Sweetest Taboo (SIN 3)

I say nothing, though, and he turns for the door. Dallas follows him, and I have to clench my hands to fight the urge to pull him back. I want him--I want him desperately--but the hurt is still too deep.

My father walks out without a backward glance, but Dallas pauses in the doorway, lingering there until I lift my head and meet his eyes. "I'm sorry," he says, and I look away, keeping my eyes on the floor as his footsteps fade down the hall and I wonder if I've just lost the two men I love most in all the world.

I don't sleep. Instead, I drift, my thoughts in a fog, my body thick and unresponsive from the drugs. I feel tossed around, like a cork on a stormy sea.

No dreams fill my mind--no dark memories from the past, no terror that I will never wake again--and yet somehow that dark emptiness is even more disturbing than my usual nightmares simply because I can't get my bearings.

I am lost. Desolate. Alone.

Then I feel the gentle brush of a hand on my cheek, and it is like a lifeline, pulling me back, drawing me out of the storm.

A smile tugs at my lips--Dallas.

But then it fades as I remember that I sent him away. That I'm not ready to have him beside me. Not now. Not yet.

The hand I feel must belong to my mother. I open my eyes to reassure her that I'm okay, then jump when I see who is really touching me.

"Adele!" I jerk back, then push myself up to a sitting position, completely ignoring the buttons on this bed that would do that for me. "I--you startled me."

My family has been doing everything possible to ensure my privacy, including leaving me listed as a Jane Doe. My mom's even asked my best friend, Brody, not to come visit--though she did at least let him know what happened to me--because she's afraid some enterprising reporter will follow him to find me.

"I'm sorry," I stammer. "I'm just really jumpy."

"Of course you are," she coos. "You poor little thing." She presses a hand to my cheek, and a single tear traces a path down the side of her nose. "I just can't believe it."

I pull away, stretching to cover the motion. I don't want her touch. For that matter, I don't want anything from her. Maybe that's not fair, but I don't care. Right now, I'm too raw to care about propriety.

She seems entirely unaware of my hesitancy, because she continues to stand right beside me, fussing with the bedding, then dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. Adele is Colin's ex-wife, though they married when I was an adult, so even had Colin still been my legal father, I don't think I would ever have considered her my stepmother.

But it's not the relationship between Colin and Adele that puts me off. Instead, it's her past relationship with Dallas. I don't think she's aware that I know she slept with Dallas before he and I were together. But I do know that she's understood what Dallas and I are to each other for years, even before we revealed our secret to the press. And that fact makes me feel just a little bit too exposed.

"This city has just gone crazy," she clucks. "Attacked and left in Riverside Park like so much garbage." Her voice climbs with outrage. "Your mother told me all about it. I called her looking for Colin a few hours ago, and she told me the whole story."

The Deliverance guys have pieced together some of what happened, and Dallas relayed the chain of events to my mom. Well, I know it was the Deliverance guys. Mom thinks that Liam and Quince have pooled their resources. Which, in a way, they have.

Apparently, the woman who attacked me had an accomplice. A man who picked me up off the sidewalk and hauled me into the back of a white cargo van while the woman slid behind the wheel. The guys found three witnesses. A couple who were walking at the far end of the block and didn't realize what was going on until the van sped away. And a fourteen-year-old who was sitting by his window in one of the townhouses texting his girlfriend. He didn't see the attack. He didn't even see the man pick me up off the sidewalk. But he did see the bastard shoving me in the back, and then the van disappearing down the street.

But my assailants didn't bring me to the hospital. Instead, I was dumped--my veins pumped full of a narcotic cocktail--near one of the entrances to Riverside Park. Someone made an anonymous 911 call, and the paramedics whisked me away to the ER. None of which I remember, and the fact that I was completely unconscious and doped up on god-knows-what during all of that is more than a little freaky.

I pull the sheet up to my chest, feeling suddenly exposed. Adele doesn't seem to notice. She glances around the room, frowning.

"I expected Colin would be here," she muses.

"No," I say simply. "I haven't seen him."

"Well, that's odd. I just assumed your mother would have reached him by now. I'll start calling some mutual friends. Maybe he's tucked away in someone's hunting cabin or off on someone's yacht."

Before I have a chance to comment, my mother steps through the open door carrying two cups of coffee. "This stuff is as thick as sludge," Mom says, "but at least it's hot--oh! Adele!"

"Lisa, oh, Lisa." She deftly takes the Styrofoam cups from my mom and sets them on my hospital tray, then pulls my mom into an awkward hug. Awkward because my mother is as stiff as a board.

"Are you doing okay?" Adele asks once she's broken the embrace. "I know Jane is--I practically interrogated her attending before I came in here. But is there anything you need?"

Mom shakes her head and manages a smile, then looks between Adele and me. "Did I interrupt?"

I almost tell her that she did, just so she'll have an excuse to leave. Adele has never been on my mom's favorite-person list. Even though Mom's the one who walked away from Colin, I think she's always felt like Adele was an interloper.

But I just can't toss her that bone. I selfishly want her beside me, and so I shake my head. "We were just talking."