Breathless (Steel Brothers Saga #10)(27)

He sat down.

“What are you doing in Snow Creek?” I asked. This ought to be the last place on earth he’d be hanging out. He was abducted here, after a run-in with all three of my brothers.

“How’s Jade?” he countered.

So much for him answering my question.

“She’s good.” Did he know she was pregnant? I had no idea. None of his business anyway.

He sighed. “Do you know how many times I’ve thought about how much simpler my life would have been if I hadn’t chickened out the day of my wedding?”

Okay, this time I wasn’t holding back. “Look, Colin. I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. Truly I am. But if you think I’m going to let you off the hook for leaving my best friend totally humiliated, think again.”

“Still the same Marjorie Steel,” he said. “You don’t take shit from anyone.”

“Especially not people who hurt my friends.”

“I was your friend once.”

“Jade trumps you, I’m afraid.”

Then I felt like a horrible person. Maybe he was looking for someone to talk to. I wasn’t the right person, but I could at least be nice. Maybe suggest he get help. But first I needed to know why he was here.

“What are you doing here, Colin?”

He didn’t respond right away. Just took several sips of his green smoothie. It looked like pea soup in a clear plastic cup.

Yuck.

“Trying to help myself, so to speak,” he finally said.

“How?”

“By taking back my life. Facing the place where I was kidnapped.”

“How is that supposed to help you?”

“Hell if I know. It was my father’s idea.”

His father? The one who’d been ready to extort money from my brother? Great.

“Have you thought about getting some real help?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean seeing a therapist, Colin.”

He huffed. “My father says that’s only for cowards. Weaklings.”

Well, your father is a supreme douchebag. Seriously, it was on the tip of my tongue.

“So he thinks you should be helping yourself. Facing the music.”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “In a manner of speaking.”

“In other words, ‘get over it.’ Right?”

He nodded.

His hair was growing out nicely. Tom had shaved his head. Colin had always been handsome, with blond hair and greenish eyes.

“Colin,” I said, “what exactly did your father think of you running out on Jade that day?”

“He told me I was a coward.”

Shocking.

“And were you?”

“Well…yeah.”

“You’re putting me in a weird position here,” I said. “I don’t want to give you an excuse for what you did to Jade, but frankly, your dad is being a dick.”

He didn’t respond.

“Sorry if I crossed a line there.” But I wasn’t sorry at all.

“It’s okay.”

I rolled my eyes. “Look. You need some real help. It’s not a weakness. It’s strength.”

“Jonah’s wife is a psychiatrist, right?”

“Yeah. But I don’t think she’d be the right fit.”

“Why not? I hear she’s the best.”

“She is. But you’re forgetting that your esteemed father tried to pin your abduction on Joe. Little conflict of interest there.”

He stared at his pea glop in a cup. “I really just want to talk to Jade. Can you arrange it?”

“That’s why you came here? Not to ‘face the music’?”

“Well, both reasons, actually. I wasn’t sure how to go about seeing her, but running into you here was kind of like kismet.”

I shook my head. “Trust me, Colin. Nothing about this was kismet. Since when do you even use the word kismet?”

“Since my life was ripped away from me by Tom Simpson. Facing death has a way of making you think a little differently.”

“That makes no sense. If you believe in kismet, you must believe it was kismet that you were taken.”

“No. Of course not! And could you keep your voice down?”

People in the small smoothie shop were looking our way. Colin was an adult. His name hadn’t been kept out of the papers. Everyone in Snow Creek knew their once-esteemed mayor, Tom Simpson, had brutalized the young man sitting with me—if they recognized him, that was.

“Sorry.” And I was. He didn’t deserve the fame after what he’d endured.

“Can you arrange it?”

“For you to talk to Jade?” I shook my head. “Sorry.”

“Please?”

“She’s married now. To Talon.”

“I know. The first guy to nearly beat me to a pulp.”

Oh, no. He was so not going there. “And then you pressed charges, got him dragged off to jail. Do not compare my brother to that degenerate Tom Simpson,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Why not? Don’t you worry about Jade?”

I opened my mouth but then counted to ten in my head.

Seriously. All the way to ten. And still I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t say something I might regret later.