Page 11 of Free to Breathe
I shrug. I wasn’t always a fan, but there’s something incredibly beautiful in the words hitting your gut when you’re thousands of miles away from home. I refuse to explain it again to a man who believes in buying suits handmade in London for his office hours. “I just do.”
“Whatever. Explain what you mean by intense. I’m sure there were enough women there to bang that you went home a happy man last night.” His crudity rubs me the wrong way, and I frown at him.
“Actually, I was home relatively early. We were backstage for a while after the show, but—” I’m interrupted when Jack’s glass clinks down on the table next to him.
“What the fuck do you mean you were backstage? And you didn’t invite me? What was it, some family connections that got you back there? Jesus.” His voice is bitter. Jack grew up in a single-parent household. Although we’ve been friends a long time, and the legacy of my family’s money shouldn’t matter, it occasionally bleeds through.
I begrudgingly admitted my lineage to him our freshman year, after he said I looked familiar. I’d campaigned for my grandfather a few years earlier, but surprisingly, I was recognized in the highly populated Connecticut college I’d chosen to attend on scholarship versus one of the Ivy League schools my family had handpicked for me. Jack had shrugged and moved on. Over the years, I’d shared a great deal about my past, but I’d never shared what kept me from returning to my family.
Especially the abusive, narcissistic bastard who’d fathered me.
Hunts aren’t soldiers. We make the weapons for soldiers. Hunts don’t do the actual fighting. We stand beside the war-torn men in photo ops to show how much our technology improved the outcome. Hunts are shallow. Hunts aren’t loyal.
Except for me.
“What? Not going to tell me the details about backstage? Plan on keeping the good details to yourself?” Jack’s snide comment pulls me from my woolgathering.
“Not much to say, other than we had incredible seats. Corinna got called up on stage where Brendan Blake dedicated a song to her, and—”
“Wait. Hold up. Brendan Blake called that cunt up on stage? What the fuck for?” Jack’s incensed.
I can feel my temper flaring. While I appreciate Jack’s loyalty, he has no real idea what really went down between me and Corinna. Probably because I don’t either. All he knows is that I’ve been miserable without her in my life. I sent her letter after letter for years, and she never responded to any of them.
Not a single one.
While a large part of me doesn’t understand how she could read my words and not acknowledge them, I have to admit, something Keene said to me last night held a lot of punch. I really don’t know her anymore.
The problem is, I still feel pulled to her.
“Yeah. Turns out they’re close friends.”
Jack chortles. “I just bet.”
I frown. “Brendan’s girlfriend was there, asshole. Apparently, Corinna helped him win a charity competition.”
Jack waves his hand to cut me off. “Like I care about that.”
“You should,” I retort. “It has to do with a kids cancer research program.” Even though our past is still riddled with so many blanks, I am so proud of what Corinna managed to do.
“Oh.” He swallows his drink. “I guess that’s great, then.” Quickly changing the subject, he asks, “So, how’s the job? Pry into anyone’s past you shouldn’t have yet?” His bellow of a laughter pulls out one of my own.
I snicker. “Not yet, but I’m sure you’ll be first on the list.”
We both crack up and proceed to drink well into the night.
* * *
Later in bed,I try to make sense of the changes in Corinna.
She was everything—beauty, grace, and a warm heart in the wasteland of my college career. Shy to the point of debasement, she never grasped how utterly beguiling she was. Is. Damn.
I don’t know what changed between us. If we’d had some kind of argument, some blowup, I’d have understood the change in who we were. I broached the topic with Ali when I saw her in passing at Hudson one day. After the anger smoothed out of her expression, she said, “That’s something you’d have to address with Corinna, Colby.” And then she just walked away.
The only problem with that is Corinna has succeeded in avoiding me.
I just want to understand why. Why did she abandon me? Us? What did I say? What did I do? Did she finally understand my feelings for her were so far beyond friendship, and that was her way of showing me she wasn’t interested?
Rolling over, I punch my pillow in frustration. I’ve spent years trying to figure out where we went wrong. The problem is, the person who knows the answers not only holds the lock, she holds the key too.
