Damon took advantage of Cain’s distraction and knocked his feet off the sofa. He swung his own legs around, despite the screaming pain in his leg as he did so.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.That altercation out in the lobby had really messed him up again. He dug in his jeans pocket and produced a single tiny tablet of pain medication, which he dry-swallowed.
“So what you’re saying is that your dad’s been offing people for years? Every cop who wrote him a parking ticket, every secretary whose ass he grabbed?”
Cain’s face paled. He bit his lip, but didn’t reply.
Fine, yes, he was being a complete asshole, but between the throbbing in his leg and the hot rage that made his gut cramp, Damon didn’t care. He pushed himself to his feet, desperate to move, but at the last second, his leg nearly gave out and he had to catch himself against the arm of the sofa.Jesus Christ, he hated being this weak, especially in front of Cain. It made him irrationally angrier.
“How the hell would that even be possible, Cain, huh? How could a person hide that much for so long?”
“I didn’t say heoffedthem,” Cain said hotly, staring at his knees. “He doesn’t have a crew of hit men hanging around the house.” Then he huffed out a dejected little laugh. “Besides Jack.”
Unwelcome sympathy coiled in Damon’s chest. Cain was a kid. Just a kid. It was the senator who deserved Damon’s ire, and Christ knew, Damon would never want anyone judginghimbyhisabsolute dickwad of a father.
Besides which, the kid surprised him. He was a contradiction, for sure, with the way he seemed to be totally cowed by his father, but had no problem standing up to Damon.
“What I’m trying to say,” Cain continued in a stronger voice, “is that I have no idea what he did in the past. But after what Jack did, and then what happened to Jack in jail? If I hadn’t happened to be in the lobby tonight, Damon, what would have happened?”
Damon limped forward, bracing his fists on the vanity. From the mirror, he could see that Cain hadn’t turned, and was still facing the empty sofa, his shoulders hunched over in a way that signified simultaneous tension and defeat - like an animal that knew it had been bested, and was just trying to protect itself.
“I’ll tell you,” Cain said a second later, his voice hollow. “People would have heard you making a racket, yeah. And the video of you, all drunk and disorderly, suddenly back from the dead, would have gone viral. You’d have been arrested for being threatening tonight, and maybe they would’ve tacked on something about you being the cause of the plane crash. Any chance you ever had of getting your life back would have disappeared in a puff of smoke. And then? Before any reporter had a chance to dig up anything, before any investigator had a chance to ask you a single question?” He spun to his feet and pierced Damon with a glare. “You would have disappeared.”
Damon returned his look steadily. “Well, maybe it would have been worth it. Maybe my disappearance would seem pretty fucking suspicious to an investigator.”
Cain’s eyes widened and his mouth went slack. “Your disa…what? You understand what I mean, right? You wouldn’t be disappearing to witness protection? To a farm in Topeka orwhereverthefuck? They would kill you, Damon. If Jack was killed before he could talk, they would definitely kill you.”
Leaning a hip against the vanity to take the weight off his leg, Damon folded his arms across his chest and looked back at Cain. “I gave it sixty-forty odds. That was before I knew he’d done this shit before, though.” He stopped to ponder. “Now, I’d say maybe eighty-twenty.”
“Jesus,” Cain breathed. “You know, Drew said Cam and Cort are worried about you. That you've just fallen off the radar entirely. But I don't think any of them realize you’re actually suicidal.” If Cain saw Damon flinch, he didn’t show it. He took a step forward, getting in Damon’s space. “They care about you. Cort is your brother. Did you stop for even asecondto think what it would do to him to lose you now?Again?”
Damon’s pulse kicked up, throbbing in time with the ache in his leg, and he blinked against the fog that crept around the edges of his vision as the pain pill, amplified by the double-slug of Jack, hit his nearly-empty stomach. Rich kid. Privileged and entitled. He had no clue what Cort was to Damon - that he’d give anything for his brother, that thiswasfor his brother, in a way, because who the hell would want a brother like Damon? Messed up leg, messed up head, no future, no fuckingname, for God’s sake.
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken some portion of that aloud until Cain shook his head. “So what you’re saying is, you’re feeling sorry for yourself.”
“No. Fuck.” Damon rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “No. I just want thisover. I want Cam and Cort to ride off into the sunset and not worry that someone’s gonna find out what they know.”
“And you think showing up like this, getting your name on my father’s radar, will keep them safe? It can only make thingsworse.”
The room wavered when Damon’s head shot up, then wavered again as he shook his head.God,the pills weren’t usually that strong. Then again, he’d never attempted to take them with nothing but liquor in his gut, either.
“I need something to happen. I need tomakesomething happen.” His explanation came out more like a plea. “Everyone else seems finewaiting, but what the hell are we waiting for? Is your father going to wake up one morning and just confess? Call a press conference and start groveling? Evidence isn’t going to fall into our laps, and I can’t… I can’t sit in this holding pattern forever.” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s me feeling sorry for myself, kid. But I want this over. One way or another.”
He leaned back more heavily on the vanity, bracing his palms on the slick surface. He was tired. So damn tired. But he met Cain’s deep blue eyes defiantly.
The kid’s gaze held none of the pity Damon was sure he’d find. Instead, Cain was staring at him like he was a complicated math problem, his brow furrowed and eyes squinted as he ran a risk-benefit analysis on Damon’s life.
He hoped Cain got a better result than he’d found when he’d tried to do the same thing.
He tilted his head back against the mirror and closed his eyes. The lights in the ceiling made pink and white sparkles dance across his eyelids, and for just a second, he could imagine he was leaning on the little dock by the pond back in Johnsville, soaking up summer sun while Cort played in the water. He’d hated his life back then, stuck in that shitty foster home. He’d spent hours planning a way to get them both out of there, never letting himself think about the possibility of failure.Hard and easy don’t matter when there’s no plan B,he used to say. He wondered if he would have pushed himself so hard if he’d known how things would end up.
“Sometimes,” he told Cain, surprised at how slurred his voice was. “Sometimes you get to a point where shitcan’tget any worse and doinganythingis better than doing nothing.”
He opened his eyes to find Cain standing right in front of him.When had he gotten so close?Damon’s vision was wonky and he couldn’t seem to clear it. Cain wrapped his arm around Damon’s waist and hauled him to his feet, like they were going to dance, and Damon went without protest.
He tried to search for his earlier anger, to conjure up some defense against this new, incredibly attractive Cain Shaw, but the medication seemed to dull all of those negative emotions, and the way Cain watched him made Damon’s mouth go dry.
“God, the look in your eyes, Cain.”
