Chains (12 page)

She rubbed her eyes and picked the dog up from my lap.

I paid the driver and we got out. “How the hell can Alex afford this place?”

Danny shuffled her feet, staring down at the concrete. “That’s what I need to tell you before we go in.” She looked up at me with fear and apprehension in her eyes. “Promise you won’t hate me,” she said.

I swallowed. Hard. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to be good. “I promise I won’t hate you. I never could hate you, Dan. You know that.”

“He’s a drug dealer,” she said. “I worked for him until I got hooked and used all the profits I was supposed to be bringing in. I lied to you. He didn’t make me leave because of…because of the baron showing up. He made me leave because I’m a junkie.”

Her words spun around my head for a second until the thought got snagged in my consciousness. “You dealed? You were fifteen. He let you—” I grabbed the sides of my head before it exploded and paced in a circle. “He got you hooked and kicked you out—left you on your own. With
Striker
out there, the motherfucker who hurt you.”

The front door opened. Alex stepped out. We stared at each other for a long moment before recognition hit him. “Tyler.”

“Surprise!” Danny said and giggled, nervously.

Alex’s eyes darted from her to me. “What is this? A fucking family reunion?”

“No,” I said, striding forward and hooking my arm around Danny as we approached the porch. “She needs a place to lie low for a while.”

He stepped to the edge of the porch stairs. “Sorry. I don’t take foster kids. Bad experience with the system in the past, you know.”

Danny was shaking and started crying again. Alex was slightly taller than me, but not as strong. He was lean and scrappy, but not a trained fighter. The years looked like they piled up on him. Maybe it was the scruff on his chin, or the sun-worn creases in the corners of his eyes, but he didn’t look like a guy in his early twenties, he looked like he was at least thirty. And pissed.

But not as pissed as me.

“She’s on day one with no drugs,” I said. “It’s about to get really fucking ugly, and she needs to crash somewhere. That somewhere has to be here.” I stepped up to him, got in his face. “You did this to her. You’re going to help me get her through it.”

“
I
did this to her?” Alex let out an incredulous laugh. “She brought this on herself.”

Danny sobbed, quietly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“You either move,” I said, shoving against him, “or call the cops to make us leave. I’m guessing you don’t like dealing with the cops.” I wasn’t playing with him. He had no choice in the matter. I pushed by him and ushered Danny into the house.

“Fuck,” Alex muttered behind us. He shut the door and pointed up the stairs. “Second door on the left. Put her in there.”

“Thank you,” she said, giving him a faltering smile. She held the puppy between her neck and shoulder while I helped her up the steps. The condo smelled like fresh paint and new carpet. This couldn’t have been where Danny had stayed with him before.

“When was the last time you saw Alex?” I asked her, opening the bedroom door.

“A couple years ago,” she said. “He gave me my phone, told me he’d pay for it and that he never wanted to see me again.”

What the fuck was his problem? As soon as I got Danny into bed, I’d find out. “You kept in touch with him though?” I asked.

Danny nodded. “Not often, but I text him to make sure he’s okay. I worry about him. He shouldn’t be dealing, it’s dangerous.” She sat on the bed, reached up and placed her hand on the side of my face. “Just like how you shouldn’t be fighting. I don’t like anyone hitting you. You’ve had enough of that in your life.”

I turned my head and kissed her palm. “Now there are rules, and I can hit back. It’s all I know, Dan. All I’m good at.”

I took her by the shoulders, laid her back onto the pillow and pulled up a blanket folded at the end of the bed. “Sleep now,” I told her, and bent to kiss her forehead. She lifted her chin and met my lips with hers.

We froze, lips pressed together. A rush of energy and heat shot through me, like my soul refueling, finding hers, plugging in. Danny was my balance. My purpose. The light to my dark.

I broke the kiss and leaned my forehead against hers. “Thank you for not hating me,” she whispered, stroking the back of my neck with her short fingernails.

It wasn’t possible to hate the person you loved most in the world, but I couldn’t make those words come out of my mouth. No words would come so I kissed her again, desperate for more of the connection that took me out of reality and away from a hopeless situation.

She pulled me down onto the bed, half on top of her. There was something so perfect about being with her like this. Like I’d spent my whole life waiting, and I had no idea what I was waiting for. Now I knew. I was waiting for Danny.

“I want you strong again,” I said, between sweet, wet kisses. “You need to rest.”

“Don’t you want me?” she asked, blinking away tears.

“Danny, I want you more than anything, but not when your emotions are all over like they are right now.” She turned her head away from me. “Hey,” I said, stroking the side of her face with the backs of my fingers, “I’m not going anywhere. When we get you through this, we’ll figure out how to be together.”

A bittersweet smile curved her lips. The sunlight through the window made her eyes almost transparent as she gazed out at the sky. “You’ll leave me again before that happens,” she said, sliding her hand across the bed toward some invisible desire she couldn’t reach.

I opened my mouth to deny it, but she snapped her head around to face me and said, “You don’t know me like you think you do. You’ll want to leave me. I won’t blame you.”

I stretched out beside her on the bed and ran my fingers through her hair with a desperate urge to sooth her. “What are you talking about, Dan? I could never
want
to leave you.”

“You will,” she whispered, turning her back to me and curling into a ball with her knees pulled up to her chest.

“You’re wrong.” I scooped her body against mine, resting my cheek against the crown of her head.

“You’ll see.”

The puppy whined and started to circle the floor. There was nothing I wanted more than to stay and make her tell me what she meant—why she thought I didn’t know her anymore when I did know her. I knew her heart. I knew her soul. It didn’t matter what she’d done when we were apart, it didn’t change who she was at the core of her being.

“I have to let the dog out,” I said, reluctantly, standing from the bed. “I’ll be back. You sleep, okay.”

She didn’t acknowledge me.

“Come on, you,” I said to the pup, hooking him under my arm and carrying him out the door.

Alex sat in the family room with his cell phone to his ear. He glanced over at me when I walked past and stopped talking. Having Danny and I here would put a crimp in his business. Ignoring him, I found my way into the kitchen and to the glass doors that opened to a patio.

The dog sniffed around on the cement, pissing on the table legs and grill. “He better not piss all over the place,” Alex said, stepping out of the house. “And you’re cleaning up his shit.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I said, folding my arms, suddenly feeling like I needed to lock my fists away. “She named him after you. The dog. Named him Alex.”

Alex lit a cigarette and exhaled a long stream of white smoke. “She would,” he said. “Especially if she needed a place to lay low for a while.”

Manipulation. Just how I figured Danny and Alex’s relationship went. I’d guessed that was how she got by, but it still stung to hear it. “I didn’t want her life to turn out this way,” I said.

“She did it to herself.”

“She’s nineteen. She did what she had to. She got away.”

Alex scratched his head. “Did she really?”

I stepped forward and grasped the back of a patio chair. “He won’t touch her again. I’ll kill him first.”

He groaned. “She’s not that little girl anymore.”

I snapped my head around, glaring at him. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Alex took a last, long draw on his smoke before dropping it and grinding it out with the toe of his boot. “It means what I said. She’s not the angelic little girl she used to be. Danny will do anything for a fix, for cash, for a hand out.”

“She’s desperate, Alex. Of course she’ll get what she needs any way she can.”

“Even at your expense,” he said, punctuating his words with raised brows. “Be careful. She knows you’re willing to give her your last breath if it came down to it.”

“Why aren’t you?” I said, stepping toward him. “The three of us made a pact a long time ago. Did you forget that?”

“You think it was a coincidence that you found her in Reno?” A disgusted smirk formed on his lips. “One Internet search of your name and anyone can find you. You’re supposed to be in Austin.”

Words escaped me. I studied his face as it shifted from irritation to pity. “You looked for me?” I asked.

“I keep track of you. Both of you. At least one of you has a future—unless you let her fuck it up for you.”

“I didn’t know,” I said, sitting in the chair. The puppy ran up and licked my hand. “I would’ve been in touch. I thought you were gone a long time ago—wanted nothing to do with me and Dan.”

Alex sank into the chair next to me. “That feeling of responsibility you have for Danny? You’re not the only one with big brother syndrome.” He shook another cigarette out of his pack and lit it. “I’ve got enough guilt for leaving you two behind—shit—there’s not a shrink on earth who could untangle the fucked up mess in my head.”

“You don’t need to get your conscience all knotted up over me.”

“I knew what would happen when I left,” he said, flicking the ash off the end of his smoke. “You didn’t get your ass beat every night. I saved you from it more than once—egged him on when he started eyeing you.”

“Well, thanks, but when you left I got bloodied up every fucking night anyway. You should’ve saved yourself the trouble.”

“I gave you a couple years without it. You’re welcome, asshole.” He narrowed his eyes at me, sucking on the end of his cigarette. “I’m not your enemy,” he said, lazy smoke drifting out between his lips.

“Never said you were.” Talking about the past turned me into a bitter teen left by my mom and shuttled off by the government to live with a fucking psychopath.

“You and I are like soldiers who made it through a war. We’re forever linked. Brothers in blood.”

“What do you want? A purple heart?”

Alex stubbed his cigarette butt out on the heel of his boot. “No. I want to go back into battle with that sick motherfucker. You got your chance to put him in the hospital. I want mine.”

“I should’ve put him in his grave,” I said, feeling a surge of adrenaline at the suggestion of giving him what he earned his entire life—a violent death.

“It isn’t too late,” Alex said, staring at me, measuring me up, determining my willingness. “He’ll come for her. When he does…”

When he does. When he comes, we could make sure he never came near Danny again.

“I’m in.”

Sir Alex The Brave