The Problem With Heartache (19 page)

Where am I?

I tentatively opened my eyes to a small slit and surveyed my surroundings. I was in my hotel suite, but for some reason, I was on the couch, and not in my bedroom. The black-out curtains were sure as hell
not
drawn—amateur move, Collins—and a standard white hotel quilt covered me, imprisoning me in a tomb of my own sweat and hangover juice.
Ugh.

“Rise and shine, Mr Collins.” The voice sang, way too loudly and
way
too close to my head. I tilted my neck up and saw Kate walking closer to me, a white mug in her hands containing something that smelled like sex, like candy, like everything good in this world, moving closer to me. “You brought me coffee,” my voice croaked, and my hand shook as I reached for it.

She smiled kindly and I shuffled myself up into a half-seated position, wrapping my fingers around the outside of the mug. I took another glance up. She looked amazing this morning, in her skin-tight jeans and tight black tank, a pair of killer heels on display. I moved my lips to my mug and tilted my head back, thinking about seeing her half-naked yesterday and grinning.
Would it really be so bad if …

“What the fuck?” I spat the hot liquid out, little brown droplets covering my white quilt, the glass coffee table, the white carpet. My stomach roiled and curdled, the bitter taste of coffee competing with the strong taste of something like tequila or maybe even vodka for position of top dog in my body. I slammed the cup down on the floor, ignoring the coffee that sloshed over the sides and seeped into the carpet. Yep, I was a bad-ass like that.

Or I was when someone fucked with my morning coffee. “What the hell did you do to it?”

A few seconds later, Kate appeared back in my line of vision with the cloth from the suite’s sink and started mopping up the coffee table, eyeing the stained floor wistfully. After a few minutes, she went back to the kitchen and reappeared with a bottle of vinegar.
I don’t even know where she woulda gotten it from …

“I just thought that some extra booze could make your hangover less painful.” Kate shrugged as she scrubbed at the carpet. “And since you slept on the couch, I figured you wouldn’t be feeling one hundred per cent.”

Now that she’d mentioned it, I did feel distinctly less than chipper. My ribs had this soft but urgent ache every time I moved, and my neck felt as if someone had stabbed it with a carving knife, right up against a really important vein.

I forced myself all the way upright, eyeing my boozed-up coffee as if it could still somehow cause me grief from the floor, and tried to focus. Shit, everything was kind of swaying. I grabbed the couch cushions and steadied myself. Nope. It was me. I was swaying.

“What did you even put in it?” I screwed up my face.

“Whatever I found in the mini bar.” Kate shrugged, as if this was the logical answer.

“Whatever you found in the—”

“You know, vodka, gin, bourbon, tequila—”

“You mixed all those things?” I frowned.

“Mm-hmm.” Kate nodded, the picture of innocence, all wide eyes and open face. “Why? Do they not go? I’m not really a big drinker …” She bit her lip in an
oops
gesture that I somehow found hot, even though I should be pissed that she just basically tried to kill me.

“Sorry for yelling.” I bit the side of my cheek. “I guess you didn’t know.” I shook my head and leaned back against the couch. I couldn’t be mad at her. Not at someone who was so freaking sweet, nice enough to try and make me feel better when I’d clearly hit rock-bottom and—

My reverie was disrupted. I looked at her, leaning up against the doorframe, one hand over her mouth … laughing.

The bitch was
laughing!

“What’s so freaking funny?”

“You,” she spat out, mirth making her shoulders shake, her hand risen to her mouth.

“Why?” I folded my arms across my chest. As far as I could tell, there was nothing damn funny about this whole thing.

“As if I didn’t know that that cocktail of booze would taste horrible!” Kate laughed, doubling over now. “I may not be super experienced, but I’m not dumb. Give me a break.”

Oh.

It took a few seconds, but I started laughing too. She went into the bathroom then came back with a wet washcloth, which she handed to me. I rubbed it over my face, relishing in the sensation of the fresh, clean scent that made the stench of booze slowly fade away.
Amazing.
“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She sat down on the couch opposite me, hands clasped over one knee as she leaned forward. “So you’re awake now?” She quizzed me.

“Yes.” I nodded. I liked playful Kate. It was one of my favourite kinds.

“And you don’t feel quite as horrid as you did when you first woke up?” She tilted her head to one side, a big smile turning her lips, and I knew couldn’t argue.

“Yes.” Strangely, her stupid coffee cocktail did the trick.

Something washed over her face, and it turned into the picture-perfect poker player’s expression. She was Switzerland. “So, let’s talk about you killing your brother.”

The words were like kryptonite to me, and I panicked. My throat swelled till it was so thick, I didn’t see how I could possibly get any words out, and my breathing came short and sharp, as if each gasp couldn’t get deep enough.

My brother? How does she know about my brother?

It was as if she read my mind, for seconds later she started to talk again. “You told me, last night. You said you killed him.”

Something that was in between a bowling ball and one of those giant round things used to knock buildings down swung like a pendulum in the pit of my stomach, dread building at a rapid rate. I’d been drunk before; hell, over the past five years, I’d been drunk a lot. But never enough to tell someone about
him
.

I must trust her more than I’d thought. She’d penetrated my walls.

Shit.

“I … I didn’t kill my brother.” Only it was about two hours too late for me to try this line as a comeback, and the look in her eyes said it—the look in my eyes no doubt confirmed it. “Did I really tell … tell you that?”

She nodded, and looked down at her hands. They were delicate, active, and currently her fingers were threading themselves through each other. If her hands had a career occupation, they would be dancers.

“You told me you killed him. It was late last night … I was telling you about how I feel … you know, spiritually. What happens next, and all.” She studied her hands as she said this and they picked up speed, dancing to her new allegro tempo.

Her words rang a bell, and I vaguely recalled talking about life after death with her. Her confusion, and uncertainty. My reassurance that she would be okay.

It was as if last night we’d travelled from LA to New York. I could see how we’d started (at the club); I could see where we ended (apparently, I’d told her I killed him); I just couldn’t figure out quite how I’d gotten from A to B. Or why the hell I’d even gotten to B in the first place, when I was trying to hit up Vegas.

I fisted my hair in my hands as I tried to piece it all together. I’d gotten drunk, so drunk; I’d needed to forget. I couldn’t handle the way she’d stripped, and in my effort to forget her, to erase her from my brain, I’d somehow taken her home with me and spilled my biggest secret.
Great work, Collins.

My brain worked at a million miles per hour as I tried to think of the most logical thing I could say to get this idea out of her brain, to make her stop thinking I was a family-killing maniac, but without the coffee, and with the hangover, it was all too much. Why the hell had I said that? I knew I felt comfortable around Kate, but how comfortable was too comfortable? Where had my usual self-protective guard been and why the hell hadn’t it been in play?

It was in that moment I made a choice. A choice that wasn’t nice; it was cruel, down to the bone.

But sometimes you had to save yourself. No one else would do it for you.

“Look, I don’t know what you think you heard, but it was clearly wrong.” I shook my head and forced a smile. “Maybe you’ve gone a little …” I cringed, one more second of deliberation, “… crazy.”

The silence in the room was deafening. It was an orchestra. It was a car cruising around the block with double-bass speakers and the sound turned to
max.
It was the loudest, meanest silence I’ve ever heard.

I expected her to crumple. I expected her to fold her body in two and run, because I knew that when I was her, when my father was at the peak of his illness, when I’d lost someone I loved, that was exactly what I would have done. Grief wasn’t easy, and sometimes, you got so caught up in mourning the dead, you could forget to mourn the living. Forget to mourn the very real quality-of-life deterioration happening right in front of you.

But Kate surprised me.

She’s really fucking good at that.

Instead, she straightened—yes, straightened—her shoulders, puffed out her chest, and smiled, a cold, cruel smile. “I know your secret, Lee Collins.”

She stood and walked to the kitchen, a seductive sway to her hips that I was unable to ignore. She grabbed her clutch from the bench and walked back to the apartment door. “I’ll keep it, but I’m going to need answers.”

The door slammed behind her. Four and a half years. Five and a half years I had kept this fucking secret, and now I’d blown it. And for what? Some chick who’d made me feel like an idiot for teasing her.

No.

Some chick who’d made me
feel.

Not only that, but I was fairly sure Lottie had been there last night. That meant she would have seen me drunk as a teenager with his first bottle of bourbon.

Shit.

I picked up my coffee cup from where it was sitting on the floor and threw it at the wall. It slammed, shattering upon impact and raining little chips of white porcelain all over the white carpet floor, mixed in with the brown liquid floating there.

Tony was going to kill me.

R
ELIEF OVERWHELMED
me as I walked down the hallway, my hands shaking. It had taken so much energy to keep it together, to not fall apart again in front of Lee after my little breakdown last night.

When I’d returned to my room at something close to one, I’d been enveloped in hurt. In pain. In sadness. Because sometimes, the questions about the when, and the why, and the after? They consume you. And without my running routine, sleep had been an elusive fiend I just hadn’t been able to come by.