“I like him.” Somehow his fist landed on his hip.
Her silence was blissful. For a brief second. “When you say ‘like,’ how exactly do you mean that?”
“I’m not sure.” Part of the truth. She’d consider it a lie of omission that he didn’t mention his feelings might lean toward more than friendship.
“Me-owww,” Blue reminded him, cry echoing down the hall. He’d unsheathe the claws and scratch up Dalton’s shoes if he didn’t move fast enough. He’d dumped dry food in the cat dish and was spooning out some wet when it hit him that his sister had been silent far too long. The silence continued while he threw the dirty spoon in the sink and began carrying Blue’s breakfast toward his room. Had the shock been too much for her system?
“Andy?”
“How could you possibly like him?” she choked out.
“When I’ve spent time alone with him, he’s not a dick, that’s how.”
“You’ve been spending time alone with him?” she shrieked.
Blue patted his leg when he walked into the room, like it was a toy, and Dalton set down the food, then had to put his hand back on his hip. It helped him confront. “Listen, I know he can be a total jerk.”
Andrea snorted in agreement.
“But, he’s . . .” Dalton rubbed his forehead, thinking. How much could he say? “He’s damaged, somehow.”
“Oh no,” she moaned. “You and damaged men.”
“I know, I know.” He threw up his palm, as if it would keep her from going on. “But it’s not like that.”
“It’s not like you’re repeating your past mistakes?” she snarked.
Dalton flinched, but couldn’t back down. “Just because he seems similar to some of my past boyfriends doesn’t make him the same kind of person. There’s substance there, under that facade he shows the world.”
“Some men are too fucked up to fix. Remember your last damaged man?” Her voice had gone sympathetic. He hated that from her. It was too close to pity.
“I remember him very well. I’m keeping that in mind, I swear. But, Andy?”
She sighed. “What?”
“Coming out like Tierney did last night? What if that’s a sort of cry for help? Or his way of tearing everything down before rebuilding?”
“Dalton,” she warned. “Do not start reading into it. Jerry said he was so drunk he could barely stand—he probably doesn’t even remember doing anything, and when he wakes up this morning, he’ll find out what he did and, I don’t know, suck on his gun.”
“Andy!” She may as well have punched him. “Oh my God, I have to go.”
“Don’t! Shit, I never should have said that. You cannot save him, D—”
He hung up on her while yanking on the jeans and shirt he’d worn last night. It took mere seconds to get dressed, but that was too long. He grabbed his phone from where he’d tossed it onto his bed and ran for the door, snagging his coat at the last second.
Are you all right? He didn’t want to mention specifics in his text, because what if Tierney really didn’t remember or even know yet what he’d done?
Tierney hadn’t responded by the time Dalton was in his car, shoving his key into the ignition. He checked quickly—two minutes since he’d sent the message. That wasn’t long, but . . . He started the car.
Consciousness seeped in slowly. Tierney didn’t know what he’d been dreaming, but he knew when he began to wake.
He was pretty sure something unpleasant awaited him. Not just a pounding head or the certainty that a big dog (named Hangover) had taken a dump in his mouth while he slept. Something even worse than usual.
When he reached the conscious equivalent of the gray light of dawn, the shock of the memory—of what he’d done last night—knocked the wind out of him as surely as falling off the table at the wake had. What do people think of me now? If they thought he was a dick before . . .
The question made him puke. Literally.
After stumbling into the bathroom and throwing up everything he’d eaten in the last month, he pressed his clammy forehead against the seat and rested his pounding head and heart.
Wow, had he burned some bridges or what? But he could never put on that slick persona again, could he? It would be like putting on wet, muddy clothes after taking a shower.
Except . . . He hadn’t liked himself, sure, but he knew that version of Tierney Terrebonne, sleazeball extraordinaire. Others knew it too, that smarmy, sexhound, blowhard role he’d developed. That’s who he was to them. Even worse, he didn’t have a clue how to not be that guy.
And he was afraid. Terrified. Of what people would say, and of being excluded from the tribe of humanity.
Yet last night . . . No one can call me a coward now.
The flare of pride didn’t last more than a few seconds. What he’d done was awesome, great, but now he couldn’t go back, and he didn’t know how the fuck to go forward. Maybe he should have made a fucking plan for what to do next. What kind of man was he supposed to be?
Time. He just needed time to adjust. A few days. Or weeks. He could hole up here. People rarely stopped by without warning. He could tell them he had Ebola and the health division had him quarantined in his home.
Ding-dong.
Oh fuck. Okay, no. No way would he answer that.
Ding-dong.
No matter how persistent the bell ringer might be.
Ding-dong ding-dong ding-dong.
Even if the sound made his head split open. He’d just let it happen, regardless of how painful it was. His head would probably disintegrate from the noise reverberating in his ears, and in a month or two when his family finally came looking for him . . . They would eventually, right? Well, when someone came looking for him, they’d find his body here, desiccated brain peeping through his cracked skull, dried blood all over the floor. It wouldn’t technically be suicide, since he hadn’t done it to himself.
He’d just let the sound of the doorbell do the job.
Too bad it had stopped.
Wait, what was that sound? Footsteps?
“I should have known I’d find you here.”
Father. Tierney groaned into the toilet bowl, and it echoed back at him, buffeting his eardrums enough to make him think about puking again. He lifted his head to avoid a repeat. “How did you get in here? And do you really want to be speaking to me?”
“Emily still has the key you gave her so she could look after your fish the last time you went on vacation.”