AS VEGAS

THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2009

Dan’s sister was beautiful.

The color of her eyes and hair were almost startlingly identical to Dan’s, and they had the same basic shade of perfect, smooth skin, although it was clear to Jenn that, at least in the recent past, Eden had spent far less time outside, in the sun.

She’d met them at the luggage carousel, even though neither Dan nor Jenn had checked any bags. She was waiting for them as they got off the elevator, her eyes widening as she saw Dan sitting in the wheelchair that Jenn had insisted he use.

It was telling—the fact that he’d agreed to the ride from the gate. He was feeling much worse than he’d let on during the flight, and she was glad she’d talked him out of making the equally long drive to San Diego tonight.

Of course maybe Eden’s wide eyes were all about Jenn, who was looking frumpier and more rumpled than ever after waking up at holy-shit-o’clock to fly most of the way across the country.

“Danny, thank you so much for coming!” Eden had rushed to greet her brother, clearly uncertain as how best to bend and hug him, so she didn’t—an awkward moment made even more awkward by the airline attendant nearly pushing Dan’s chair into her.

Dan hadn’t helped much, his focus on getting out of there. “Is Zanella …?”

“He’s with the car. He’s circling,” Eden told him, leaping back out of the way to keep the wheelchair from running over her feet in her open-toed sandals. She’d clearly gone to some length with her appearance, dressed as she was in a pretty flower-patterned sundress, her long hair twisted up into an artfully messy chignon, her makeup carefully understated. “He didn’t want to park and make you walk all that way.”

And with that, Dan was whisked away toward the pickup area, leaving Jenn to juggle both of their carry-on bags and to introduce herself.

“God damn it, slow down,” she heard Dan say to the chair-pusher. “Jenni, are you—”

“It’s okay,” she called after him. “I’m okay, we’re right behind you, Danny. I’m Jenn LeMay,” she told Eden, who took the handle of one of their bags from her as they both scrambled to follow. “Thanks.”

“I’m Eden. Thank you so much for coming.” Eden was clearly embarrassed by Dan’s apparent rudeness. And yes, there was definitely a little bit of amazement on her face, too, as she took in Jenn’s stringy hair and tired eyes behind her glasses.

“He’s in a lot of pain,” Jenn told her, sotto voce. “Since he left the hospital, he won’t take the painkiller that the doctor prescribed and …”

Eden forced a smile. “Thanks for, you know, but … he hates me. I know he hates me. It’s okay, I’m used to it by now.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Jenn started.

But Eden interrupted. “I’m surprised he let them give him any painkillers at all. Even in the hospital. He’s always been freaked out. You know. Terrified he’ll be instantly addicted. Considering our family, it’s understandable.” She shrugged. “So who knows? Maybe he’s not just being bitchy because he hurts, maybe he’s also going through withdrawal. Good luck to all of us with that.”

At first Jenn resisted the urge to stop short, mostly because Dan and his wheelchair were so far in front of them. But then she did stop, because that distance-created privacy was a good thing. She put a hand on Eden’s perfect arm, and stopped the younger girl as well.

And she was a girl. She was only nineteen, even though she looked much older.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve made excuses for his behavior,” Jenn told her. “But, see, I know how hard this is for him, and I love him … So, I’m inclined to cut him a little slack. But, you’re right, he wasbeing bitchy and I’ve heard his end of several phone calls to you, and I just want you to know that I’ve been slapping him upside the head. A lot lately. More than usual. For being less than polite to you, in case I didn’t make that clear.”

Eden was just standing there, looking at her, almost perfectly expressionless.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that, well, I hope you’ll be patient with him, at least until his injury heals. I’m going to try my best to help out, at least over the next week and … I don’t know if he’s mentioned this to you yet, but he seemed to think it might a good idea for you—both of you—to go to an Al-Anon meeting or two—”

“I don’t drink,” Eden said. “Not since …” She shook her head.

“Well, no, Al-Anon’s not … It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous, but it’s designed for the families of alcoholics. There’s a great program for adult children of alcoholics—I’m one, too, and … Well, it really helped my brothers—some of my brothers—and me deal with some pretty intense issues from our childhood. It was good, because now that we’re adults, we can have these completely different relationships—healthier relationships—than we did when we were kids, back when we had no control over what was going on around us, you know?”

Eden was looking at her as if she were speaking Greek, but then she nodded very slightly and said, “And Danny … wants to do this? This program? With me.”

“Yes, he does,” Jenn told her. “But it’s kind of obvious that it’s hard for him, when he’s with you, not to slip back into your childhood relationship. So … it might be difficult for him to communicate that to you, until … Well, it’s kind of a catch-22, you know?”

“Who are you?” Eden asked, laughing to try to hide the tears that sprang into her beautiful eyes. “His girlfriend or his therapist?”

“Like I said. I’ve been in your shoes. Younger sister …? Older brothers behaving like total dickheads …?”

Eden’s smile and laughter became more genuine.

“I never had a sister,” Jenn told Danny’s as she pulled the girl in for a hug. At first Eden resisted, her body stiff as if she’d never been hugged by a friend before. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you better. And? When Dan does act like a total dickhead? We are going to join forces and let him know it. Is that a deal?”

Eden hugged her back then, almost fiercely, as she laughed. “Jennilyn LeMay, it’s definitely a deal.”

“Come on,” Jenn said. “Let’s go find Ben and bring him home.”

Peter Sinclair the third was gone from the cell when Ben woke up.

Whatever drug they’d given him in that injection must’ve still been in his system, because he’d heard nothing—and it was hard to imagine that other boy being taken away without raising some kind of fuss.

His arms were stiff from sleeping with them up and over his head, and his bladder was uncomfortably full. He was feeling the first signs of low blood sugar—shaky and sweaty and considerably nauseous. He was also experiencing his trademark irritability—normally a telltale signal that he needed some sugar, fast. When he wasn’t being held prisoner, that is.

In his current situation, feeling irritable was a given.

He looked around the cell, at the drab walls, floor, and ceiling, at the bare lightbulb hanging overhead, at the other cot, where … Yeah, Peter Sinclair had definitely pissed himself at some point in the night. The smell of urine was unmistakable and nauseating.

And definitely the drug had still been in Ben’s system last night when he’d talked to the other boy, because at the time, he’d felt oddly calm.

Now, however, his heart was pounding at the idea that he was locked up and tied down—a prisoner here, for God knows how long. He remembered telling Peter that Eden would find him and get him out.

Today, he had no such misconceptions. He was a prisoner here, and he would remain a prisoner here—and there was little he could do about it.

It was hard, as he was lying there, not to think about Neesha, about the god-awful story she’d told him, about what had happened to her after her mother had died. Maybe it was something that she’d made up. Just something she’d told him to impress him or to make him sympathize. Or maybe, like the cop had said, it was a product of her delusional mind.

But somehow Ben doubted that.

And he couldn’t imagine the strength that she’d needed, that she’d had, to live as a prisoner for so many years—without hope of release.

“Hey!” he shouted into the silence, his voice rusty from sleep. “Hey! Gay diabetic in here. One is a disease, the other is not. One can be successfully managed through diet and insulin injections. The other is unchangeable and fuck you sideways for thinking otherwise, you sons of bitches—”

The door opened. “Is that any way to talk?”

It was the man Peter had nicknamed Weird Don.

“I’m a diabetic,” Ben said. “That means I need to check my blood sugar levels regularly throughout the day so I don’t fall into a coma and die.”

“You have to get pretty sick for that to happen,” Don said, coming into the cell and closing the door behind him with a solid-sounding click. “A lot of boys come in here with ailments. Asthma. Eczema. Acne. It all clears right up when they learn to reject their unnatural yearnings.”

“Yeah, that sounds like bullshit to me,” Ben said. “I wonder why. Oh, probably because it is bullshit.”

Don came farther into the room, but he didn’t unfasten Ben’s hands. Instead, he moved next to the cot and stood there. And Jesus, weird didn’t begin to describe the way he was looking down at Ben. “It’s not,” he said.

“Aren’t you supposed to untie me?” Ben asked, yanking at the plastic bindings and making the metal frame of the cot rattle. He glanced over at the camera, oddly glad it was there. “I need to go to whatever passes for the medical facility in this hellhole. To get tested and get some insulin—and some food—so I don’t throw up on your fucking shoes.”

“That kind of language isn’t necessary,” the man chided.

“Yeah, I think it is,” Ben countered, “because you don’t seem to understand what I’m saying.”

“But I do understand your pain. I went through this program when I was your age,” Don said earnestly. “It helped me. God, how I hated myself …”

“I think you still hate yourself,” Ben said. “But me? I think I can probably go now, because for the first time in a long time? I’m actually doing okay in the hating myself department. I met this girl a few days ago, and her courage astounded and kind of shamed me. And then I came here, and I met Peter Sinclair the fucking third, and I’ve never met anyone like him before, and you know what? I’m going to survive whatever you do to me. I’m going to say whatever I have to say, and I’m going to walk out of here, and I’m going to fool you and your asshat friends into thinking I’ve seen your stupid light, but when I leave, I’m going to be as gay as the day I walked in here—as gay as the day I was born. And after I leave, I’m going to be on a mission. I’m going to find my own Clark Volborg and we are going to live happily ever after, and in about ten years I’ll think back on this, and I’ll think of you with pity, because I’ll know that you’re still here, and that you still hate yourself—when all you had to do was listen to Peter, too, and understand that you’re not alone and there’s nothing—nothing—wrong with you.”

It was possible Weird Don had heard none of that, because he said, “You know, you don’t have to leave. You can sign papers and stay.”

“Fuck you,” Ben said, before he realized what Don had just told him—you don’t have to leave.

And sure enough, as Don left the little room, someone else came inside and cut him free.

It was the woman who’d bagged up his clothes. She held those bags now, as if she’d been standing there with them, in the hallway, all night long. “This way,” she said as he rubbed his wrists and rolled his shoulders, as he tested his very shaky legs.

“I need a bathroom,” he said. “And some insulin—not necessarily in that order.”

“You’ll have to wait until you leave this facility,” she said tightly as she led the way down the hall, her heels clopping loudly against the industrial tile. “And you can tell your parents that your tuition is notrefundable.”

With that, she pushed open a door and gestured for him to go through it, and holy God, it was the doorway to some kind of lobby, and Danny was standing there, looking like shit, but his eyes lit up when he saw him, and he said, “Ben!”

And Ben’s knees crumpled and he hit the floor. And—great—he was pretty sure he pissed himself as his brother’s worried face wavered and faded and the world went black.

“I hate this,” Eden said as she and Izzy waited in the car in the Crossroads parking lot. “I want to be in there. I want to know what’s happening.”

She was practically vibrating with nervous energy, and Izzy knew that she was scared to death that something was going to go wrong, and that Danny and Jenn were going to come back out of that building without Ben in tow.

He knew exactly how to distract her—if only they weren’t sitting in the car in the broad daylight.

Or maybe what he really wanted to do was distract himself, and the best way to do that, other than the very obvious, was to mentally replay—moment by moment—the outrageously great shagging he’d given her after they’d gone into her bedroom last night and closed the door behind them.

Or he could deconstruct the incredibly groovy good-morning greeting she’d given him after he’d gotten up to take a shower. She’d followed him, slipping past the shower curtain, stepping into the tub with him, wrapping her legs around him as he’d pinned her to the tile wall, beneath the rushing water.

But like all good things, their shower eventually came to an end, and he’d dried himself off with one of her clean-smelling towels as he’d wandered into her living room.

He’d realized immediately that he hadn’t given the tiny room so much as a single glance last night. The curtains were tightly closed, and he peeked behind them to see—sure enough—a slightly sagging bouquet of bright red roses—the bouquet he’d seen from down on the street.

The card was still with them, and he reached and flipped it open. To Jenny, it read.!!!Congratulations and welcome. Love, the girls at the club.

Much better than a card reading,!!!Thanks for last night. Love, Enrique, your most ardent admirer.

Izzy let the curtain close again and turned back to Eden’s living room. It was furnished with sad and sorry pieces that looked as if they’d been retired—and none too soon—from a frat house. She’d valiantly covered the easy chair and sofa with sheets and blankets to conceal their years of wear. There was a bookshelf and an end table, both of which held a collection of smiling Buddha statues, no doubt belonging to the person from whom Eden had sublet the place.

As he stood there, letting the hardworking air-conditioning circulate around his extremely happy genitalia, he’d found himself thinking of Nurse Cynthia’s matching furniture.

Which Eden would probably have loved.

And the crazy thing was? If that had been Eden’s apartment, with Eden cooking him dinner in that too-perfect kitchen, Izzy would’ve loved it, too.

As it stood, Eden kept her own place as neatly tidy. The Buddhas were all dust-free—although the clothes he and Eden had shed upon arrival last night were still strewn in the tiny entryway that was open to the living room.

He collected it all—and his wallet, too—rolling up the pants he’d bought for the occasion and trading them for a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals that he’d brought in his seabag. He tossed Eden’s—including her stripper thong—in a laundry basket that was just outside the bathroom door, blocking what was probably a linen closet.

He stashed his bag just inside of Eden’s bedroom, wondering—briefly—what Dan was going to say when he found out that Izzy and his sister had reconnected. As in Izzy’s tab A had again gone, repeatedly, into Eden’s slot B.

But they’d blow up that bridge when they came to it. And what Dan thought about Izzy and Eden rehooking up was hugely secondary to what Eden thought about it.

Izzy knew where he himself stood. For him, the pros far outweighed the cons. And while he acknowledged that he might not feel the same in a few days—or hours—when she decided enough was enough and shut him down. But right now? He had both feet planted absolutely in the fuck me again column.

And Eden seemed to be in agreement.

Although, they really hadn’t done much talking last night—aside from that wish-list discussion, which was part of the foreplay, and really couldn’t be taken all that seriously. Like he was really supposed to believe that giving him head was on her wish list? It was part of the hyperbole that came with passion-talk. Not that Eden wasn’t good at it.

He just couldn’t take it too seriously.

After Eden emerged from her bedroom in a sundress that he immediately wanted to take off of her, they’d set to work cleaning up the apartment for his majesty King Danny’s arrival. And then it was time to go. Eden had remained pensively quiet during their ride to the airport, so Izzy’d focused on both his coffee and navigating the unfamiliar streets.

It was fine with him—the no-serious-talking. But he’d realized at the airport, after Dan and Jenn had climbed into the backseat of his rental car, that there were things that needed to be said—important things—without Eden’s two brothers listening in.

To his surprise, she started the conversation. “She’s really nice,” she said. “Jenn.”

“Jennilyn LeMay,” Izzy said, and Eden met his gaze.

“Yeah,” she said. “Um …”

“I won’t tell,” Izzy said, referring to Eden’s having borrowed Jenn’s name for her career at D’Amato’s. He didn’t need to spell it out. He knew Eden knew exactly to what he was referring.

“Thanks.” She looked out the window again at the cracked tarmac, at the sign in the window of the auto-parts store across the street. FLOOR MAT SPECIAL! FREE FUZZY DICE WITH PURCHASE!

“Do you get, like, a weekly paycheck?” Izzy asked, and she glanced at him again. “If you want, when you give notice, you can ask them to send your last check care of my apartment in San Diego. I’ll make sure you get it.”

“Oh,” she said. “Thanks. But no. They don’t pay me—I pay them. To work there. They get a percentage of my tips, so …”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s like I’m renting a spot on their stage.”

“Wow,” Izzy said. “Okay. So, good. You can just give them notice with a phone call and …” Hmm. She wasn’t meeting his gaze. “You are going to quit working there. Or …?” He let his voice trail off and up.

“Of course,” she said, and it was so obviously a lie that he laughed his disbelief.

“It’s a little far for a commute,” he pointed out. “Five hours? Each way? At least?”

Eden looked at him and apparently decided to cut the bullshit. “It’s not like I can get a job dancing in San Diego,” she said. “Someone would see me.”

“Yeah, I thought that was the idea. A lot of people see you. Kinda hard not to see you, sweetheart, when you take off your clothes on a stage, in a spotlight, moving the way you do …”

“I meant someone from the SEAL team,” she said. “And they’d tell Danny.”

“And you want to earn a living doing something that you don’t want your brother to know about because …?”

She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a wad of cash that was nearly the size of a softball. “Tens and higher,” she said. “These are my tips from one day of work.”

Holy shit. “Let me entertain you,” Izzy sang. “They ever hire guys? Maybe you and I could be a team.!!!And now, from San Diego, put your hands together for … Irving and Eden!”

Eden laughed at that. “You won’t even take off your shirt when we make love.”

And okay. She was going to refer to last night’s mad fucking as making love. It was good to know what to call it.

And it was true, Izzy was inclined to leave his shirt on both for pickup games of basketball and for banging fair maidens. He had some pretty nasty scars on his chest as the result of a near-death experience with a terrorist who’d pulled the trigger of an AK-47 that was aimed in Izzy’s direction.

He’d kept his shirt on last night, even though Eden had seen his myriad of scars before. He wasn’t sure why he’d bothered—it certainly hadn’t seemed to disturb her in the past, nor had she so much as blinked this morning in the shower.

Well, she’d blinked plenty. And gasped a whole lot more.

But not because of his scars.

“Yeah, well,” Izzy said now. “The whole guy-thong thing is so overdone. So Chippendale’s. I thought with the T-shirt on, yet freeballing it, I could bring something a little different to the table. Maybe leave my socks on, too, for the complete dork effect. And then, you know, do some windmills with my man-parts since my sexy-dancing chops leave a lot to be desired …?”

She was giggling. “Ooh, something new for my wish list.”

“I think we’re onto something really big here,” Izzy said, grinning back at her. “Not quite a full monty because the shirt and socks are still on. Although let’s face it, if you’re on that stage, too, I could be singing and dancing like Justin Bieber and it wouldn’t matter, because no one would be looking at me.” He pitched his voice into a boy soprano falsetto. “I need somebody to love …”

“Ooh, I love that song.”

“And why am I not surprised.”

Her smile faded as she held his gaze and said, “It’s been incredible. Yesterday and last night and …? I really did miss you, you know.”

This was a harder lie for him to swallow than the one about quitting work at the club, but it wouldn’t do him any good to do anything but take it as she’d clearly meant it.

As proof that he’d distracted her sufficiently.

As a sparkly little memento from right now.

Right now Eden could imagine that she’d missed him for all those months that she’d intentionally stayed far, far away. It was possible that she even believed her softly spoken words. It was probable that in this moment, she truly liked him. She liked talking to him, but better yet and lucky for him, she liked fucking him. Oh, wait, no—making love. She liked making love to him.

And she’d continue to like it and him just fine until doing so was no longer convenient.

“Seriously though?” she said, and he waited to see what she was going to say, because he had no idea what was coming next. “I was thinking I could stay on the schedule. At D’Amato’s. Just for a couple days each week. Consecutive days, because of the drive. For the next few months at least. See, I paid rent on the apartment through the end of July. It was the only way I could get it—to pay the full summer up front. I’ve been studying to get my driver’s license, and I was saving to get a car and … I was thinking I could drive up to Vegas, like, Thursday morning and be back in San Diego early Saturday morning. You know, after working a double Friday shift, too.”

“Well,” Izzy said. “That’s, um …”

“I’d earn more in those two days of dancing than I could make in two full weeks of work at some stupid McDonald’s,” she said.

“So why not work in L.A.?” he asked her. “If you really want to continue to dance.” He used her word for it. “It’s a much shorter drive. I bet D’Amato’s has some kind of sister establishment in the greater Los Angeles area.”

She was surprised. “Wow, I never thought of that. That’s … A really great idea.” She looked at him. “You’d … be okay with that?”

“It’s far from my place to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do,” he pointed out. “Although, hot tip? Unless you really, really love doing it? You should find a different job.”

“I love the money,” Eden said bluntly. “And I don’t hate the work as much as I hated getting paid slave wages to douse myself in french-fry grease and cheerfully suggest supersizing orders for people who needed to take a deep breath and order a salad instead—while every male worker in the place grabbed my ass five times a day. Not Rodney. He was my friend. But I had more hands on me working there, in a single shift, than I’ve had in the entire time I’ve worked at D’Amato’s.”

“Really?” Izzy asked, and she nodded. “Wow, that’s … a problem. I was going to say that, you know, there are other options besides fast food and stripping, but very few come with a bouncer to protect you.”

“Are there other options?” she asked. “Because I haven’t found them. I cleaned houses for a while—until one of the clients came home early and offered to give me ten bucks extra to blow him. Don’t worry, I got out of there fast,” she added quickly as she saw him start to react. “I was safe, but I’m the one who got fired because he said he caught me stealing and that I tried to get out of it by propositioning him. And, of course, they believed him instead of me. Which is the story of my life.

“I’m good at being a nanny,” she continued, “and even though it’s hard work for a lot of reasons, most of the time, women won’t hire me. I did find work with a single mom in Europe, after I left Anya’s, and Stacy—that was her name—she also paid my airfare back to the States. But the job ended when they returned to Chicago, because her mom lived with them, so … Ben thought I should try to target gay couples, you know, because there’s no threat in either direction? I’ve looked, but I haven’t found anyone who doesn’t want full-time, live-in, twenty-four/seven care. Which won’t work if I’m going to be living with Ben. But even if I could get a job as a nanny? Which hurts worse? Taking off my clothes while a bunch of losers leer at me, or taking care of someone else’s baby after burying my own?”

She looked intently out the window, which usually meant she was fighting the urge to cry.

“I’m sorry,” Izzy murmured, which was such a flipping stupid thing to say. Still, he was sorry. Incredibly, completely sorry. And not just for her loss, but for his, too.

Eden nodded, clearing her throat. “Right now I think I like stripping more.”

“Maybe if you got a college degree—”

“Oh, please.” She cut him off, turning to face him. “Like that’s going to make a difference? Besides, what’s the big? Doesn’t everybody hate their job?”

“I don’t.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay. Everyone who’s not a Navy SEAL.”

Izzy smiled at that. “Maybe, although I suspect not. You know, my oldest brother, Martin, was married to a stripper. Best wife he ever had, and he’s had a few. Of course, I was fifteen when he married her, so my judgment was … colored. She used to work her routine in the playroom—with her clothes on. Well, most of the time, anyway. There were a few times that …” He cleared his throat. “That’s a pretty impressionable age, and, um, Mandee? She was freaking hot. Almost as hot as you were up there. Almost. But my point is? She loved it. Stripping. Loved it. She and my aunt Carol used to argue about it endlessly. Carol was insistent that working as a stripper is bad for society. The objectification of women, yada yada.” He stopped himself. “And I don’t mean to belittle that, because it’s very real. It’s a problem. You’re selling sex, and you’re selling yourself and all women everywhere short—by making sure an entire subset of men never learns to see you or your feminist sisters as anything more than hot bodies. See, I was listening when Carol talked—almost as carefully as I watched when Mandee rehearsed. But Mandee always argued that that Neanderthal subset—the let’s meet for drinks at the strip clubcrowd—isn’t likely to ever see any woman as more than a nice pair of tits, so who’s to criticize her for making money off of their lame-ass ignorance?

“And really, how different is what a stripper does from all of the actresses in the movies who get naked for love scenes? And yes, one’s telling a story, I get that. Carol would point that out. But, Mandee would argue, and I absolutely agree, that there’s not a single tastefully shot art film on this planet that hasn’t had the scene with the famous naked actress used as a visual aid while some huge number of miscreants jacked off to it. Shit, I’m sure there’s been jacking off done to scenes from movies where everyone’s got their clothes on. Does that mean we should ban all movies? Or put all women, everywhere, in burkas? That’s definitely not the answer. I know we can all agree on that.”

Eden was looking at him as if she were having trouble understanding what he was saying.

So he explained. “My point,” he said, “is that if you said to me, Izzy, I just love the power that I feel when I take my clothes off up on that stage, I love it more than words can express, well, then I’d say that since you love doing it, and if you’re working in a place where you’re not being pressured to do more than dance, if you’re careful of your safety when you approach and leave the club …” He shrugged. “You should go for it. But if you come home from work feeling the need to scour your entire body with bleach? You might want to set a limit. Plan for an end date. Do this for a year or two or even ten, learn how to invest those wads of money that you earn, and then retire and never do it again.”

Eden was nodding, but he could tell from the way she was looking back at the Crossroads front door again that it was time for a change of subject.

But first he had to say, “Whatever you end up doing, just keep me in the loop, okay?”

She met his gaze. “And if I do … you won’t tell Danny. Or Ben?”

“I said I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”

She seemed to believe him, and she nodded. “Thank you.”

“So I was thinking you might want to give some thought to Danny being here,” Izzy said, “and staying in your apartment, and whether you want him to find out that we, uh, reconnected, or whether you’d prefer we, you know, keep our distance from each other when he’s around …?”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh. Um …”

Dan was fond of telling Izzy that Eden was certifiably crazy, and maybe she was, because he could tell from her face that she actually thought Izzy had just said what he’d said because he wanted to put some physical distance between them. Like last night’s fucking-great lovemaking hadn’t made him beyond hot for more.

“No, no, nuh, no,” he said quickly. “Look at me. Sweetheart. Tonight? You and me? We’re getting it on. Even if we have to leave the apartment and, I don’t know, go pretend to run an errand so you can jump my bones again in the car. We’re gonna find some alone time. Trust me, it’s my top priority.”

She still looked so uncertain, so he brought it down to the very basics of nonverbal communication and he pulled her toward him and kissed her. It was a fuck me kiss, hard and hungry, and he could tell from the way she kissed him back that his message had been successfully received.

And what happened next was completely his fault. He’d loved that sundress she was wearing from the moment she’d put it on that morning, and even though his hand seemingly found its way up under her skirt on its own initiative, the brilliant idea to do so was all his. Although, true, she quickly convinced him the idea wasn’t just brilliant but in fact sheer genius by shifting and slightly opening her legs for him to explore even further. So as he kissed her, he kept his hand traveling north against the mind-blowing smoothness of her thigh, on the verge of reaching paradise and …

“Oh, for the love of Christ!”

It was Danny, of course, standing outside the car and knocking impatiently on the window—bang bang bang.

They sprang apart, but it was even more awkward than it might’ve been because Izzy’s dive watch got snagged on the seam of her skirt. And so much for Izzy telling Eden,!!!I just wanted to remind you that Dan never really liked it when we were together, and since you’re the one who’s going to have to live with him for the next three years, you might want to withhold the fact that we’re banging like bunnies every chance we get. Just on the off chance that it might piss him off.

“Ben could use some help,” Dan said, in that same beleaguered tone, as Eden lowered her window, even as Izzy struggled to get his watch free. “And I thought you might want to know, but obviously I was wrong.”

Crap, it was stuck and it was definitely easier to simply unfasten the band and let it remain swallowed up by Eden’s dress, than to continue seeming to paw at her the way he was doing.

“What’s going on?” Eden asked. “Where is he?”

“He’s still inside,” Dan said tightly, tersely. “Jenn’s with him, because I can’t fricking get down on the ground. And I’ll be useless in the ambulance, plus I have no idea what his current deal is with the diabetes, so if you’re done messing around with Zanella here, you might want to get your ass in there and—”

Eden was already out of the car. She’d started running for the building back when Dan had said ambulance.

Izzy turned off the engine and got out, too, trying to be surreptitious about the fact that he needed to adjust his shorts.

Danny, of course, didn’t miss a thing.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Zanella?” he asked, but it was clearly a rhetorical question. He didn’t wait for an answer as he limped back toward the building.

Which was when the ambulance arrived—holy shit—sirens wailing.

And Izzy took after Eden, passing Danny at a run.

Ben was going to be all right, but the doctor wanted to keep him in the hospital a little bit longer for observation.

Dan looked up as Jenn sat down next to him in the hospital waiting room. “You sure we shouldn’t ask for a double room—get you a bed, too?” She wasn’t completely kidding. He could see her concern for him in her eyes.

“I’m tired,” he admitted, “but I’m okay.”

“That could have been bad,” she said quietly. “They claim—the administrators at that place—that they had no clue Ben was diabetic. None, whatsoever. Apparently, their standard operating procedure is to lock up their new campers—that’s what they call them. Campers. But they lock them up at night. Not just in a cell. Ben just told Eden that he was handcuffed to a bed, with his hands up over his head. All night long.”

Dan wasn’t surprised. He’d done research on the types of “therapy” used in places like Crossroads.

Jenn was as livid as he’d ever seen her. “I think we should call Linda Thomas,” she told him. “That lawyer Maria recommended? I know you’re not big on litigation, but … Ben could have died. And with a lawsuit of this magnitude? It’s like that case against the KKK. We could force the place to shut down, just to pay damages. Ben could use the money for college tuition … It’s not all bad, you know—taking the legal route. And if it’s Greg and your mother who were ultimately responsible …? That would give you leverage, if you ever needed it.”

But he didn’t need it. “I just want this to be over for Ben,” Dan said. “I don’t want to drag it out. I want …” He exhaled his despair. It sounded like a laugh, but it wasn’t. There was nothing funny about this. Not at all. “I want one of your massages, and a ten-hour nap,” he told her. And this time, when he met her eyes and laughed, it felt more real.

Jenn smiled back at him, her hand warm atop his thigh. “I think we could arrange that,” she said. “I’ve already asked Izzy to drive us back to Eden’s. She’s going to stay with Ben until he’s released, which means when he goes out to pick them up, we’ll have some privacy.”

Her eyes were so beautiful behind the smudgy lenses of her glasses. Dan leaned forward and kissed her because he couldn’t sit here and not kiss her when she was looking at him like that—as if she knew exactly what he was thinking and feeling. But she didn’t know all of it, though. Not the stuff that was making him feel so damn defeated.

“Jenni,” he said as he took her hand and looked down at her long, elegant fingers. They were almost as long as his, but his hands were far broader and still dwarfed hers.

She leaned in and kissed him again, which was nice, but it was over too soon.

“I got a problem,” he admitted. He knew he just had to say it, but it was so goddamned hard.

She saw that he was struggling to find the words, but she didn’t do anything more than lace their fingers together and patiently wait for him to get to it. Which he did after inhaling and exhaling hard a few times.

“I didn’t count on this,” Dan tried to explain. “I didn’t factor this in when I did the math. This.” He gestured to the hospital around them. “The medical care. The hospital stays.” Ben had been in this ER before. A lot. The doctors and nurses all knew him by name, which was great, but also terrifying. Thankfully, they’d had a letter on record, granting parental permission for Ben to receive the treatment he needed, should he be brought in. Which was an additional complication Dan hadn’t considered. He was not only going to have to go pick up Ben’s school and medical records tomorrow, but he was also going to have to schedule a time to connect with Ivette and get her to sign a whole stack of similar letters for him to take to San Diego.

“His doctor actually told me he’s doing really well for a kid with his type of diabetes,” he continued, telling Jenn. “Apparently, doing really well means he’s only in and out of the hospital a couple of times a year.” He shook his head. “I don’t know where I’m going to get the money for that. And since he’s not my kid—”

“Dan—”

But he wasn’t done. “The reason my mother agreed to let me have him,” he told her, “is because I promised I’d keep sending her money.” He closed his eyes. “I bought Ben from her, Jenni, for a monthly sum. That I now have to deliver. And that, plus the rent on an apartment in San Diego, plus medical bills of an undetermined amount …? I’m never going to see you. I’m not going to be able to come to New York to visit. I won’t be able to swing it.”

“So, I’ll visit you,” Jenni said.

“It’s not fair to ask you to do that,” he countered.

“You’re not asking,” she pointed out. “I’m volunteering.”

What could he say to that? He just shook his head. No.

“So if that doesn’t work for you, are you … breaking up with me?” she asked quietly.

“No! Jesus! God!” He put his arms around her. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admitted. “I just … God, when Ben didn’t open his eyes …”

When Ben had fallen in that lobby, when his legs had just—boom—given out from beneath him … That had been bad. But when Dan had realized that his brother had lost control of at least some of his bodily functions … He’d nearly killed the sanctimoniously smug woman behind the front desk.

His wounded right leg had kept him from getting down on the floor next to Ben, but that was okay, because Jenn was there.

And there it was. The bottom line. Whatever happened was going to be okay, because Jenn was there.

Except she wasn’t going to be there. Not for very much longer. She was leaving in a week.

And Danny desperately didn’t want her to go.

Break up with him? Hell, he wanted her to move in and never leave his side again.

But if she didn’t want to marry him, she sure as hell wouldn’t move to San Diego to live with him and his dysfunctional family. Which, God help him, appeared to include Irving Zanella.

Whose dive watch Dan had in his pocket. He’d picked it up after it had finally disengaged itself from where it had been caught, up Eden’s dress.

Jesus Christ.

“He’s okay,” Jenn reassured him, talking about Ben.

“I know,” Dan said. “I’m just …” He shook his head. “Tired.” Yeah, maybe this would all seem less overwhelming when he wasn’t exhausted.

Jenn gently pulled her hand free and stood up. “I’ll see if I can find Izzy. Then we’ll go in and say good-bye to Ben, okay? I’ll be right back.” She kissed the top of his head.

He was busy watching her walk away, and he didn’t see Izzy approach—not until the SEAL sat down next to him and said, “Bro, we need to talk.”

Dan briefly closed his eyes. “Yeah, let’s not do this right now, Zanella,” he said on an exhale. “Jenn went to look for you and—”

“I thought sooner would be better than later,” Izzy said.

“Yeah, well, not for me.”

“Or for me,” Izzy agreed, in that same almost-somber tone. In fact he was sitting there minus his usual devil-may-care, fuck-all-y’all attitude. And the expression on his face was believably contrite. “But for Ben and Eden and Jenn …? Let’s just get this over with.”

“Over with?” Dan said, sitting up straighter. “Over with is you driving us to San Diego and then getting the fuck out of my life.”

“I think I’m probably more in Eden’s life,” Izzy pointed out mildly. “But okay. Have at me. I’m an idiot. I’m a fool, a moron, an asshat, a dipshit. You hate me, you’ve always hated me, I annoy you, and now I really annoy you because I’m sleeping with your sister again. Come on, Danny. Let me have it. Don’t hold back.”

“Jesus,” Dan said, “you’re such a douchebag. What were you, with her for ten whole minutes yesterday before you got back into her pants?”

“I prefer the term reconciled,” the other SEAL said. “Before we reconciled. And it was more like a couple of hours, but yeah, I agree. It happened pretty quickly. You’re not the only one who’s surprised.”

“But I’m not surprised,” Dan told him. “I’m not even close to surprised. What the hell is wrong with you? You’re like the stupidest kid in the world. You touch the hot stove, burn yourself, but then turn right around and touch it again.”

“Hey, Izzy, there you are,” Jenn said, looking from Dan to Izzy and back again. “Everything okay here?”

“Yeah,” Izzy said as Dan flatly said, “No.”

“What if, yeah, okay, you get burned,” Izzy said to Dan, as if he didn’t care that Jenn joined their conversation, which she did by sitting down on Dan’s other side, and taking his hand in silent support, gently squeezing it. “But you also get—”

“Don’t say what I think you’re going to say,” Dan warned him.

“I’m speaking figuratively here,” Izzy said. “Okay? What if you touch the figurative stove, and even though you figuratively get burned, you also figuratively get a million dollars. Chances are, you’re going to go back to the stove.”

“For a million dollars,” Dan argued. “Yeah. But we’re not talking about a million dollars.”

“At the risk of potentially offending you,” Izzy said. “By moving from figurative to actual, I can state that I would, absolutely, trade a million dollars to be with Eden.”

“Be with Eden,” Dan repeated, unable to keep his heat from his voice. “Let’s cut the crap and just say what we mean. You’re talking about—”

Izzy protested. “But you said I shouldn’t say—”

“—having sex with my sister,” Dan finished. “Which is worth—to you—a million dollars. You are fricking stupid.”

“It’s not just the sex,” Izzy insisted.

“You could buy a much nicer girl,” Dan shot back, “for a million dollars. Or maybe you’re as white trash as she is, and you like the whole I’m a slut vibe Eden brings to the table.”

He knew, the moment the words left his mouth, that it was the wrong thing to say. He also knew that it was only because Jenn was sitting next to him, holding his hand, that Izzy didn’t haul him to his feet and kick his ass. Injury be damned.

“That wasn’t helpful,” Jenn murmured, and Dan couldn’t bring himself to look over at her.

Izzy now sat leaning forward slightly, with his forearms on his thighs and his hands clasped together in front of him. He appeared to be relaxed, but Dan could see the muscle jumping in the side of his jaw. His knuckles were also close to white.

Dan knew he should apologize, but the words caught in his throat because he didn’t want to. He was that mad. At Izzy and Eden. At the entire universe. At every human being on the planet except for Jennilyn and Ben.

“Will you, um, excuse us for a second, Jenn?” Izzy turned slightly toward Jennilyn, looking past Dan, but not quite meeting Jenn’s eyes, either. At least as far as Dan could tell. He seemed to be looking at a spot on the wall across the room. “I have to say something to Dan that he’d prefer you don’t hear.”

“I don’t keep secrets from my girlfriend,” Dan said.

But Jenn was already rising to her feet. “I’ll go see how Eden and Ben are doing.” She gave his hand one last squeeze. “Please, no bloodshed.”

Izzy waited until she walked away, until she rounded the corner. And even then, when he spoke, he kept his voice low. “I have opinions and predictions about your relationship, too, you know. Plenty of them, in fact. And I happen to think that you’re using Jenn and that you’re a shit. And I happen to know that if she hadn’t come to Germany the way that she did, you’d’ve hooked up—in a heartbeat—with Sheila Anderson.”

“No,” Dan protested. “I wouldn’t have.” But even as he said the words, he knew that it certainly would have been his pattern in the past.

“Yeah, you would’ve,” Izzy argued. “Because that’s what you do, asshole. You sleep with whoever makes googly eyes at you—as long as they’re convenient and as long as there’s an end date in sight. Me, I have a weakness for your sister. And yes, I continue to want her—wherever and whenever possible. Am I using her, simply because I know for a fact that she doesn’t love me? Maybe I am. And maybe that makes me a shit, too. But I think it just makes me a fool and all those other things that you didn’t disagree that I wasn’t. But as much of a fool and a dipshit that I am? I am not deluded. I know Eden’s not going to stay with me for very long. I know what’s coming, and my life will go on. But until then? I’m on board this train, this incredibly fabulous train, whether you like it or not.

“So. You think I’m a shit, and I know you’re a shit,” Izzy continued. “But here’s how we’re going to get along for these next few days or months or yes, years, if I’m that freaking lucky. You watch your mouth when you talk about your sister. You show some respect. And I won’t kill you. That sound fair to you? Because it sounds really, really fair to me.”

Izzy stood up, clearly not intending to wait for Danny’s response. Which was probably good because Danny was stuck on that one most horrifying word that Izzy had said.

Years.

Holy Christ, if everything went just right, he was going to share an apartment with Ben and Eden and freaking Izzy Zanella for years.