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Time slowly ticked away, the therapist letting Bree sit with her thoughts and memories, the want and upset bubbling inside her. Why did she come to therapy? How was crying and feeling like a failure therapeutic? It wasn’t the first time this woman had suggested closure with a man who’d been a flash in Bree’s life, a wild weekend she couldn’t get out of her system. Unlike most who had an escape in Vegas, she lived here. The escape wasn’t from out of town, and if she needed to see Ice again, she could. But need shouldn’t be the emotion. That was addictive behavior, the kind that had her tossing and turning in bed, the part of her that warmed at the sound of ice clinking in her glass as it fell from the dispenser in her freezer. Need was animalistic. Want, on the other hand, want was when she was in the quiet moments and thought about how he enjoyed a good tease from her, the way his body felt under her hands, and when he told her she didn’t fear the fire. Want came when she thought of the smokey eyes filled with desire and want for her as he spoke of never being sated.
“And that’s time,” Dr. Hollingsworth said, silencing the small alarm clock and scribbling the last of her notes. “Bree, I want you to take the weekend and think about next steps. You spoke of being on four-year cycles, which I get from an education standpoint, but you’ve been out of school for years now, which means you’re moving on to a new phase where there isn’t a set date to complete an achievement.”
Letting out a long breath, Bree stepped from the office and headed to her car, awareness of her surroundings heightened as it had been for the past month, even when she’d been at home with her parents for two exhausting weeks until she had to get back to work. Not for a project that got behind, though, but for her own mental well-being.Motheringandsmotheringwere close in pronunciation for a reason. While her parents balanced between caring for her and forwarding her local jobs and housing options, all she could think of was returning to Vegas, even if her home no longer had the false sense of security.
The safety of the world was seemingly gone, as if she hadn’t known the ugliness before, the dangers safely on the other side of the TV screen being reported on the nightly news. While Misty’s death would be forever in the urban legends around the neighborhood, the house would sell, and none would care. A friendship, more built on a need to socialize versus actual sisterhood, had forever shifted Bree’s life, making her reexamine choices beyond the superficial. Perhaps she was meant for Las Vegas and their false façades. The first and only meaningful connection she’d made with a person and she didn’t even have the strength to go to him, settling instead on check-ins with Detective Nunez.
Now the slightest movement, prepared or not, had her heart thundering and hand rushing to cover her chest. So why, when Ice stood from where he was leaning on his bike, did she not jolt? The man crossing the parking lot wearing a fitted suit, the collar popped open, exposing the dark ink that covered his neck, should have sent shivers through her trembling body. It was a deep navy suit, contrary to the boots and leather he normally wore. The sight of his tattooed fingers and tops of his hands coming from the bright white of his cuffs that reached just beyond the suit coat made her heart race in a different way. It skipped and jumped as if it were a toddler splashing through puddles and making everything wet.
“Long time,” he said, his voice somehow smoothed, as if she were traveling down a gravel road at a crawl, a few grinding cracks as the tires pressed into the broken rocks, but nothing anyone could fear. “I’ve been missing you, Bree.”
“I haven’t moved, Ice,” she countered, the hurt from him not reaching out more than she expected.
“What was that?” he said, tapping his ear as he took a step toward her. “They say I’ll get most of my hearing back, but I’m at about fifty percent.”
“I said I haven’t moved,” she repeated, a bit louder to counter the slight traffic noise finding its way from the busier street a block over.
“I know. I pay attention,” he said with a devilish grin from making her repeat herself.
She knew he’d been in the hospital for a few days recovering from a concussion—and hearing loss, it seemed. Cuts and scrapes appeared healed from the last time she’d laid eyes on him. The world had flipped, spun into the sun and back out for her, and here he stood like sex on a stick, sending her back into orbit.
“Do I want to know how you knew I was here?” she questioned, unsure if stalking was a turn-on or a red flag. Guess it depended on who was in the bushes.
“I think you know enough of my secrets,” he said, his shoulders broadening for a bit. “But the office is only a few blocks from the courthouse, and not many people have a Neil deGrasse Tyson sticker saying ‘Y’all motherfuckers need science’ on their back window, at least not in Vegas.”
She glanced over to the sticker, then tried to set herself back to rights.
“That why you’re in a suit?” she queried, trying to remember the legalities Detective Nunez had told her he would have to deal with. “Court?”
“Signing papers, mostly, but my lawyer and the DA do like to tango around the indeterminate danger I pose to society.”
“By being a Road Captain?” she questioned, having never learned the meaning behind the title.
“That is a dangerous position.”
“What is it?”
“I map out and plan rides we take.”
“You’re an event planner,” she said, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it all. “Guess being from Vegas, that is a full-time job.”
“I’m not an event planner,” he protested, the little kid in him practically stomping his foot at the idea of it all. “There is so much more to it because I need to know where and when we can stop—shit, maybe I am basically a glorified tour bus operator.”
“Okay, but you’re all clear?” She thought of the pile of criminal acts that had gone down in a short time frame.
Between John’s trial for embezzlement, the bankruptcy, and him doing the apology campaign when it came out that both Misty and John had been caught in bed with the Brambilla son-in-law, the bisexual adulterer couldn’t be found to answer questions. But no one had been charged since there was no body. He was simply a missing man who’d abandoned his wife and kids, tale as old as time.
Ice had too much to settle, and all she could do was walk away. She didn’t like messes she didn’t understand. A puzzle, sure, nuclear reactor, possibly, but legal issues, from Mrs. Parker’s kidnapped nephew and the car she narrowly escaped, to bodies of two serial killers that had DNA links to so many open cases they set up a field office? Ice and Fubar would have been heroes if they weren’t Sinners, which she saw as bullshit, but both men took it in stride. They’d saved countless people, but a patch on the back stole their right to recognition. No matter how Nunez explained it, Bree had to accept at least Ice wasn’t going to serve time, and this time it wasn’t because of a burrito.
In the wake of the attack, the trailer had been blown on its side. It had never been a place for kids, but neither was her house, and she knew in her heart they needed to find their own space. While she did check in at first, eventually she had to trust in the system that they would be fine. And it wasn’t as if her parents hadn’t flown in and practically kidnapped her the moment she stepped foot out of the hospital. All of it built a wall she needed to respect and not try to take a sledgehammer to. It was a few days of excitement she’d cherish, but she lived in the real world, and Ice lived in his—a satellite circling the real world, that occasionally dipped into her space and flashed when it went by. She’d gotten to see the flash, and most don’t. For that reason she couldn’t help feeling blessed, as if she’d seen a falling star, one she would need years in therapy to get through witnessing, but had enlightened her to the greater world around her.
“The kids would like to see you,” he said, offering an olive branch she so wanted to grab, but she wasn’t going to play nursemaid or nanny because Ice needed help.
“I’m not really their aunt,” she replied, though it did lighten her heart that they asked about her. “And I’m not here to be a nanny.”
“I have a nanny,” he said, his lids lowering a bit in the predatory way he had.
“You do?” she questioned, wishing the end of her sentence hadn’t squeaked at the pang of jealousy as she envisioned a twenty-year-old dancer and not Nanny McPhee, pre-transformation.
