This Is a Dark Ride (8 page)

Jesus!
How the hell had Brody made this big of a mess just cleaning out a sink? He hadn’t even washed the damn dishes; why would he bother cleaning one sink?

Another soft cry came from the lump beneath the sheet. Definitely feminine. Weird. He hadn’t known that Brody had any women friends, not anymore. He’d had quite a few before his lifestyle had ruined his looks, but that was a long time ago. Everyone had wanted Brody, and he’d taken more than a few up on their offers. Men, women, once it hadn’t mattered much, but alcohol and drugs were the only lovers that Brody had these days. He occasionally still pretended to be interested in Sam, but more and more Sam was worried that it was all just an act.

Cautiously he pulled the sheet down a little, revealing the naked body of a woman. Not just any woman; she was the one from the doorway up by the liquor store. He stared down at her wide-eyed.
This couldn’t be. What the hell was she doing here?

Sam knew damn well Brody didn’t have the money to pay her to be here. Besides, if Brody did have money, he wouldn’t spend it on sex; hell, he wasn’t even interested in sex anymore. Sam considered this for several moments, that nagging doubt creeping into his mind that just possibly Brody wasn’t interested in
him
anymore.

Maybe it was a foolish thing to worry about. The last thing on Brody’s mind was sex. Brody wasn’t the nicest guy in the world, but if he’d slept with her, she wouldn’t be out here lying on the couch now, would she? Sam stared down at the girl again. Maybe she’d had drugs. Maybe she and Brody had gotten high together.

She lay on her back, and she was all bruised up. They were fresh, bright purple against her fair skin. A ring of black-and-blue skin around her neck like someone had choked her…
Fuck, fuck, fuck, what had Brody gone and done?
This wasn’t good. He blinked, and the girl suddenly became someone else, the one that she reminded him of, the one that once haunted his nightmares. Sam pulled the sheet back up to her chin, covering her body.

Sam stood motionless for a few seconds, trying to decide what exactly was going on and what he should do. Finally he squatted down by the sofa and looked at her more closely. She shivered beneath the thin sheet. Sam clenched his hand into a fist. Brody was an asshole for not giving her the blanket.

Fucking Brody, he’d really screwed things up now! If Sam found out he was in any way responsible for the condition this girl was in, he was going to kill Brody! He’d tried really hard to be understanding of Brody’s addiction problems, the mood swings, and outbursts that accompanied them, but if Brody had gotten all fucked-up and hurt this girl, there was no excuse that would be good enough. As much as he loved Brody, this was something unforgivable.

He moved his face close to hers, listening to her breathing. She smelled clean. Like the green soap in the bathroom. Her hair was damp, and he wondered if she’d washed here. Sam gently pushed a lock of hair out of her face, and her eyes fluttered and opened slowly. She touched his face, sending goose bumps racing up his arms.

“Brody?” she whispered hoarsely, and then her eyes grew wide. Her hand jerked away, and her gaze locked on to his. Her lips parted, and she let out a tiny gasp.

“Brody’s sleeping,” Sam said.

“Will you get him, please?” There was panic in her voice, and she held the sheet against herself like it was a shield.

“Yeah, sure.” He wasn’t going to know what the hell was going on here until he got Brody up anyway.

In the bedroom Sam flipped on the switch. The bare lightbulb on the yellowed ceiling came on, illuminating the bedroom. He grabbed Brody’s shoulder and gave him a hard shake. “Wake up!”

“What?” Brody mumbled.

“Get up! What the fuck’s going on? What did you fucking do?”

Brody didn’t move. Sam grabbed both of his shoulders and shook him violently. Brody’s head bobbed up and down limply.

“Get up! What did you do to that girl?”

“I gave her some pills.” Brody’s words were slow, and he yawned. He put his hand over his face and covered his eyes. There was dried blood beneath his nails.

Sam cocked his fist back, ready to smash him right in the side of his fucking head.

“Brody?” the girl’s voice called out. Sam lowered his fist. Maybe he’d better not go jumping to any conclusions here. If Brody had done all that to her, it didn’t seem likely that she’d be so anxious to see him. He had a feeling he wasn’t seeing the whole picture yet. Still, why did Brody have dried blood on his hands?

Brody’s eyes fluttered open, dull and unfocused. They were red, and if Sam hadn’t known better, he’d have thought it looked like Brody had been crying.

“What?” Brody said.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Give me a second, Angel. I’m coming.” He sat up and looked at Sam with a confused expression, his brows knitting. “What are you doing?”

“I was trying to wake you up. She was asking for you.”

“I’m up.” He scratched at the stubble on his jaw.

Brody brushed by him and went into the living room. Sam followed, still trying to figure out what was going on.

Brody knelt on the floor by the sofa, and Sam watched in surprise as the girl wrapped her arms around Brody’s neck and clung to him tightly.

“I didn’t know where you were!”

“Shhh, I’m right here. I was just in the other room sleeping. You feeling any better?”

“I don’t know.” Her hair brushed over Brody’s skinny arm, and the sheet slid down, revealing a generous amount of her upper body.

Brody kissed her forehead. “It’s all right, everything’s good. Promise.” He disentangled her arms from him and smoothed the sheet over her. “That’s Sam,” he said without turning around.

Her cloudy eyes suddenly flashed with recognition as they met his gaze over Brody’s shoulder.

“You stopped up at the curb a couple of days ago,” she said with an accusatory edge to her voice.

Brody turned and regarded him with a tired smirk. “Oh, say it ain’t so! Saint Sam was out trolling for whores?”

It was hard to miss the cringe on the girl’s face at the word
whore.

“I wasn’t trolling for anything. What’s she doing here?”

“I found her.” Brody picked up a twisted cigarette butt from a pile on top of what appeared to be a wrinkled napkin, and sat down on the edge of the couch next to where she lay. “Beside the building, back by the trash cans.” He shook his head, and anger flickered in his usually hollow and expressionless eyes. “They fucking dumped her there.”

“Who did?” Sam tried to shake the image from his mind that the term
found her
conjured up. She wasn’t a fucking cigarette butt or some loose change; how did someone
find
a person dumped by trash cans?

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “They robbed me, that’s all. They wanted my money.”

“I brought her up here to clean her up and to let her get warm.” His expression turned challenging, but behind that challenge there was a pleading look in his eyes that Sam was not accustomed to. “She’s hurt. You don’t have a problem with her staying here for a while, do you, Sam?”

Sam shook his head, knowing he’d have to be an ass to say she couldn’t stay. “No…no, but why didn’t you call an ambulance?”

“I don’t imagine her health insurance plan covers this. She probably should have called the cops. Those guys—”

“Don’t! Don’t do this, please, Brody? I don’t want you talking about it. In fact I wish both of you would stop talking about me like I’m not even here. I told you, Brody, they just robbed me—that’s
all!
I don’t want to talk about it anymore, please?”

Brody immediately fell silent. He shot the girl an apologetic look. “If she wants to talk about it with you sometime, that’s up to her.”

Sam didn’t bother asking. It was definitely something she wasn’t eager to discuss at the moment.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Angel.”

A whore named Angel, wasn’t that just perfect? “Angel?”

She shrugged and then managed a weak smile. “My mother was hopeful once, I guess.”

Sam laughed in spite of everything. She had a pretty smile. It didn’t do much to light her sad face, but he had to admit it was dazzling.

“You hungry?” Brody asked her.

Sam’s jaw dropped. Brody never seemed to think about food or the needs of other people. Hearing both in the same sentence was astonishing.

She shook her head. “I’m tired. Weird tired. I think it’s from those pills you gave me.”

“Did they help the pain at all?”

She nodded.

Damn, Brody must have been extremely concerned about her if he was willing to part with pain pills.

He made a great show of smoothing down the sheet over her again. “Go back to sleep, Angel.”

She grabbed Brody’s arm, holding on to it the way Sam wanted to.

“Can I sleep with you, Brody?” she asked hoarsely.

Un-fucking-believable
. His junkie, alcoholic, fuckup boyfriend had one of the most beautiful women Sam had ever laid eyes on practically begging to sleep with him.

Brody looked uncomfortable, and he glanced over at Sam. “Um, no. I don’t…I don’t think so. I can’t ask Sam to sleep on the sofa. He worked all night.”

Oh, that was real nice—blame it on him! Angel looked back and forth between them blankly and then shook her head.

“You two…you share a room?”

“More than just a room… At least we used to.” Sam heard the bitterness in his own voice, but there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Sam soothed his irritation by thinking of the discussion Brody was going to have to have with her about his problems getting it up. As far as Sam knew, Brody hadn’t been able to get hard for months, but instead of calming Sam down, the thought of that made him even angrier. What if
he
was the problem? What if it wasn’t the fucking drugs and booze; what if Brody would rather have a woman?

“He’s available now, if you want him,” Sam heard himself snap.

The “poor me” look on Brody’s face didn’t do anything to soften Sam. Brody wasn’t the “poor me” type, or at least he shouldn’t be. That look spurred Sam on, and his words and his tone were harsher.

“Maybe you can cook him something and then sit there and feed him. Yeah, and if you like to clean up puke or you want to hold his clammy fucking hand when he’s got the shakes, then he’s the man for you.”

Brody’s mouth gaped, and Angel’s eyes were wide.

Good. Fuck them. Fuck this
. He was tired, tired from work, tired of his life. He was especially tired of playing nursemaid to a man whom he’d once worshipped. Now she was here too. This was too much. Sam had thought he wanted her. He knew he loved Brody, but now here she was, holding on to Brody.
His Brody
. He could see exactly where this was heading, and neither she nor Brody had any fucking interest in him.

Angel gathered the sheet and sat up. Her face flashed with a grimace at the movement.
She was hurting
. Sam immediately regretted acting like a jerk around her.
Look at her
. She was all beat to hell. Some asshole had put his hands on her and hurt her. Now here he was hurting her too. Being a dick. What was his problem? This was the woman he’d been dreaming about—and she was here! He should be happy. Well, maybe he would be happy if she was here because of him. But she wasn’t. She was here for Brody.

“I’m gonna go,” she said.

He could see how much Brody wanted to say something, but he didn’t. Instead he stared back at Sam with that unspoken plea still in his eyes. Sam bit his lip; he wasn’t going to let Brody make him the bad guy here.

“I’m not turning you out into the snow,” Sam said quickly.

“Why are you being so nasty to me? I didn’t do anything to you. You sure aren’t the fucking welcome wagon,” Angel said.

“No? I’m so sorry! By all means, feel welcome here. Take my bed, go and sleep with Brody. You want my fucking car too? The check engine light has been on since Christmas. You might want to get someone to take a look at it.”

She wrapped the sheet around her body and attempted to stand, but her legs seemed to crumple from beneath her.

Sam caught her before she fell. He was happy to feel her in his arms, but he was very aware that Brody watched him. Sam held on to her woodenly, wondering why holding someone so damned icy made him feel flushed and hot. Other than Brody, he couldn’t recall anyone in the world that he’d ever wanted as much as he wanted the woman he now held. It should be only Brody.
What the fuck are you doing?

He felt Brody’s eyes on him, and Sam awkwardly met his gaze. Brody didn’t say anything, but slowly a smile spread across his face.
Fuck. He knows
. Sam wasn’t sure how Brody knew, but he could see plain as day in Brody’s eyes that he did.

“You don’t want her to go, Sam. Tell her you’re sorry.” The authority the old Brody Redlinger once had crept into that voice, and Sam nearly shivered.

“Tell her, Sam.”

“Just…just stay here,” Sam said, forcing himself to speak softly. He looked at her. The sheet had slid down, baring her breasts. He realized he was staring at them, and he abruptly made himself stop. He was acting like he’d never seen a pair of tits before. His gaze moved up to her solemn face. “I’m sorry I’m being a dick.” He set her back on the sofa.

She stared up at him, looking partly scared but mostly confused. “I’m sorry you have a problem with me,” she said, sounding more hurt than sorry.

“I don’t.” He most certainly did, but not the kind of problem that she was thinking of. “Look, I’ve been worried about you,” he said.
There
. He’d said it out loud. Maybe he could stop thinking about her, dreaming about her,
wanting her.

“Worried about me?”

He nodded sheepishly and looked over at Brody, ready to confess—sort of. He’d admit to buying the coat, but he wasn’t going to tell either of them about the way he’d been feeling. The way he couldn’t stop thinking about her…

“I bought her a coat. It’s in my car.”

Brody looked so goddamn smug. “Yeah? When’d you do that?”

“A couple of days ago. She didn’t have one. It’s been so cold outside, you know? That’s why I stopped…” He could hear the defensiveness and deceit in his own voice. Brody lied to him all the time about whether he’d eaten or not, and Sam wondered if Brody felt bad inside like he did right now.