Caught in the Glow (The Glower Chronicles Book 1) (17 page)

“Okay,” Kady said. “I don’t
want
to go anywhere. Is she going to be okay?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I think if we get her to the hospital soon, she should be.”

“Then go,” she said. “Just, when you know how she’s doing...”

“Someone will call you,” I said. “I promise. We’re going to get her taken care of, Kady. Don’t worry. The doctors will know what to do. It was really good that you called me.”

She nodded, hugging herself, her face still drawn. Colin was already lifting Fee, cradling her head against his shoulder. Slim as she’d always been, as I saw how easily he picked her up I realized she must have gotten even thinner with all the partying. Those bold structured dresses she favored would have helped hide the change.

I steeled myself and pulled out my phone as we hurried to Colin’s car. Sterling responded to my emergency code text twenty seconds later.

“Avery?” he said, sounding as if I’d woken him up.

“I’m with Fiona,” I said. “She’s... We’re taking her to the emerg at UCLA.”

I could almost feel him snapping alert. “What?” he said. “Tell me everything.”

My last glimpse of Fee that night was the soles of her bare feet gliding away as the emergency room nurse wheeled off her prone body on a gurney. Sterling had just arrived. He stopped next to me, looking after Fee and then glancing over at me—and at Colin beside me. His brow burrowed. When he spoke, his voice had the low flat inflection that told me he was deeply displeased.

“You’d better get your client home,” was all he said.

I wasn’t sure how much he was upset at me, or Fee, or the situation in general. It didn’t seem wise to ask. He’d have taken care of everything else that needed doing, and I guessed the real reckoning would come later. I bobbed my head.

“Let me know as soon as they’re sure she’s all right,” I said.

“Of course.” He turned away.

I trailed after Colin down the echoing hall and across the parking lot. Neither of us spoke as we got into the car. I slumped in the passenger seat. Colin started the engine and turned us back toward his condo building. As the streetlamps flashed by overhead, my mind drifted back to a similar drive some five hours ago. One just as quiet, just as tense, but in a totally different way. A lump rose in my throat.

It had been a beautiful day, and now it was a wretched one. How had it all fallen apart so quickly?

We stood at opposite ends of the elevator, a distance that felt yawning. I kept a couple paces behind him as we stepped into the penthouse. Colin turned over the deadbolt, and my gaze fell on the shirt crumpled on the floor near the kitchen counter—the shirt he’d pulled off me between kisses earlier than evening—and somehow that was the thing that broke me.

I took a gulp of air that turned into a sob and dropped my face into my hands as if I could catch the tears and push them back in. They just kept coming, streaming between my fingers and down my cheeks with each hitch of my breath. My legs wobbled. The space around me felt so empty I was sure Colin had walked off and left me to my pain until a hand tentatively touched my back. I turned toward him instinctively, and he drew me closer, his arms loose but fully around me, his thumb stroking over my hair against the nape of my neck. I gripped his shirt, unable to stop myself from sobbing harder.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “She’ll be okay. I’ve seen people survive after being way more gone than that.”

That didn’t mean they always did. But the words sank in, gradually, giving me at least enough of a defense to barricade myself against that fear. My tears started to slow. I wiped at my eyes and my nose, conscious of the wet streaks I’d left on Colin’s shirt. When I’d gathered myself enough that I trusted myself to look at him, I eased back.

“Sorry,” I said.

“You don’t have to apologize,” he said, but he didn’t meet my eyes, and his voice was stiff. “She’s you’re friend. Of course you care about her.”

I heard the echo of a past conversation that had happened here in this room, when he’d challenged me about how I cared about
him
. Did he really think Fee was the only person I was frightened for?

Colin stepped away, heading for his bedroom. He’d made it halfway there before I managed to force out another sound.

“Can we talk?” I said.

He stopped, but he didn’t turn back. The set of his shoulders looked like a wall. “I think I said everything I needed to,” he said.

“Well, then maybe you need to listen,” I said. “Because there are things I still need to say.”

He sighed, but he faced me then, braced as if he expected me to hit him, his expression wary. I’d hurt him that much, with just a few thoughtless words.

He’d
cared that much, that my words could hurt him.

I swallowed hard. “I think you got the wrong idea about what I started to say, before. There are two things I want you to be absolutely clear on.” I paused, grappling with the words. “I was attracted to you from the first time I saw you at Rushfield,” I went on. “Even more, the first time I saw you here. I didn’t fake how much I wanted everything we’d done together. And it isn’t just the physical stuff—I’ve been around you, I’ve seen you—not always in the best situations, but enough to know you’re funny, and kind, and passionate about the actual music, not just getting famous, and all sorts of other things that make me
like
you. You made me remember that I can’t just bury myself in work and school all the time, that I should be enjoying my life too.”

“But?” Colin prompted.

I risked stepping a little closer. He didn’t move to meet me, but he didn’t draw back either. “I wanted to be with you,” I said. “I did. But I’m not the sort of person who can get into some casual fling and then just walk away. I knew the more involved we got, the harder it was going to be when it was over.”

“What made you so sure all
I’d
want was a fling?” he asked.

I gave him a look. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that the first day I was here, you made sure I’d see you having fun with your friend on the terrace. Or the fact that you had a different girl here less than a week later. Or that less than a week after that, you were practically drooling over that woman I didn’t know you knew was a Glower. And it wasn’t as if you were talking long term plans or grand romance with me. How do you
think
I got the impression you weren’t looking to settle down?”

Colin opened his mouth, and closed it again. “All right,” he said after a moment. “I guess that’s fair. I never really... It was to try to get their attention. The Glowers. They seemed to like the stars who ran a little wild.” I raised an eyebrow, and to my surprise he blushed. “And, okay, I did get some enjoyment out of it.”

“Then there’s the other thing you have to know,” I said. “Yes, maybe if I weren’t doing this job, if we’d met under normal circumstances and you didn’t have Glowers hovering around you, I wouldn’t have wanted things to move so fast. Maybe I’d have wanted to take a little time to be sure I wasn’t getting in over my head. But I didn’t hook up with you
because
of the job. It wasn’t to get some glowing performance report or a quarterly bonus. I was worried about you, for
you
—I hated thinking that what happened to my dad could happen to you—I
cared
. I cared so much I couldn’t help thinking that protecting you and your happiness any way I could was worth getting my heart broken.”

I stepped forward again, right up to him, my eyes locked with his. I still couldn’t read any acceptance in his face, but he stayed there.

“So I’m sorry,” I finished, my voice shaking, “if I got a little angry at the thought that you didn’t care about yourself the same way. But you can’t say I was using you to get something for myself. I gave you
everything
.”

I pressed my hand to his chest in a little shove for emphasis, and he caught my fist. “Avery,” he said, his voice strained. I found myself blinking away fresh tears. He traced his thumb over my cheek, brushing aside one that had slipped out. His jaw flexed. Then all at once he was cupping my face, pulling my mouth to his.

The kiss was rough and needy, but that was fine. I hadn’t thought Colin Ryder would ever be kissing me again. I kissed him back with the same fervor, my arms looping behind his neck.

He lifted me, groaning as our bodies pressed together, and carried me the few steps to the sofa. As he lay me down on the buttery leather without breaking the next kiss, his hands were already sliding up under my shirt. I hadn’t bothered with a bra when I’d pulled it on, hadn’t thought I’d be leaving the penthouse tonight and had been too panicked over Fee to think of it before. He found my bare breasts with a hum of pleasure that rippled from him into me, and pinched the nipples between his thumb and forefinger with a pressure that made me gasp. My hips canted against his, provoking another groan.

There was no gentle teasing this time, no slow burn. Colin dropped his hand to venture beneath my skirt, exploring the dampness already spreading on my panties. I whimpered a plea against his mouth. His lips crushed against mine as he yanked the panties past my knees, fumbling with his jeans a second later. I didn’t care. I was ready. He paused just long enough to retrieve a condom, and then it seemed before I’d even had time to gather my breath he was pushing inside me, all the way to the hilt.

He thrust hard and desperate as his kisses, but even so his hand stayed between us, massaging the nub above my core. I moaned, lost between those sparks of pleasure and the electric fission within. The room spun around us. As I bowed up, the hard length of him found that sensitive spot within. Just that one touch sent a pulsing, shuddering wave of release through my body. Colin arched over me, thrusting a few more times before his breath stuttered with his own release.

I looked up at him braced above me, the muscles standing out in his corded arms, as the stars faded from my vision and the heat of the moment faded away. He met my gaze. Still inside me, softening but no less filling me, and yet I could see in the distance in his eyes that I hadn’t reached him. Not really, not in the ways that mattered. And with that every other part of me felt empty.

He withdrew with a gentleness completely at odds with the way we’d come together and eased back on the sofa, tugging his clothes back into order. I guessed I might as well do the same. I found my panties dangling from one ankle and slid them up under my skirt, trying not to think of him, of the act that should have been intimate and now somehow felt the opposite, as the fabric settled between my legs.

“That’s the last time we should do that,” Colin said, staring straight ahead. “However I feel about you or you feel about me, I’m not changing my mind about getting marked. And you obviously can’t accept that decision. So there we are.”

The pang of loss I felt was nothing compared to the tension I could see in his face, coiled through his shoulders. I found the ache in my chest was for him as well as for me.

“Then there’s one more thing you have to know,” I said. “You don’t need any Glower’s help to make music people are going to love, that’s going to last. You’ve got a gorgeous voice, you play like you were born with a guitar in your hands. You don’t need them for anything.”

Colin’s brow knit as he glanced at me, and I realized with a shock that he honestly didn’t believe it.

“You can say that,” he said, “but I know how I got here. It’s the same way I got that Glower interested in me. I put on a good show, I act a little crazy, and people take notice. It’s got nothing to do with the music I’m making. That’s what people liked about me at Rushfield, that’s what got Brian’s attention, that’s why the record label thinks they can make money off me. If I’d just been sitting with a guitar on a stool in some coffeehouse, no one would have given me the time of day.”

I doubted that. “You don’t think it’s possible it could be both?” I said quietly. “That you could be good at getting people’s attention with the way you act,
and
good at making music?”

He lowered his head. “I’m not saying I’m crap. I’m just saying... This is my big break. This could be the one time I get this much money and press thrown at me. And when I’m in the studio, playing, singing, nothing sounds
right
, nothing sounds like a song that’ll be more than a brainworm in someone’s ear for a few weeks until the next thing comes along. I want to be more than that, while I have the chance. While it
matters
.”

I reached for his hand, and he let me take it. I clasped it between both of mine, resting it on my knee.

“You know,” I said, “I don’t think—most people at the Society don’t think—that the Glowers actually make anyone more talented. They’ll puff you up with extra confidence, push you past the fear that you won’t be good enough, that you’ll screw up, anything that holds you back from the best you could do. But that talent is in there either way. There are ways you can reach that best without them.”

“You think,” Colin said. “You don’t know.”

“No,” I acknowledged. “There aren’t any Glower manuals lying around, and they’d obviously
like
people to think they’re offering something sparkly and magical. But I can tell you I’ve never seen anyone produce something after they were marked that’s
so
far beyond what they were creating before that I can’t imagine they could have come up with it otherwise.”