Damaged Grump (Bad Chicago Bosses)

Every night I spend with Roland Osprey is like gazing at pretty flowers.

Oblivious to the hell that’s raging right underneath my feet.

Or maybe I only wish I could be oblivious.

Maybe I only wish I didn’t understand.

Because now my eyes are open.

Now, I see Roland in all his real, broody, dark knight glory.

Understanding what happened to Barry Osprey...it’s like the light that illuminates who he really is, the Rosetta Stone that deciphers his own special language.

His inexplicable behavior suddenly makes way too much sense.

I can’t unsee the pain, the anger, the bitterness in everything he does. The focused need for unholy wrath that shapes every choice, every move, every emotion.

He’s spent his entire adult life crafting himself into a human sword to strike down the man who destroyed poor Barry.

What he’s done—who he’s become—requires a crazy willpower I couldn’t have imagined before I met him.

In a scary way, it’s admirable.

It also hurts me to my core.

Because even when I tumble into bed with him night after night, taking refuge from the loneliness of Dad’s townhouse without Dad in it, I’m way too aware.

I wouldn’t be here with Roland at all if he hadn’t needed me for his secret mission.

I just wish I knew why I’m here with him now.

Am I a convenience? An escape? A fling? Someone attractive enough to sate his needs while he moves me around like a chess piece?

Or is there something about me that he might just need as much as he aches to take down the man who ruined Barrett’s life?

I really don’t know what I’m doing.

If this is just a hilariously reckless mistake, with my heart so strung up in the hundred messy feelings I get around Roland. This plea for him, this warmth, this—frick, everything.

Of course, we haven’t talked about what it means or said a word about the future.

Honestly, I’m afraid to.

I feel like if I talk about it, if I end this little game of denial where every time we swear it’s the last time...

Then it really might be the last.

He’ll wall himself off, and it’ll sting that much more after discovering what’s under all that armor.

God, I can’t be thinking like this right now.

Not when I need to pin on a smile and stay strong for Dad.

So I step off the bus just a block away from Dad’s treatment center, pushing all thoughts of dark, infuriating men out of my head.

The recovery center is an impressive building, all state-of-the-art luxury that looks more like a spa resort than a haven for recovering addicts.

So much for not thinking about Roland.

He’s the whole reason why Dad’s even here.

I have to be grateful for that, all lovey-dovey complications aside.

Shouldering my purse, I stride up to check-in at the gated access booth. That’s another perk of a treatment place that celebrities and powerful families frequent.

No one ever violates anybody’s privacy without being on the friends and family access list. Only Roland and I are authorized to see my father.

I spoke to the intake coordinator earlier, and she’d warned me that Dad was going through the roughest stages of his withdrawals.

But I’m still not ready for how he looks.

One of the white-clad attendants directs me to a small courtyard. Patients drift around the grounds, muttering to each other in small clusters or reading or playing games.

Dad, he’s just curled up in a lawn chair alone on the edge of a blooming garden patch, staring up through the canopy of trees. Streaming sunlight turns the leaves overhead into translucent green and gold.

But even with the tinted light falling over him, my father projects one color.

Grey.

My palm flies up, pushing a gasp back into my mouth.

He’s unshaven, his cheeks and eyes sunken, his lips almost purple, his skin dry and coarse. His hair is a lump of dull silver around his shoulders. He looks like he’s lost fifty pounds in less than two weeks, this haggard shadow of himself.

Guilt smacks me square in the chin.

Ouch.

Here I’ve been living this idyllic little fantasy of a not-relationship with Roland, while Dad’s been suffering alone.

He doesn’t notice me approaching, huddled under a blanket despite the balmy day. When I sit lightly at the foot of his lounger, reaching out to rest my hand on his blanket-shrouded calf, he starts a little, turning his head to blink at me slowly.

“Callie-girl.” His smile is pure heartbreak, his voice shaky and raspy. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself, Dad-zilla,” I joke around the lump in my throat, forcing a smile. “You look a little rough.”

“I feel like dog crap, so I must look the part...”

“But?”

His smile strengthens. My heart lifts when I see there’s a light in his eyes that’s been missing for a long time. A warmth, a determination I forgot he had, buried under the haze of alcohol and misery.

“They were right about one thing—it had to get worse before it got better,” he says, and his trembling voice firms, even if it’s easy to tell it’s taking a lot out of him. “I signed on for the ride, though. I’ll be fine. Whatever I’m feeling now isn’t half as bad as it would’ve been after a few more years pickling my damn brain. I’d rather feel like a desert turd now than wind up worm food.”