Page 184 of Secondhand Smoke

When he spoke, his voice sounded faraway and flat. “Bruce, you’re dismissed for the night. I won’t be needing anything else.”

He heard Bruce take a step forward, his tread heavy on the wood-look tiles of the entryway. “But, sir.” Worry in his voice, a concern for the generous employer who’d clothed him in Armani suits and gorgeous calfskin boots. The boss who’d bought and furnished the apartment below for him. “Won’t you be–”

“Bruce.” Ian turned to face him. “I dismissed you. That means I want you to leave. What part of that don’t you understand?”

The big man’s face, always so closed down with professionalism, colored with shock. His eyes tracked across Ian’s face. Then he finally schooled his features, nodded, and backed through the still-open door. “Yes, sir. I have my cell if you need me.”

“Thank you, Bruce.”

Ian went to the door when he was gone, and latched all five of the deadbolts. Slid the chain in place. Then he went to his kitchen and the wine rack above the fridge where he kept the reds.

Cabernet Sauvignon. Lovely vintage. He uncorked it and drank straight from the bottle, head tipped all the way back, throat opening as the wine slid straight down to his stomach. He was gasping when he lowered the bottle, breathing raggedly through his mouth.

“What did they do to you?” he whispered. “Kev, what did they do?”

Could it have been any worse than what had been done to both of them, when they were teenagers?

He whirled and chucked the bottle across the room. It exploded against the far wall with a spray of red and a tinkling of glass. The drops ran down the wall, viscous as blood.

~*~

The wine was gone. Tango lay on his back on one of the picnic tables in front of the clubhouse. He’d had to drag it out from beneath the pavilion, his too-thin body protesting the entire time, so that he could lie flat on his back and stare up at the cold pinpricks of the stars overhead. They were spinning, twirling around and around overhead, dancing.

In his right hand, he held his phone. In his left the scrap of paper Whitney had left behind at Maggie’s house with her cellphone number on it. He kept thinking about the wounded sheen of her eyes, like he’d betrayed her with his cruel words. He’d betrayed Ian too, in a way, hadn’t he? But Ian was used to the viciousness of life. Whitney was not – innocent, sweet Whitney. Untouched by her ordeal in Don Ellison’s basement prison.

He had to close one eye to read the number, and then his fingers fumbled with dialing. But finally, he had the phone pressed to his ear and it was ringing, ringing, ringing…

“Hello?” She had a pretty voice. He’d thought that earlier, when she called his name, but it was even pretty over the phone, which wasn’t always the case.

“Whitney? It’s Kev.”

She took a breath. “Hi.” And just that one word conveyed her disappointment in him.

The spinning stars were making him sick, so he closed his eyes. Then he was shut off from the world, alone with Whitney’s voice, just as he had been back in the cell.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was an asshole to you, and I shouldn’t have been.”

He heard her sigh, and it struck him as a maternal sound, like when Maggie was put out with Aidan, but unable to withhold tenderness. “It wasn’t true, you know, what you said.”

“I know.”

“Addiction has nothing to do with being a bad person or a good person.”

He swallowed hard, felt bile stirring in his belly and searching for his throat. “I know.”

“You sound drunk.”

“I’m very drunk.”

“Kev.” Reprimanding.

“I’m sorry about your brother, too,” he continued. “I don’t know that I ever said that, but I am. It’s awful what happened.”

“Poor Jason. He struggled for a long time. He didn’t deserve this.” She paused, then: “You don’t deserve what’s happened to you either, Kev. You’re a good man.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” His turn to sigh. “If only you knew. I’m not worth shit.”

“Don’t say that.” A note of ferocity. “You…what you did for me…”

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