Secrets to Hide 3: Just a Little More (4 page)

“How long’s it been?” Damien asked.

Forever
. He didn’t have to ask what Damien meant. His boss couldn’t have missed the fact that Brad had called home about fifty times since the beginning of his shift. “Four and a half hours. She answered the first time.”

Damien’s brows lowered over concerned eyes. “But not since.”

Brad could only shake his head. With every minute that passed without hearing Angel’s voice, a heavy knot grew bigger in his gut. Fear. There was no denying it. He was afraid. He’d been afraid since he’d walked out of the apartment this afternoon. The sight of Angel there on the couch, lying so still and quiet, pretending to nap so she didn’t have to answer his usual litany of
Are you okay?
, haunted him. The dark circles under her eyes. The hollows under her cheekbones. Sleeping and eating had been a challenge for both of them lately, he knew that, but that glimpse of her combined with the tone of her voice, the hesitant catch of her words when he’d talked to her on the phone earlier, had something in his gut churning. Every tick of the clock seemed to push the end of his shift further and further away.

A weather alert beeped on the TV that hung over the opposite end of the bar. The warning sound amped his worries even more. “How the hell can we have freakin’ snow at the end of March?” Ryan complained as he stared up at the screen.

Damien glanced toward the flashing red map of mid-Georgia, then met Brad’s eyes. He had that Papa Bear look, the one he wore when his fiancée, Harley, was traveling with her band and he couldn’t be in constant contact with her, or when their daughter, Klio, was sick and he couldn’t be at home. The same look Brad was sure his face reflected. Atlanta in March was fickle; it could be full-on winter one day and springlike the next, but even in the coldest winters, actual snowstorms this late in the month were rare. Apparently Brad’s luck ran to rare, because a snowstorm was brewing, the temperature dropping lower than they’d experienced in years—possibly the lower teens before dawn. The pictures flashing on the screen showed area roads getting worse by the hour, rapidly becoming one big skating rink as snow and slush melted and resolidified into sheets of dangerous ice. Thank God Angel didn’t have a car.

Brad hesitated. He shouldn’t—he had no idea what the hell was going on with Angel, and it wasn’t like he was doing any good here being so distracted—but he’d burned through his sick leave and vacation already this year. Taking care of Angel after the attack had put a serious crimp in his managerial training, but Damien hadn’t said a word. The weight of responsibility, however, rested heavily on Brad’s shoulders. He damn sure wouldn’t let Damien pay him more than he worked for, but Angel needed him.

The weight of indecision pounded in his head. Gaze locked on the TV screen, he said huskily, “I should’ve stayed home.” He reached for the phone again, only to come up empty.
Damn it.

“She’s not doing any better?” Damien asked, distracting him.

“No.” The admission cut the load weighing down his shoulders in half. He’d been strong for Angel, but sometimes he didn’t feel strong enough. Tonight was one of those times.

“What about the counselor I told you about?”

“She’s refused every time I bring it up. Says she’s not ready to talk about it.” But she would be after tonight. He didn’t care how much she argued; she was going.

Damien was quiet long enough that Brad finally glanced at him. His boss narrowed his eyes. “That’s not all that’s bothering you, though, is it?”

“You’re too da— darn perceptive, you know that?”

Damien grinned, at Brad’s observation or his attempt to avoid cussing, he wasn’t sure. Both, probably. The guys liked ragging him about his effort to keep his language clean, but if he let himself cuss here, he cussed around Angel. She deserved better.

Shaking his head again, he forced himself back to the conversation. “I am worried about the counseling; I have been for six weeks. I was just afraid pushing her into it would damage things worse. For her. And…between us.”

“Between you? How?”

“Before that night, before…well, there was something happening, between me and Angel, something…” He didn’t even know if he could put it into words, that tentative emotion that had hovered between them what seemed like a lifetime ago. “I kissed her that night.”

“And?”

Brad laughed, the sound short and sharp. “And…nothing. The next time I saw her, she was in the hospital. Since then things just…haven’t seemed right. She’s distant.”

“I would think that’s to be expected.”

“Of course it is.” Brad hesitated. Did he really want to talk about this? “I just…can’t help wondering if what was between us has become tangled in with what that…bastard did to her.”
Bastard
wasn’t a curse word, was it? It was in the Bible.

He looked at Damien, needing something, anything to reassure him. “What if all this never goes away?”

Damien leaned against the bar. He was close enough that his lowered voice didn’t reach beyond the two of them. “That’s not something you can control. Hell, it may not be something she can control, and certainly not without help. I’ll tell you one thing, though: I made a lot of mistakes with Harley. A lot. But I did one thing right. I didn’t let anything, including my own stubbornness, get in the way of going after her.” He straightened, slapping Brad on the shoulder. “Don’t let that bastard stand in your way, Brad. Go after her. She needs you.”

Damien waved a hand at the nearly empty bar. “A couple more hours won’t make a bit of difference. Besides, you’re as much family to me as Einstein over there.” Damien jerked his head toward Ryan where the man sat at a table, talking to Kelsey as she iced her wrist.

“You’ve done too much already,” Brad told his boss, though he knew it was futile. He didn’t even want to protest, not at this point, but he couldn’t overcome the compulsion. Neither Damien nor Ryan had complained about Brad’s absence lately. They’d allowed him a lot of flexibility. Allowed him to cater to Angel’s good and bad days. Maybe less catering and more tough love would’ve been better.

Damien threw him a get-real look. “Wrong. We take care of our own, and that’s what you are. So is Angel.” Concern bled into his words. “I mean it. I don’t care how long it takes; the only thing you have to do is make sure your girl is safe.”

Damien stepped past Brad to reach for the half-full bottle of Jack Daniels sitting conveniently on a low shelf, probably to fix one of his favorite Jack and Cokes. When he realized Brad was still hesitating, he growled. “I thought I told you to get your ass in gear.”

Brad didn’t argue further. Nodding his thanks, he tossed his bar towel at an approaching Ryan, hitting the kid square in the face. Ryan’s halfhearted protest and Damien’s laughter trailed behind him as he hurried toward the back of the club to grab his coat and keys from his locker.

“She needs you.”

Angel couldn’t see beyond her own pain and uncertainty right now. Brad had given her space, hoping that when her attacker was caught, when she was fully healed—emotionally as well as physically—from the assault, that she would let him back in. Maybe he’d waited too long. Damien was right; Angel needed Brad.
He
needed to remind her of that so they could get on with their lives. They’d been stuck in limbo, waiting for her attacker to be found, waiting for the fear to go away. Just waiting because they didn’t know what the hell else to do.

No more waiting. No more wondering and worrying. It was time he told Angel exactly what she meant to him.

He just had to find her first.

* * * *

The cold took Angel’s breath away, which was probably a good thing, because she was hyperventilating. The ragged, panicked pressure in her chest built exponentially with every step away from the secure doors of her apartment building. The heavy snowfall obscured her vision. She’d always loved snow, loved the cold and the glittering purity of a world coated in white. But not today. Not for a while. Since the night she’d been grabbed out of the darkness and dragged into hell, the world had become a place she avoided, not something she reveled in.

Out of the heavy white curtain, a hulking black shape suddenly appeared. Her haste to get away shattered any coordination she hoped to possess, tangling her legs together so that she stumbled in the glittering snow caking the sidewalk.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” A thick Southern accent softened the words but couldn’t soften the grip on her arm. She was jerking back before the man’s face, partially obscured by his coat’s heavy hood, registered in her brain.

Not him. Oh God, it’s not him.

“S-sorry. ’M fine, thanks.”

The man nodded politely and disappeared once more into the white oblivion, leaving Angel backed against the solid brick wall of her building. Humiliation heated her cheeks despite the frigid temperature of the air.

“W-well shoot-t-t, gir-rl. Get your a-act t’gether.”

Deep breath in. Out. Again.

She took her control where she could get it these days, and breathing helped when the panic struck. She couldn’t see much beyond the curb, but one of the fancy, wrought-iron streetlights that lined their road stood silent sentinel against the night directly in front of her, and she fixed her gaze there, filling her lungs with frozen air until they went numb and her eyelids felt like they were frozen open. It took a while, but eventually her freaked-out heartbeat slowed and a spark of triumph lit in her chest.

See? You can do this. You already did—you’re outside, for God’s sake!

She was, wasn’t she? A slow glance around confirmed that she had, indeed, made it all the way outside. She hadn’t been out of their apartment in so long she’d begun to forget what the sky looked like. Angel, the proverbial poster girl for all things outdoorsy, had stayed locked in her apartment for the last, what, five or six weeks? No open curtains for her, no trips to the lobby. Heck, half the time she couldn’t make herself answer the apartment door, not unless Brad was there with her.

A choked-off laugh escaped, trickling into a cough. “No,” she croaked to herself, “when you go n-nuts, Angel, you go all out.” And the knowledge that the man who had attacked her just a few short weeks ago was out there somewhere, possibly right outside her door, had driven her slowly but surely insane.

But no more boogeymen jumped out at her from the darkening shadows of the snowy night. She stood alone on the street, probably because everyone else was smart enough to be inside where it was warm. But Angel’d had no choice. She hadn’t been able to stand for one more minute the knowledge that her attacker continued to control her through her fear. Even the simple pleasure of a winter snowfall had been denied her. No, she’d had to prove to herself that she could break free, go where she wanted to go when she wanted to go. If she cried and hyperventilated at the same time, well, she could live with that. What she couldn’t live with was that slimeball’s grip on every aspect of her life.

“N-no m-more,” she whispered as a shiver shook her.

A snowflake landed on her eyelash, reminding her that she stood in the swirling snow giving her crazy self a pep talk.
Well, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right, right?
With a shrug that rustled the flimsy fabric of the Florida State jacket she wore, she forced herself to step out, one foot, then the other, the whipping wind giving her a push as she moved farther into the falling snow. The world felt wrapped in cotton wool, all sound muffled, as if she were alone in the world. She wouldn’t mind that as long as Brad was with her. As long as the mystery man with the penchant for force didn’t appear.

He’d been blond. Wasn’t that the stupidest thing to remember? Blond and strong. Not bodybuilder strong, but wiry strong. Not like Brad. Brad was big, solid, with the kind of muscles her hands itched to trace, but not so big that he looked like he’d tip over from their bulk. No, Brad was just right. This guy had just felt wrong.
He’d
been wrong.

The hair had been wrong too. Brad’s hair was blond but not the same light shade as her attacker’s. No, Brad’s hair was a deep, rich gold with wide streaks of brown, like he’d had lowlights put in. He wore it just to his collar but longer on top, long enough to tangle her fingers in when he’d wrestled with her as a teenager. Long enough that she could run her fingers through it when he had a headache, or whenever she wanted a better look at his beautiful gray eyes. Long enough that she could imagine fisting it when he thrust inside her, when she came apart in his arms.

Not that
that
was ever gonna happen. Not anymore.

Pushing thoughts of her best friend from her mind, she crossed the intersection. And then another, and another, not really sure how long she drifted; she only knew the blanketing softness of the falling snow, and the silence—such blessed silence. Not like the empty apartment that shouted at her with every passing second, a constant reminder of how much of a coward she was.

No, this was peaceful. “Finally,” she said, the word slurring with the cold.

The wind pushed her along the streets, guiding her from one to the next until she didn’t have a clue where she was. And didn’t care. It was so nice not to care.

Brad cares. He’ll worry.

She just couldn’t get away from him, could she? Not that she wanted to. It might hurt to think about him right now, about how close they’d come to being more than best friends, but the thought of being without him hurt even more. She couldn’t remember a time before Brad. He’d been her childhood crush since that day in the fifth grade when Robby Newcastle tried to corner her so he could put his hand up her dress. Brad had kicked the little pervert in the shins and told him exactly what Brad would do if Robby tried to touch her again. And then Brad smiled at her, that smile that had made her tingle even then. He’d saved her that day, and Angel knew then that she’d follow him wherever he led.

They’d been the best of friends ever since, growing up together, refusing to be parted until he’d urged her to pursue her bachelor’s and then her master’s degree in English as a Second Language at Florida State. Away from him, even though that hadn’t been why he’d urged her to go. It wouldn’t have mattered even if that was why he’d encouraged her. By then it’d been too late for her. Brad had become her adult fascination. The man she loved.