Breathless (Steel Brothers Saga 10)

“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.

Colin had no idea what Talon had been through. The same as he had been, only at age ten instead of twenty-six and for a longer period of time.

“You need to stop talking about my brother right now, or this conversation will end.”

“I’m just—”