This Is a Dark Ride (12 page)

He pulled his head up and gazed into her eyes. “You’re so beautiful, Angel.”

She stared at him, unable to say anything. It was like he had spoken a foreign language. Those were words she’d never heard, and he said them with such sincerity. Her chest felt funny; her whole body felt like she was floating. Not floating, no; it was more like flying. She was flying again. Soaring through clouds.

“Morning.” Brody’s smug voice from the bedroom doorway broke the spell. “Looks like I’m missing the party.”

Sam let go of her like he was holding a grenade with the pin pulled. His arms went down by his sides, hanging there limply.

“Morning, Brody,” Sam mumbled, looking down at the floor.

“You making breakfast?” Brody asked.

“I will if you’re hungry.”

Brody shrugged and grinned. “How ’bout you? You hungry?”

Sam just kept looking at the floor. Angel worried, uncertain if he was embarrassed that he’d kissed her or just embarrassed that Brody had seen him. Maybe both? She wasn’t flying anymore; instead she’d crashed, and she sat down on the rumpled sofa, truly grounded once again. She hugged herself, remembering she was naked.

Her stomach felt sick all of a sudden.

Maybe Sam had realized what he’d done, kissing
a whore
like that. Well, she’d certainly proven herself for what she was. She’d kissed both of them. Offered to fuck either one of them. Now she was here between them like an extra sock.

Brody smiled at her. “You hungry, Angel?”

“I don’t know,” she said quietly without looking at him. She didn’t want Brody to see how disappointed she was right now. She pulled her legs up and sat cross-legged on the sofa, pulling Sam’s T-shirt over her body, feeling her own icy feet touching her bare legs.

She focused on a window near the table. The sunlight reflecting off the snowy roofs of the buildings around them made the day appear bright and warm, but she knew it wasn’t.

She didn’t want to go back. Not back outside, back on the street, back out in the cold, back where she had to fuck strangers.

She looked up finally, choosing to look at Brody and not Sam.

“Were you serious about that offer? Me staying here, I mean?”

“’Course I was.”

She studied his slender body. Shirtless Brody was both strange and impressive. Muscle and bone, like some stone carving come to life. It was hard not to try and imagine him and Sam together. They would be beautiful to see.

“I don’t want to get in the way. I don’t want to keep you two apart. I don’t want Sam to sleep on the couch. I’m in the way.”

“You’re not in the way,” Sam said quickly. Brody laughed a little, masking it as if he were coughing.

“Where do you want Sam to sleep?” There was a suggestive tone in Brody’s voice that was hard to ignore.

“Wherever he wants.”

Brody rolled his eyes. “Well, there’s your problem then, because Samson here don’t know what he wants.”

“I’ll tell you what I want. I want her to stay,” Sam said, his voice doing a sexy tremble.

Angel chewed her bottom lip. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

Brody shook his head. “It’s a fucking California king. There’s enough room.”

“Enough room?” What the hell was he thinking?

“Sure,” Brody said, his back turned toward them both as he took a frying pan out of a cabinet. “We can all sleep together in a nice warm pile.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed and he frowned. “We’re not all sleeping together, Brody.”

“You want her to sleep on the couch? Or me? Whatever you want, Sam. This is your place, right?”

“Don’t do this, Brody. I’ll sleep on the sofa. I’m fine with it.”

“Whatever,” Brody said.

Chapter Six

Sam avoided him like the plague for the next week or so, and that was probably a good thing. Brody knew he was increasingly bad company. He was surly and grew enraged over little things. A lot of the time he felt like there was nothing to look forward to anymore. No drinking. No pills. He tried his best to keep his temper in check around Sam and Angel, but he wasn’t always successful.

She’d been through enough shit—that was plain. It wasn’t her fault that he’d gotten himself addicted to pretty much anything that came along, so it shouldn’t be her problem that he needed to get off everything either.

His patience dwindled the sicker that he felt. Today was by far the worst day yet. He’d spent an hour in the bathroom, his stomach unwilling to accept the glass of milk he’d drunk when he woke up sometime during the night.

He gave Angel a lot of credit. She was a tolerant woman, but she also could hold her own in an argument and she wasn’t budging on the “no booze, no drugs” thing. Brody knew Sam felt the same way, but Sam had to go to work. Angel was always around to stay on Brody’s back and keep him from doing anything. Like a fucking watchdog.

He thought of how he’d kissed her once—only to see, only to make sure of what he already knew. She kissed like Sam did. She was like Sam in so many ways. Tortured inside, needing and lacking…probably submissive as well. Perhaps not by choice, but life hands out cards that must be played.

That first night, Brody had felt a little sexual charge thinking about her and Sam, but the last thing on his mind now was sex. He’d kill for some wine, a couple of pain pills, anything…

The room was cold, yet sweat beaded on his forehead. His stomach burned, and his hands shook so bad it was hard to complete even the minutest of tasks.

He was supposed to be helping Angel fold clothes. Brody watched her making it look easy, folding about five of Sam’s shirts and stacking them in a nice tidy pile, while he still fought with the same pair of jeans he’d been fooling with for the last ten minutes.

It felt like things had gone nonstop since the moment she arrived. They’d gone to the apartment she’d been staying in, an empty apartment, no better or worse than this one. It felt like a terribly long walk, and the sun glinting off the snow had given him the most horrible headache imaginable.

She’d worn Sam’s clothes—a T-shirt, sweatpants—and looked silly in Brody’s sneakers, which were huge on her. At least they fit better than Sam’s shoes. His feet were gigantic. But she did have her own coat.

That coat, the one Sam had bought for her was hideous. A down-filled, nylon monstrosity. There was something about it though, the first thing Brody had noticed before he saw how ugly the coat really was. It was purple. Her favorite color—like somehow Sam just knew that.

Now the laundry, oh, the fucking laundry! It seemed like years that they’d sat in the laundry room of the building, doing nothing but watching clothes tumble in the dryer. He toted baskets of clean clothes back up to the apartment, and the little table was piled high with things that needed to be folded.

The walls were closing in. He’d heard that expression before, but now he understood. A block from the liquor store with nothing to drink, stuck in this apartment.

He glanced over at the plastic chocolate milk mix container on top of the refrigerator. Angel had money in there. Brody wasn’t sure how much, but he’d seen her put it in there after she’d insisted on giving Sam a little cash to help pay the rent.

He could borrow some, maybe just enough to get a bottle of cheap wine. She’d never let him, but maybe if she didn’t see him take it he could go and—

“Brody?”

“Huh?”

“Want me to help you with those? You’re really having a hard time.”

He looked down at the jeans he’d twisted into a ball and then back to her worried face.

“No. I’ll get them.”

So much care in her eyes. Concern… Just like Sam. Fuck, it had been bad enough that he’d always let Sam down. Now he had to worry about letting her down too.

Her bruises were changing color; eventually they’d be gone.

Gone. Something he wished she wouldn’t ever be. His pain-in-the-ass watchdog, the bitch making him work and stay clean—he tried to squash the way he felt for her, tried to instead think of all the things she was preventing him from doing. He didn’t want to love her.
No!
He did not love her.

He hated himself for thinking about stealing from her, hated it even more because he knew what she’d had to do to earn that money in that yellow plastic canister. He would have put it back. Tried to anyway. Maybe Benny had some odd job somewhere that Brody could do for a little something. Benny usually had pills. A couple of Xanax would be good. Mellow him out a little.

“I’ve got to go out,” he mumbled. “I’ll be back later.” He threw the rumpled jeans back into the basket of laundry.

“Where are you going?” She sounded like an old mother hen. How could he possibly be in love with a woman who interrogated him, demanding to know where he was going? He was a grown fucking man, and it was none of her business.

“Just out. Maybe I’ll go look for a job,” he lied. Angel had put in a few applications already, so she might buy this story.

She pursed her lips, and Brody was fairly sure she knew he wasn’t telling the truth.

“You’re not going to look for a job,” she said. “Even if you really wanted to, you aren’t ready yet. You can’t even fold a pair of pants, for Christ’s sake!”

“I promised I’d get a job.” That much was the truth. Promises, he was full of them. Keeping them was another matter.

She laid her hand on his arm. “You know what? You should take Sam out to breakfast when he gets home from work. That little diner down the street looks like a nice place.” She began to chatter on about putting in an application there and how she hoped she got the job.

Brody tried not to look at her like she was completely insane. “How am I gonna afford that?”

“I’ll give you the money to do it.”

He shook his head. The idea of her giving him money felt just as wrong as him thinking about stealing it. “I can’t take your money.”

“He’d like it if you took him out.”

Sam
would like
a lot of things. Things Brody was incapable of giving him. Brody took a deep breath and tried to count to ten, but he only got as far as eight. “Look! I’m not taking your money. If you want to do something useful with that money, how about springing for a fucking bottle of wine?”

Angel flung a shirt down and stomped over to the refrigerator. She grabbed the container and threw it at him. It hit him squarely in the chest and then fell to the floor at his feet. The lid popped off, and a few bills fluttered out.

“Take it. Take it all. Spend it on whatever the fuck you want. There’s still a good bit there. Make sure you get some good shit.”

Even if he’d still wanted to take the money, right now he was incapable of holding it. The tremors in his hands seemed to resonate through his entire body as he bent and tried to pick it up to put it away.

The apartment door creaked open behind him, and he knew Sam was home. Nothing like an awkward situation becoming even more awkward.

“What’s going on?” Sam pulled his coat off, shaking snow away.

“Brody’s going shopping,” Angel said.

“Fuck this. I don’t need this shit.” Brody clenched his hands together tightly, trying to ease their shaking. “I’m so tired of this.”

Sam set a large bag down on the table. It too was covered with snow, and Brody glanced over at the window. It was coming down hard outside. He blinked, trying to clear his vision. It didn’t help. The world around him blurred until all he saw was white. His head felt weird, and bright flashes of light began to pulse before his eyes.

“I bought this…for you. For the cat.” Sam wiped water from the melting snowflakes off the chipped Formica tabletop with the palm of his hand.

Brody reached inside and pulled out a blue plastic tray. Inside of it was a bag of kitty litter and some canned cat food.
For Krieger.

Brody’s chest tightened. It was an unexpected act. Brody knew he wasn’t capable of taking care of the cat on his own, not now, not the way he was. Half the time he couldn’t remember if he’d eaten himself. He couldn’t be counted on to take care of Krieger.

Everyone here wanted to help him, wanted to make him happy. It was too much. Sam had never seen him cry, and it was not going to happen now.

He pulled out a chair and sat down, resting his elbows on the table, holding his head in his hands.

“You okay, Brody?” Sam asked. “You don’t look too good.”

“Just…just having a bad morning.” Brody intentionally avoided Angel’s gaze.
This isn’t her fault.

He picked up a can of food with a picture of a fancy, long-haired cat on the label. The way the ad executives at the company viewed that cat was the way he saw Krieger. Beautiful. Perfect, just as he was. The can slipped from his shaking hand and hit the floor. It rolled over beside the sofa.

Sam went to the bedroom. The window that led to the fire escape rasped open, and a few seconds later Krieger made an appearance at Brody’s feet. The cat promptly hopped onto Brody’s lap.

Sam picked up the litter pan and ripped open the pull string on the bag of litter.

“He’s ours now,” Sam said as he poured some litter into the pan. “He’s staying. I know how much you love this cat. I won’t listen to him cry outside anymore. If he pisses in here, he pisses in here. I’ll deal with it.”

Brody stroked the cat’s scarred head and glanced over at Angel’s face. He traced a scab beneath Krieger’s ear. Brody considered the sadness in her eyes. The girl never looked happy. Once maybe, the time when he’d walked in on Sam kissing her.

He knew he’d interrupted something. Some magical moment, something beyond just the two of them tasting each other’s mouths; there was something that went deeper than that. Something he wasn’t sure he could feel. Perhaps he could feel it, because he was certain that he did, but he had no idea how to act on those feelings, how to show Sam just how much he loved him. The intensity of his feelings for Angel further muddied the waters. Brody had never been able to convince Sam that he loved him when it was only the two of them. How could Sam possibly understand that there was room enough in Brody’s heart to love them both?

Angel needed someone to love her, and she deserved it. She deserved a whole lot more than someone like Brody. So did Sam. Maybe they should be together, without him in the way.