Page 83 of Impossible

I turn around and walk back to the house. In the door, up the stairs, down the long hallway to the master suite. Hollis’s room. I knock.

“Come in.” His voice is strangely buoyant.

The master suite is an ostentatious thing, with a big canopy bed and a marble fireplace and a crystal chandelier. Hollis is perfectly at home with his pressed suits and gold jewelry and groomed beard and gelled hair.

Tonight is no exception. He sits in front of the hearth, a small fire lit within, a crystal tumbler in his hand, a bottle of Macallan 30 on the table in front of him. Even his spirals have style. He’s still in his suit from work, his tie pulled loose around his throat, his cuffs unbuttoned.

“Leon!” He grins at me, expression bleary. “Come, have a drink.”

By the sound of his voice, he’s had several.

The plush carpet mutes my footfalls across the expansive space. I’ve always hated the tufted couch in front of the fireplace. It’s cream-colored, beautiful and elegant and uncomfortable, intended for eyes and not asses.

Hollis doesn’t look at me as I hover next to it, not wanting to sit. His olive skin glows in the amber light of the fire. His eyes are glassy, his expression frozen in ambivalent pleasantry. Like he has no other default to turn to, no backstage behavior, not even in the privacy of his own room.

“You and Risk and Joshua match tonight,” I nod at the bottle.

“Do we?” his eyebrows arch in passive curiosity. He takes a sip.

He didn’t check on Joshua when he got home. After everything that happened last night, he didn’t even bother to check.

I take a deep breath. I can feel the heat from the flames. My skin is already hot.

Hollis sets his glass down and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, tenting his fingers and hiding his face. He’s expecting anger. He knows he deserves it. He knows he can’t fend off the inevitable.

I could yell. Lord knows I’ve practiced the speech I would give him a million times, righteous indignation dripping from every word.

I sink to my knees before him instead.

“Hollis,” I murmur.

He looks at me, surprised by my nearness. The softness of my voice.

I clear my throat. His brown eyes are like Indie’s—gorgeous and complicated. So terribly sad.

“I love you.”

The breath he lets out is ragged. He is thin, his evergreen scent more like a car ornament than the forest I’ve called home for so long.

“I need you to love me too.”

His Adam’s apple bobs.

“Can we really not do this without the bond?” he asks.

I use his knee to leverage myself to my feet. I take his hand and pull him to his. He pads behind me to Risk’s room.

I open the door and show him what’s inside.

Risk and Joshua have curled into each other on the bed where I placed them, forehead to forehead, legs all tangled. They remind me of the lovers at Pompeii, encased in ash. Doomed. I shake off the thought. Not anymore.

Hollis inhales sharply when he sees the wreckage. I follow his eyes over it, tracing the chaotic whirls of clothing strewn about, trying to find some sort of pattern. There is none. He can barely look at Risk and Joshua.

“I was trying to do the right thing,” he whispers. “I didn’t want anybody to get hurt. To stay hurt.”

Joshua stirs. His pale blue eyes blink open. They fix immediately on Hollis. None of us speak. For a long moment, I watch Hollis and Joshua face off. Unlike Risk, Joshua is incapable of asking for what he needs. I’ve always tried to intuit. Failed a million times, but still, I tried. Hollis won’t. The chasm between them is wide.

Joshua shakes Risk’s shoulder gently. He rouses all at once, amber eyes electric the moment that consciousness strikes.

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