Freefall (The Indigo Lounge Series, #5) (32 page)

Two truths smack me in the face as I’m drying myself.

The first is, I don’t care what anyone who sees me with Mason, labels me as. All I want is to be with him.

I also possess a rampantly alive and kicking fountain of jealousy and possessiveness. Enough to equal or even surpass Zach Savage’s. I want to punch in the throat each and every woman that Mason has ever fucked.

The first observation fills me with even more dread. The second I accept with weary resignation. I hadn’t been joking when I’d told Mason I was already fucked up. Learning this new dimension of myself only adds to my unique quirkiness.

I’m chucking cruelly at myself as I leave Mason’s bedroom, wearing nothing but a short silk robe. When I hear voices, I think it’s the restaurant’s concierge, delivering my food.

My feet slam to a halt when I enter the living room.
“Bethany?”

She turns and smiles when she sees me. “There you are! Was thinking I might need to barge in there and pull you out of that shower.”

She reaches me and tugs me into a hug. Beyond her shoulder, I see Zach talking to Mason.

A sense of déjà vu fills me. The last time I’d been in this position had been in Zach and Bethany’s kitchen in Montauk. Then, as now, I’d been filled with turmoil and dread. It’s strange to think so much, and so little, has changed since that day.

Bethany pulls back and stares into my face. I see the concern and anxiety in her blue eyes, and my heart catches.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

Her eyes widen. “Nothing.
I’m
fine. But I was about to ask you the same question.”

A knock on the door stops further conversation. I let the bellboy in and direct him to where to leave the trolley.

The moment he leaves, Bethany grabs my hand and clutches it tight. “We need to talk. Can we go to your suite?” There’s a tension in her body, and I notice that she’s not doing her usual
devour-Zach-from-across-the-room
routine.

In fact, her body is precisely and deliberately turned away from the two men on the balcony.

“Bethany, what the hell’s going on?”

She shuts her eyes for a fortifying second, before she stares sadly at me. “I promised Zach I wouldn’t say anything. He’ll kill me if he knows I’m even thinking about it. But—”

“Stop
fucking
me with, girl, and spill.” Whispering the dirty word brings a ridiculous swell of shame, as if I’m betraying Mason.

As if he’s compelled me, my gaze finds his. He’s staring right back at me, intense speculation narrowing his eyes.

“Not here,” Bethany pleads.

I drag my gaze from Mason’s and nod. Plastering a fake smile on my face, I stride to the trolley and grip the handle.

“Hey, we’re going over to my suite to catch up on wedding stuff,” I lie to Mason without looking him in the eye. “I’ll see you later.”

He jerks straight from the cross-legged, cross-armed position he’d adopted while talking to Zach. I wonder whether he’ll stop me from leaving. I wonder what I’ll do if he does.

“Keely.”

Heart hammering, I turn. He comes to me and catches my face in his hands. His kiss is hard, but brief. Hazel eyes probe mine for a heart-stopping second before he releases me.

“Hurry back.”

I swallow and nod. “Okay.”

Bethany holds the door open, and I wheel the trolley through like a bank robber hightailing it out of a heist.

I don’t know why I’m in a hurry to hear what my best friend has to say.

Because I do know that whatever it is will bat my fucked-up-ness into the next century.

mason

I
stare at the door Keely just walked out of and calmly acknowledge that the feeling spreading its way through my bloodstream is panic.

Not the crash and burn type that leaves just as quickly as it arrives. This is the slow, insidious type that taunts you with its possibilities and ability to grow extra appendages to fuck you with.

It started with the left-field question about Hani. Then grew when I realised how the thought of her interaction with Morton made me feel.

The little shit didn’t have a spine worth crushing, and I’m sure Keely can hold her own more than adequately. And yet none of that matters. The protectiveness that welled up in my chest, and is still present, beacons a chaotic sequence that’s been building since I told her about Toby. Since she let me purge on her.

I recall a conversation with the tribal priest in Roraima. He’d told me I’d never find peace for the chaos that reigns in my heart. I’d informed him that peace was the last thing I wished for, or wanted. He’d told me he would pray that my chaos never quietens.

My chaos isn’t quietening. It’s mutating into something less virulent and less murky, which makes me see through the dense jungles of pain and rage.

She’d looked into my eyes and witnessed what I’d done. Or at least she suspects. She hadn’t called me a monster despite knowing what lives in my soul.

I’m not sure if the open acceptance is better or worse. All I know is I crave her beyond imagining, whether she’s trapped beneath me, giving me what I need, or out of my sight.

The Hani issue isn’t a problem.

The thought that it might keep Keely from me is. Keely is all I need.

“Have you heard a fucking word I’ve said since Keely walked out that door?”

I inhale my irritation and turn to Zach. “So besides bringing your fiancé to help clusterfuck my evening, and then soiling my eardrums with goddamn
small talk
, why are you here?” I ask Zach.

He lifts his beer and takes a long pull. “My staff alerted me that I have a Titus-Morton-shaped problem that needs to be dealt with. Know anything about that?”

“Yeah, the guy’s an asshole. He’ll be a lifeless asshole when I get my hands around his pussy neck.”

“You see, talk like that is why I thought I’d better come and check on my investment before you turn my yacht into a killing field or start throwing guests overboard.”

“Great, I suggest you go take care of your problems and let me deal with mine.”

“I think it might be too late, buddy,” he mutters.

I glance sharply at Zach. “Care to shed some light on that declaration?”

A hard, almost regretful smile twists his lips. “My soon-to-be wife—if she ever stops nitpicking every motherfucking detail of this damned wedding and gets round to actually marrying me—and your...what is she to you, exactly?”

My teeth smash together. “Get to the damn point, Savage.”

Zach shrugs, unconcerned by the seething volatility raking through me. “My Peaches and your Keely are close. Closer than you or I will be comfortable with, if you two survive the shit storm that’s coming long enough to become a thing.”

The roar of the chaos increases, and panic deadens my limbs. “What shit storm. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Keely called last week, after you dumped her.”

“I
didn’t
dump her.” I can barely speak through the poison tearing through my bloodstream. “What did she say when she called?”

“She wanted to know whether there were any bare-assed skeletons in your closet.”

“
What?
”

“You can freak out in your own time when you’re chasing rats the size of lions in that shit of a jungle you’re so crazy about. Right now, shut the fuck up and listen, because I know one of two things is going to happen in the next five minutes. Right now, my Peaches is spilling her sweet little heart to her best friend—despite promising me she won’t—about what happened to Peterson after you got your hands on him.”

“
Mother of Christ!
” I charge for the door, but Zach gets there first.

I knock his hand away intent on chasing down Keeley, but he shakes his head. “It’s too late, man. By now she knows.”

“How? And how the fuck did your woman find out?”

Zach’s eyes gleam. “This is where I’m supposed to say I don’t have any secrets from the woman who holds every beat of my useless heart in her fucking hands, or some shit. And yeah, it’s true. But the unvarnished truth is, she was freaked out with worry about her friend. I couldn’t have that. So I asked a guy I know to look into things.”

I shake my head. “Bullshit. I covered my tracks better than ‘a guy I know to look into things’ standards.”

Zach crosses his arms and leans back against the door. “Let’s agree to disagree on how good we are at what we do. Does Keely know you’re investigating what happened to her six years ago?”

My hand drops from the door in a dead weight. “Shit! How the fuck do you know that?” I spike my fingers through my hair, certain in the knowledge that if there’d been any hope of salvaging anything from the first piece of shit news, it’s just gone out the window with the second.

“She’s important to Bethany, which makes her important to me. And before you throw a tantrum, Bethany doesn’t know about the investigation, or what Keely went through.”

My head snaps up. “She doesn’t?”

“No, and I’m going to make damn sure my little fire cracker doesn’t find out from me. But do me a favor, tell Keely. Trust me, things have a way of coming out whether you want them to or not.”

I thrust my hands into my pockets to keep from putting my fist into the wall. “I don’t intend to let the person or
persons
who violated her get away with it. But yeah, thanks for the hearts and roses and forgiveness sermon,” I snarl.

Zach bares his teeth. “Any time, pal. That code you wrote me ten years ago for tracking my stock made me a bundle and stopped my companies from tanking during the ’08 fuck storm. And I won’t divulge which one, but one of the toys you invented for me makes my Peaches a very happy woman. I figured the least I could do was give you a little man-to-man heads up that your life’s about take on epic clusterfuck proportions. As for letting anyone get away with it, I’ll go after them myself if you don’t.”

Our gazes meet, and an understanding passes between us. I nod, then pace in tight circles, noting wryly that Zach is still guarding the door. I can’t hear myself think over the roar in my ears. I want to see Keely, but I don’t know how I’ll react if she walks away from me.

I stop in my tracks as steel blades of irony slide between my ribs. I’ve been walking away from everyone who comes within caring distance all my life. Now, by attempting to care for Keely, and bringing her the justice she deserves, I’ve risked her walking away from me.

I see Zach turn sharply toward the door, and I lunge past him and yank it open.

When I see Daniel, instead of the woman who’s importance has crept beneath the black noise of my life, I bite back a growl. “What do you want?”

The young guard looks from me to Zach, senses the volatile land mine before him, and hurries to speak. “We’ve had a call to the captain’s office for you, Mr. Sinclair.”

I shake my head. “Take a message.”

Daniel grimaces. “That’s just it. She wouldn’t leave a message, except to say it was urgent.”

“
Who
wouldn’t?” I snap, although I know who he means before he replies.

“She said her name was Cassie McCarthy.”

“For the love of Christ,” I growl under my breath.

“Problems?” Zach enquires.

I veer toward him. “No.”

She wasn’t in trouble—financially or health-wise. I’d made sure to keep an eye on her and my mother since my father died three years ago. Seven is also programmed to alert me if anything happens. Besides those parameters for keeping an eye on them, I consider myself free from obligation to Cassie and my mother.

“My ex-wife’s definition of urgent and mine vastly differ.”

“Are you sure?”

I spin around at the softly worded question.

Keely is framed in the doorway, her beautiful face, pale and drawn. That air of fragility I saw in Montauk is back, and the eyes that track me as I close the gap between us, are a dark, haunted green.

“What?” I ask, forgetting what she’d said as I’m confronted by the feeling I’ve only ever felt once before in my life. Hopelessness.

“I said are you sure your definition of urgent and hers are that different?”

I shake my head in confusion. I reach out to touch her hand, but she jerks away.

I ball my hand into a fist and lower it to my thigh. “What are you talking about?”

She dismisses Daniel with a nod, and walks into the room. I vaguely register Bethany enter and cross to her fiancée’s side. Or that they exchange a whispered argument before Zach leads her out.

“Cassie called me.”

That jars in a way that unnerves me even more. “Why would she do that? She doesn’t know you.”

A frigid little smile touches her mouth. “Stop underestimating the people around you, Mason. You’re not the only one who knows how to track another human being.”

I search her eyes in a last, desperately futile attempt to save what’s coming. Not so long ago, I’d proudly boasted that I had nothing worth salvaging and therefore nothing to live for. Now everything I’d flung away in my grief and murderous despair comes flooding back. I feel my heart beat, my lungs fill, my soul raise its head and condemn me for abandoning it.

“You know,” I rasp through lips that want to beg for every single act of cruelty I’ve ever perpetuated.

Ravaged green eyes meet mine. “That when you caught up with Peterson, you kidnapped him and kept him locked in a cage for ninety days with just enough food and water to keep him alive? Yes, I know.” Her voice shakes with echoes of her own tortured past and I die a million agonizing deaths in the face of her pain.

“Keely...” I grab her hands, but they’re cold and almost lifeless. I rub them between mine, but she just stares at me.

“Did you torture him?”

The poison in my blood bleeds into my stomach and sickens it. “Don’t ask me that.

“I’m asking, Mason. You can choose to answer truthfully, or you can lie.”

Bile rises higher and I swallow several times before I can speak. “I wanted answers. I couldn’t accept that his illness was the sole reason he took my son.”

“And did you? Get your answers? Or do you go back to the mental institution he was sent to, once a year, to demand more answers?”