Fate (Steel Brothers Saga 13)

Shit. Did I really just say that? What if she took me up on it?

“I… I don’t want to get rid of you.”

Damn. Thank God. The anvil slid off my shoulders again.

“Good. Now, what looks good? Do you want a cocktail? Virgin, of course. Or an appetizer?”

She smiled, and my heart surged. At that moment, I knew I’d do anything to see her smile.

Any-fucking-thing.

Chapter Twenty-One

Daphne

We didn’t talk a lot. He asked me some questions about my home life, and I answered them briefly. And maybe not completely truthfully, but truthfully nonetheless. So far, the only lie I’d told was the London lie. That lie was so much a part of my life, sometimes I thought it might actually be true.

Then I caught myself.

Lies weren’t truth.

Dreams weren’t reality.

Lost time wasn’t lost forever. I hoped, at least.

I went to therapy the whole of my senior year, and I asked my therapist, Dr. Payne, and my mother if I could take some time off to begin college. To actually have something normal in my life. They’d both agreed.

Maybe “normal” included a relationship with a nice guy. Brad Steel seemed like a nice guy so far. Yeah, he’d been late, but he clearly felt terrible about it. If he was willing to go slow with me, which he claimed he was, maybe seeing him could be a good thing. A healing thing.

“I’d like to take you to my condo,” he said when we got into the car to drive home.

My nerves hit me with blunt force. Everyone knew what going to a guy’s place meant.

“I don’t know…”

“I just want you to see where I live. I know where you live. We don’t have to do anything.”

Yeah. I’d definitely heard that before somewhere, though I couldn’t remember where. Probably on a TV series or soap opera. I watched a lot of TV junior year, though most of it was a blur. Things came back to me sometimes, though, like the déjà vu I was having at this moment.

I knew fear.

I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did. It was invisible knives scraping across my skin. It was a heartbeat made of thunder and breath like lightning. It was nausea clawing up my throat.

I didn’t feel any of that right now.

I did not fear Brad Steel.

“Okay,” I said.

He smiled. “Great.”

His condo wasn’t a condo at all. It was a patio home that was at least three thousand square feet. His bedroom alone was bigger than my house. Okay, I was exaggerating—but not by a lot.

My nerves pricked my arms as I looked around the massive suite. A huge bed—bigger than my parents’, I was sure. Was theirs a queen? This was a king, no doubt. Oak hardwood floors covered by royal-blue rugs placed here and there. A bar. Yes, a bar in the bedroom. And a bathroom easily twice the size of my dorm room. Two walk-in closets, two sinks, two toilets.

I’d never seen anything like it other than in magazines.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I think it’s the most amazing bedroom I’ve ever seen.”

He smiled. “Technically my father owns it, but it will be mine someday.”

“What about Sean?”

“Murph? He pays me nominal rent. He’s a little strapped, so I let him live here.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“Murph’s a good guy. It’s nice to have a friend who’s normal.”

I wrinkled my forehead. “Your other friends aren’t normal?”

“That’s not what I meant.” He laughed. “Okay. Maybe that’s exactly what I meant.”

“How so?”

“I have a group of friends from high school. Good guys for the most part, but the more I get to know them, the more they seem a little off.”

A little off?

Whispers filled my head—whispers I’d heard last year at high school.

Daphne’s back, and she seems a little off.

I’d love to ask her out. She’s gorgeous, but a little off.

She thinks she’s all that. Walks around, not talking to anyone. She’s a little off.

“What does that mean, exactly? A little off?”

“It’s not something I can pin down, you know? Just a feeling.”

“What kind of feeling?”

“That something’s not right. I don’t know. They’re a little off.”

This was getting me nowhere. If Brad could explain what the phrase meant, maybe I’d know what those kids at high school meant. I felt normal. I didn’t feel “a little off.”

“They’re just envious,” my mother had said. “You’re the prettiest girl in school, and you spent junior year in London.”

“But I didn’t spend junior year in London,” I’d said.

“But they think you did. That’s all that matters.”

Was it? Was it all that mattered?

I was tired of the lie. I wanted to shout out the truth sometimes. “Hey, everyone! I spent most of my junior year hospitalized for anxiety and depression!”

But I’d never do that. Never. What if I lost my newfound friends? Ennis, Patty, and Sean? What if I lost Brad Steel? What if they all decided I was “a little off”?