.” I stab my chest with two fingers, knocking them hard against my sternum. Watching him die, after my other baby brothers had died, it was like two giant hands cracking open my chest, reaching in, and hunting for my heart. “It would be like it’s happening again. And I have done everything I can to move on.”

“You have,” she says, nodding. “You’ve also turned to women and to sex and to conquests to move on. And that hasn’t entirely helped, has it?”

The question is an arrow piercing me, cutting through my flesh and blood, exposing nerves and guts and the frightening truth of the last few years of my life. When sex became a numbing agent for the pain.

“No,” I whisper, my voice broken shards of glass.

“Maybe it’s what you need then. To feel it again. To go through that pain. To know you can say it and you’ll survive.”

Chapter Twelve

Harley

The house is quiet when I unlock the door. My mom is nowhere to be seen or heard. She usually calls out to me when I come home, but if the house is silent she must be at the office.

Thank God.

That’s exactly where I need her to be. She’s out on assignment a lot, or meeting sources, or visiting with her editor – my chests tightens when I think of her editor, the woman my mom reveres, the woman who mentored her – for her books. And while she often writes her books and articles from home, she spends time at the office too. She says she likes the discipline, the sound of other voices, the clickety-clack of colleagues tapping away on keyboards. The camaraderie helps fuel her. No surprise. My mom is a social beast.

I say a silent prayer of thanks for her office mates, and now all I have to do is wait thirty more minutes. Miranda said the package – her marked-up pages of edits – would be here around three-thirty. I’ll grab it when it arrives, tuck it under my arm, and like a quarterback with the ball, keep my head down and run like hell out of here.

I leave my purse on the marble table by the door. My stomach rumbles. I never ate lunch. All I had was coffee and toast at the diner this morning. Then I picked up the bagels for Trey.

I feel so stupid just hearing his name in my head. I can’t believe I thought everything he said last night was real and true. Then he point blank admitted to me this morning that I shouldn’t believe a word he says when he’s wasted. Maybe that’s the reminder I need to apply the brakes because I was starting to think there was hope. But capitalistic love and sex and kisses are better. Safer. At least they’re honest. No one’s pretending they feel. The money is on the table, and no one can get hurt.

Without an exchange, you can be played a fool.

With money, everyone is safe.

Cash can be recouped. It can be made and multiplied. Feelings can’t. They are loaned and borrowed and you can never pay them off.

I head to the kitchen.

There’s a tupperware container on the counter, and a Post-in note bearing my name. For Harley, only. Your favorite cookies in the whole world.