Accelerate

  With that reminder in my head, I knock the car door closed with my hip and start up the walkway to the front porch. Lena and Jordan have already gone in and they’ve left the door open for me.

  Things are deceptively quiet when I first get into the house. I use my foot to close the door behind me, then head for the stairs. But a quick glance into the family room shows Joe passed out on the family room couch, a bottle of scotch dangling from one hand and a line of something—coke, heroin, who the fuck knows—spread out on the table in front of him.

  Goddamnit.

  Lena is bent over him, curly brown hair falling in her face as she checks his breathing to make sure he’s alive. He is, thank God. For now anyway. Who the hell knows what the future is going to bring—every goddamn day is an adventure lately. And not the good kind.

  Lena starts trying to wake him up, but I bark, “Leave him!” at her as I take the stairs two at a time. “Take Jordan to her room. I’ll get him after I put Benji down.”

  Joe’s a belligerent drunk at the best of times. At the worst, he’s bad-tempered and sometimes even violent. Neither my sister nor Jordan needs to deal with that tonight. Fuck, I don’t need to deal with it tonight. But that’s not a choice I have. I’m the one who fucked up, who got caught and went to prison even though I knew my whole family was depending on me. Joe’s addiction, his total inability to deal with life as it comes at him, is just one more part of that fallout.

  “It’s okay. I can wait,” I hear Jordan say to Lena as I reach the top of the stairs. “Do whatever you need to do.” Fuck. If this doesn’t just give her a warm, fuzzy feeling about the Medina clan, I don’t know what will.

  “Lena!” I say, the warning clear in my voice. But Lena either doesn’t hear it or chooses to ignore it because I can hear her murmuring softly to Joe as she tries to rouse him.

  Fuck.

  I race down the hall to Benji’s room, dump him unceremoniously on his bed. I barely pause long enough to get his shoes off and the covers pulled up to his chin before I take off for the family room…and my asshole of a little brother.

  Somehow I know already that tonight is going to be a bad night for him.

  “Leave me the fuck alone,” he’s telling Lena when I get back downstairs, his arms swinging wildly as he tries to extricate himself from the arm she put around his waist to help balance him.

  “It’s okay, Joe,” she tells him. But it’s not okay. It’s never okay with him, and as he pushes and shoves against her, he calls her all kinds of vile things. Things no one should have to hear, let alone the sister who’s done her best to take care of him for years.

  A quick glance at Jordan shows me that she’s white-faced and tight-jawed, her back pressed up against the wall as she tries to get as far away physically from Joe as she can. Not that I blame her. The guy’s in rare form tonight.

  Fuck.

  “I told you to take Jordan upstairs,” I snap at Lena as I join the fray.

  “Fuck you!” Joe says, angling a fist at my jaw that I manage to dodge by about a mile. “Don’t talk to my sister like that!”

  “That’s ironic considering you just called her a curly-haired little cunt,” I growl at him, disengaging his arm from around Lena’s waist.

  “It’s okay,” she tells me, still trying to hold on to Joe. “I can handle him.”

  “Nobody can handle him right now. He’s a fucking mess!”

  “Well, fuck you, too, big brother! And the white horse you rode in on.” Joe lashes out again and this time I’m not fast enough. He catches me on the temple with his fist, has me seeing stars until the pain wears off. “Except it’s not a white horse, is it? Hasn’t been a white horse for a long, long time!”

  “Joe, come on—” Lena says.

  “Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up! I’m sick of you defending him. Sick of everyone thinking he’s so fucking great. So fucking special. He’s not.” He shoves his face in mine then, eyes wild and breath sour. “You’re not!” he screams.

  “Believe me, I know exactly how not special I am,” I tell him grimly. I’ve still got an arm around his waist and as he struggles against me—to no avail—it hits me just how much weight he’s lost recently. He’s always been tall and skinny, but there were muscles to back up the height before. Not as big as mine, but there nonetheless. Now, it’s like he’s nothing but skin and bones. Or, more likely, nothing but drugs and addiction.

  Fuck.

  When did it get this bad? I wonder as I move him toward the stairs. And how the fuck did none of us notice? How the fuck did I not notice? Isn’t that my fucking job? To see beneath the bullshit and surly attitude? To see what’s really going on in his head?

  Joe’s still fighting, still calling me every name he can think of as I get him upstairs. But he’s slurring his words now, his head lolling back on his neck, and I know it’s only a matter of time before he passes out again. Something for which I am pathetically grateful.

  I need time to assimilate what I’ve just learned, time to figure out if I’m right about the addiction. And if I am, what I’m going to do about it.

  I get Joe to the bed, get him stretched out on his sheets. But when I try to cover him, he kicks the blankets off. “Fuck you!” he tells me, though the words are so slow and slurred I can barely understand them at this point. “I don’t need your fucking help. I don’t need the great Nic Medina to come in here and…” He drifts off before he finishes the sentence.

  For long seconds, I just stand there, staring down at him. He looks like hell, hair greasy, skin sallow, bags under his eyes. His T-shirt has ridden up some and I can count seven or eight ribs right below the skin, can see that his stomach is practically concave.

  Shit. Fuck. Goddamn son of a bitch. How the fuck did I not see? How the fuck did I not know just how bad a shape he’s in? Yeah, he avoids me most of the time and, yeah, I let him because I’ve worked hard not to push at him when we’ve got so much past between us. But still, has it really been that long since I’ve looked at him, really looked at him? That long since I tried to figure out what the fuck was up with him?

  Jesus. Is it possible for me to screw up any more with this kid?

  Apparently so, because instead of turning around and walking out of Joe’s room, I open his nightstand drawer instead. Find a bunch of weed and rolling papers. I take it all. There’s nothing else in the drawer, but I’m not stupid enough to think that this is all there is. Weed didn’t fuck Joe up this completely and weed isn’t what I saw on that table downstairs.

  I search his whole fucking room while he’s snoring on the bed, knocked out cold. I find more weed in the jacket hanging in his closet. There’s some molly in his underwear drawer and a small baggy filled with white powder in his sock drawer that’s either coke or heroin. My gut says heroin.

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

  I carry the whole mess to my room as I try to figure out what the fuck to do with it. Do I dump it all down the toilet? Do I hold on to it to confront him with? Is he an addict or just a recreational user? And if he is addicted, am I going to kill him if I just toss out his whole fucking stash?

  Jesus Christ. I can’t believe this is fucking happening. Can’t believe that on top of everything else going on right now, there’s this, too. And I didn’t fucking see it. I. Didn’t. Fucking. See. It.

  I end up shoving all Joe’s shit in my own underwear drawer before heading back downstairs to check on Jordan. It’d kind of defeat the purpose of me bringing her here if she’d ended up fleeing into the night. Not that I’d blame her at this point. There’s a part of me that wants to walk out that door right now, too. Walk out and never come back.

  I’d never do it, but I hate myself for even having the thought.

  But when I get downstairs, Jordan isn’t there. Neither is Lena. A quick glance outside tells me all the cars are parked where they’re supposed to be—thank God—which means Lena probably just took her up to the guest room.

  Still, I??
?m not going to be able to settle until I know for sure so I head back upstairs to check. I think about grabbing a beer—I could use one right about now—but then I think of Joe, fucked up and soon to be strung out, and I decide I can do without it.

  The door to the guest bedroom is closed and I can hear water running in the en suite bathroom. Good, so Jordan is settling in all right—or, at least, as well as can be expected in the whole nightmare she’s just tumbled into. I want to apologize to her, want to tell her how fucking sorry I am that she got dragged into the middle of this whole fucking mess. More, that I dragged her into the mess when all she was trying to do was put herself through school and make a better life for herself.

  Now she’s caught in the middle of hell and I’m not sure how to get her out. Not sure if any of the plans running around in my head are actually going to work.

  I’m supposed to meet Anderson tomorrow night, and I know, if I go, he’s going to try to kill me. But if I don’t go, he’ll know I’m onto him and he’ll kill me anyway. But he’ll probably end up killing my crew, too, and that is not going to happen. Not if I have any control over the matter.

  And I do have control. Or, more precisely, I will. As soon as I come up with a fucking plan. Pretty hard to think it through, though, when my whole fucking life seems to be crashing in around me.

  Figuring the first step is to stop lurking in the hall like some kind of fucking stalker, I head back to my room, stripping my clothes off as soon as I get the door closed behind me. Jordan’s got the right idea—maybe a shower will help me clear away the shit of the day and help me focus. At this point, I’m willing to try just about anything.

  Chapter 15

  Jordan

  I can’t sleep. I haven’t tried, yet, but I don’t need to lie in an unfamiliar bed, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling to know that I’m not going to be able to turn my mind off. How can I after the day I’ve had? When a million different thoughts are running through my head and none of them are good?

  Then again, that’s not exactly true, is it? Because in between all the thoughts of dirty cops and messed-up lives and stolen cars and money worries, in between all that are thoughts of Nic.

  Thoughts of him working so hard not to hurt me in that parking garage.

  Thoughts of him cradling me on his lap at the beach this morning.

  Thoughts of him handing me the keys to the Mercedes like it’s nothing. Like a woman he just met matters more than a two hundred thousand dollar car.

  And running beneath them all—through them all—are thoughts of him rocking me to my first orgasm in three long years.

  If I’m being honest, it’s that more than anything else that’s keeping me up. That, more than any of the rest, that’s haunting me. It’s what has shivers shooting down my spine, what has my sex aching and my nipples peaking against the soft tank top Lena lent me earlier. Nic bringing me off without a thought to his own pleasure, his own need.

  Is it any wonder I’m all twisted up inside?

  Add to that my worry over Anderson—and I am worried, I’d be an idiot not to be when Nic thinks he’s capable of murder—and it’s a miracle I’m as calm as I am. But that, too, is because of Nic. Because, even though I’ve only known him a couple days, I trust him to keep me safe. Trust him to have a plan that will get all of us out of this alive.

  Considering the trust issues I’ve got, that says a hell of a lot.

  Then again, it’s those same trust issues that are keeping me awake. Those same trust issues that confuse me, that make me wary when I try to think about what comes next for Nic and me.

  The last guy I trusted not to hurt me betrayed me so completely that I’m still not over it—so completely that I’m not sure I’ll ever be over it. And though nothing about Nic tells me he’s that kind of guy, I’ve been wrong before. I don’t think I could stand it, don’t think I could survive, if I was wrong again. Not about this.

  Not about him.

  I hate how vulnerable that makes me feel, how fragile, when I’ve worked so hard and for so long to be neither.

  But sitting here brooding about it isn’t going to change anything, isn’t going to make me feel any better. And since I’m tired of pacing the same stretch of carpet while staring at the same four walls, I decide to hell with it. Lena told me to make myself at home and right now, I’m hoping a cup of tea will help me relax. Plus settle my nerves at the same time.

  I always keep a few chamomile tea bags from work in my purse, so all I need is a mug and some hot water. Surely it won’t bother anyone if I help myself to that.

  I pull open my door, start moving down the long hallway that leads to the stairs. As I do, I tiptoe past Lena’s and Benji’s rooms, not wanting to disturb them, not wanting to land on any of the creaky floorboards and wake them.

  I’m at the end of the hall now, about to go downstairs, when I hear water running behind the last closed door. Nic’s room. Lena pointed it out to me earlier on the quick tour she gave me of the house. She hadn’t made a big deal of it—just acted like I had a right to know, so I did the same. I haven’t given it much thought before now—what with everything else I had to occupy my mind—but now that I’m standing right outside the closed door, now that I can hear the shower running, it’s hard to think about anything else.

  For a second, just a second, a picture of him wet and naked pops into my mind. I can see him standing under the spray so clearly, head tilted back, hands in his dreads as water cascades over his gorgeous caramel-colored skin. Across his broad shoulders, down his muscular chest and flat abs, over the light happy trail that leads to—

  I cut off the images there, force my feet to carry me away from his door and down the stairs to the dining room, where I left my purse on the table. My cheeks are on fire, hell, my whole body is on fire and all I can think about is Nic. Touching him, holding him, licking him—

  “Can’t sleep?”

  I nearly jump out of my skin at the two softly spoken words, whirl around to find Lena standing behind me, a mug in her hand and a smile on her face.

  “I was looking for the tea bags I keep in my purse. Thought I’d make myself some tea.”

  “Don’t let me stop you,” she says. “Though I do have a pot of hot chocolate made. If you’re interested.”

  “Hot chocolate sounds really good, actually.”

  “Well, come on, then. I made a lot because Nic loves the stuff.”

  Unspoken is the fact that after the night he’s had, he could use the comfort. “How’s Joe?” I ask, giving voice to the other concern that’s been circling through my mind. Nic had looked so devastated to find his brother passed out on the couch—and even more devastated by the shitty things the kid had said to him. It had made me furious, knowing that this kid probably wouldn’t remember anything that he’d said to Nic in the morning, while I could tell Nic would be beating himself up over it for weeks. He’s that kind of guy.

  “He’s sleeping it off,” Lena tells me. “Which, I guess, is the best thing I can say about him right now.”

  I don’t press any more as I follow Lena into the kitchen. I’m not part of the family and it’s none of my business—as long as Joe and Nic are okay, there’s nothing else for me to say about the situation. At least not to her.

  So instead of doing what my gut is urging me to and asking how Nic is, instead I watch as Lena ladles hot chocolate from a red pan on the stove into a large black mug.

  “Wow. When you said you made hot chocolate, you mean you made it. From scratch, I mean.”

  She grins over her shoulder. “Hot chocolate is Nic’s favorite, but he’s picky about it, and thanks to him, so is Benji. And it doesn’t take long once you get the milk heated, so I figure why not.” She grabs a can of whipped cream, raising her eyebrows questioningly as she holds it over the mug.

  I nod my head enthusiastically in answer to her unasked question.

  “A woman after my own heart,” she says as she squirts a generous amount onto the drink, then
picks up a bar of chocolate and starts shaving it on top of the whipped cream. For a second I can’t help feeling like I’m in an alternate universe. One where drag racers are actually baristas and hot cocoa is a gourmet drink. Whatever Lena’s making, it’s a far cry from the little powdered packet I usually use.

  She hands me my drink with a smile, then gestures for me to sit down across the table from her. I take my first sip as I follow her lead, and ohmyGod is it good.

  I must look like I found nirvana—God knows, I feel like it—because Lena takes one look at my expression and starts laughing. “That good, huh?”

  “So good I can’t help wondering what I’ve been drinking all these years. Because it has definitely not been hot chocolate.”

  She just laughs again, then passes a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies across the table at me.

  “Let me guess?” I ask. “Also Nic’s favorite?”

  She nods. “And Benji’s. He worships his uncle.”

  “I’ve noticed that. Nic seems to feel the same way about him.”

  “Oh, he definitely does. Nic may look all big and bad on the outside, but he’s actually a marshmallow underneath it all.”

  I lift a brow at her. “Somehow I can’t see your brother being okay with you describing him as a marshmallow.”

  “He probably wouldn’t be. But that doesn’t make it any less true. He’s got a good heart, you know? Soft. At least when it comes to the people he cares about.” She takes another sip of her cocoa, eyeing me over the rim of the mug the whole time. “He doesn’t let a lot of people in, but once he does, you’re in forever. He’s loyal to a fault, trusts the people he cares about unconditionally. Would give them the shirt off his back without a second thought if they needed it. Would go to jail for them if that’s what it took. Hell, he’d die for one of his crew if he thought it was necessary. That’s the kind of guy Nic is. Always has been, always will be.”