7. CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 7
Colden
N eo’s here. Tired, beat up, and more gorgeous than ever. He digs into his food like he hasn’t eaten in weeks. His cognac-colored eyes lack their typical shine. Not that I know what his eyes look like anymore.
I catch Dacker’s gaze, and without a word said between us, I know having his brother here, seeing him, doesn’t ease his anxiety.
It doesn’t alleviate mine either. I will do everything in my power—what little there is of it—to protect this family. Which is the exact reason I slid out of Neo’s life. At least that’s what I tell myself. Not that I was terrified of the intensity of the longing. So terrified, the chatter about all the ways I would ruin my friendship, Dacker and Neo’s relationship, and disappointing my parents hijacked my brain. And I knew the best thing for all of us was to leave.
“Hendrix and I were meeting at a bar to celebrate. As usual, I got there before Hendrix.” He turns to me, purple blooming on his jaw, and I fist my hands, digging my nails into the flesh so hard, I’m surprised blood doesn’t trickle down my fingers.
Whoever laid their hands on this sweet man will pay. Distancing myself from him when all I wanted was to follow through with his drunken twenty-one-year-old advances was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Keeping that distance for five years when I still wake in the night craving more of his rum flavored lips from that party has been more excruciating than every time my parents left me behind as they and my brother went to one exotic destination or another to save the world. So tracking down the fucker who hurt him will be nothing. No matter how long it takes.
I blink back the unwanted memories that, at thirty-two, should no longer bother me and focus on what’s important. Neo and his wide mouth, which is moving.
“The guy hasn’t been on time a day in his life. His mom says he was two weeks late for his own birth.” He chuckles. “While I waited, Alexander showed up.”
Dack’s expression clouds and turns stormy. “He didn’t say anything to you, did he?”
“Who’s Alexander?” I look between Dacker and Neo, hating that I don’t know. Maybe our unspoken rule of not discussing our love lives was dumb. Why did I think only keeping up with his research, reading articles he’d written, and whatever Dacker shared when he bragged about Neo would be enough?
Drinking him in is like presenting a starving man with an all-you-can-eat buffet. I lick my lips.
“The latest asshole this one was dating.” My friend jerks his chin at his brother.
Neo flinches like Dacker smacked him, but then straightens and crosses his arms over his chest. “You make it sound like I only date assholes.”
Dacker mirrors Neo’s stance and raises an eyebrow as if to say, “Well…”
“Fine.” Neo unfolds his arms, then breaks off a piece of banana bread and pops it into his mouth. “Mmmm.” His eyes fall closed and he drops his head back, and my dumbass cock plumps. “I miss the care packages you used to send me.”
I shuffle in my seat to get more comfortable, not squirming because I never told Dacker I sent his brother paperbacks I thought he’d enjoy when I finished reading them, or cookies and my banana bread, or little things I thought he might need when he was in college.
After their mom died, Dacker was devastated and Neo—not even ten—was more worried about keeping his dad and older brother happy. So, I vowed to do what I could to bring a little happiness into both Neo and Dacker’s lives. It started with bringing Neo old science magazines of my mom’s, or a box of specially decorated cookies from his favorite bakery. And when he went away to college, keeping that up seemed natural. Why should he miss out on care packages because he had the misfortune of his mom dying? But after his twenty-first birthday, I stopped sending him packages.
“Yeah, well…” I tuck my cold hands under my legs. “I figured you were probably tired of being treated like a kid.” And it felt a little too personal. At the time, I figured we’d both do well with a little space.
“I never saw it that way.” He pops another bite of bread into his mouth and hums around it.
Torture.
Being this close and unable to find out firsthand if the light brown strands of his hair feel as soft as they look, or feeling the heat of his thigh searing mine through cotton and denim and not be able to touch him is the worst kind of agony. I bite the inside of my cheek and hold it until the desire to lick the pale skin at the base of his neck, peeking out from his open shirt buttons, passes. Maybe not pass, but it diminishes enough for me to speak. “So what happened with the asshole?”
His expansive shoulders slump and he wets his lips, which does not help the whole wanting to lick him from head to toe thing. “He came over, offered me a beer, and apologized.”
“For cheating or for his general dickheadness?” Dacker spits the words out like he’s disgusted to even be talking about the guy.
Neo’s tawny eyes roll, reminding me of when he was in middle school and would get exasperated when Dacker pressed him about something he didn’t want to discuss. “The cheating.” Then he mumbles, “He’d have to know he was a dickhead to apologize for it.”
“So let me get this straight.” I shift to face him. My arm rests along the back of the booth and my bent knee presses against his leg because now that he’s here, I can’t help but touch him. “This Alexander douche was lucky enough to get you to date him—”
“They were practically living together,” Dack adds.
Mouth falling slack, Neo’s eyebrows launch to his hairline as he swings his head toward his brother. “No we weren’t. I have a roommate.”
“How many boxes of his shit did you toss?”
Lips pinched, Neo leans across the table and shoots one finger in the air. “One. He had one box.”
“Didn’t you ask your landlord to change the locks the day you caught him kissing that chick?” With a lift of his brow and slant of his mouth, Dacker serves his younger brother his you-know-I’m-right look.
I hold up my hand before Neo can launch a rebuttal. For as cheerful as Neo is, he doesn’t take anyone’s shit. Especially Dack’s. “Whatever. The fact is, the dipshit had you, brilliant, compassionate, stunning you, and he thought he could do better?”
Outside, tires rumble, the ding ding of a bike bell sounds, and laughter cackles, but inside, silence blankets us as my best friend and his brother stare at me with identical expressions of disbelief. Their mouths hang open, making them look like twins instead of half-brothers with a six-year age gap. In Dack’s wide eyes there’s amusement mixed with concern, while Neo’s have more shock and awe like I just ordered a bombardment of military forces to attack.
My mouth goes dry.
So, maybe, I said more than I intended. I clear my throat and shift in my seat, focusing on Dacker. “You know what I mean. Your brother is the total package.” That one brow raises, and I clamp my teeth together until my jaw aches. I never mastered the one brow lift and all the condescension that comes with it. And my best friend knows I hate when he gives me that look. “What? You don’t think your brother is extraordinary?”
“I absolutely do.” Dack shoots his gaze to Neo, whose cheeks flush the faintest pink, and I want to strip him to see if I can make him flush anywhere else. “I just didn’t realize you noticed.”
My head spins and I cling to the lies I’ve told myself since I realized I no longer saw Neo as a kid, but as a sexy man I wanted to know in ways that were inappropriate for a twenty-seven-year-old to think about his best friend’s twenty-one-year-old brother. “Of course I’ve noticed. He’s like a little brother to me.”
The pretty pink of Neo’s cheeks burns scarlet all the way to the tips of his ears. It takes everything I have not to pull him into my arms and tell him I’m a bigger liar than his asshole ex. Because there is nothing brother-like about the feelings I’ve harbored for him. But he deserves someone as extraordinary as he is, not a subpar guy with subpar powers living a subpar life. While he was coding, developing programs, and applying for patents and shit, I was working for his brother as a human ice dispenser and bartender because I couldn’t hold down a bartending job anywhere else for very long.
My job with SPAM isn’t much better.
Neo guzzles his drink, then slams the glass down, closing his eyes and pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. After a second, he opens his eyes and continues as if I hadn’t made things beyond awkward. “Anyway… I woke up on the floor of a bathroom with a killer headache, no idea where I was, no recollection of how I got there, or what happened.”
Rage blazes through me, a roar hurls up my vocal cords, ready to smash through my lips. But scaring Neo is the last thing I want to do, so I grit my teeth until my jaw aches. “He drugged you?”
One sharp nod.
“I’m going to kill the fucker.” Dacker cracks his knuckles, his typically open expression hard enough to crush steel.
Under the table, I kick my friend. The last thing Neo needs is Dacker morphing into a hulking Neanderthal. The guy has been through enough; he doesn’t need to deal with Dack’s shit. Or mine, for that matter. I keep my tone calm and as comforting as I can through clenched teeth. “Then what happened?”
“Then I threw up. Realized Alexander was unhinged when he unlocked the door, acting like there was nothing wrong with drugging and kidnapping someone you used to date.” He pops a fallen piece of bacon in his mouth and chews. “He wanted to talk. I didn’t. So, when he left to make me something to eat, after locking me in the bathroom again, I broke the window and escaped through it. Then I took the bus here.”
“He took your phone, but not your wallet?” That doesn’t make any sense to me. Keeping the wallet would mean cutting off Neo’s access to credit cards and his ID.
“He took both, but I had just enough cash for a bus ticket.” Long fingers scratch at the beard that wasn’t there the last time I saw him. If it’s possible, the scruff along his jaw makes him infinitely more attractive. “Alexander was always on me to workout. Said I didn’t have the strength to break out of a paper bag. He probably thought I was too weak to escape.” He raises his arm and flexes. His playfulness belies the trauma he just experienced. “He’s not wrong. These are the arms of a nerd who spends his days at his laptop.”
Hidden beneath the table, I pound my fist against my thigh. The more I hear about this Alexander fucker, the more I want to ruin him. Nothing about Neo is weak. His laughing eyes are proof. Anyone else would be in the fetal position after being drugged and abducted.
My gaze stuck to his raised arm. I let my eyes roam the biceps that are like a rolling knoll of perfection. Instead of running my hand over said perfection, I dig my fingertips into my thigh. My fingers pulse and my hands ache. Not only is my power useless, it’s a pain in the ass. Anytime I’m overwhelmed with emotion, like the anger currently surging through me, it’s like turning on the ice making switch.
“Did you call the police?” I draw in a slow, steady breath and keep my tone calm.
He shakes his head. “The only thing I could think of was getting away. Probably not the smartest thing. Maybe if I’d made a report right away, they could have done something.”
“Unlikely, but we’ll make a report, anyway.” Frigidness throbs over my knuckles, making it hard to concentrate. “I’ll be right back.” I jump up and stride to the kitchen, ignoring any strange looks from the two, and go straight to the walk-in freezer, where a bucket still sits to the side.
Drawing my hands over the bucket, I let out a relieved breath when cubes hit the bottom like I used to do when I worked for Dacker. With every frozen crystallized cube, the ache that streams from my fingertips up my forearms all the way to my elbows retreats. I close my eyes and focus on the mantra Aunt June taught me. “I am the ice, the ice is me, and all is good.”
I have got to get my shit together if I’m going to be of any use to my friends. Once I fill the bucket, I take a moment to focus.
No more getting sucked into the shades of amber and gold in Neo’s eyes. Or on the darker ring of brown that highlights them. No more wondering if his lips taste as delicious as I remember. No more basking in the tenor of his tone that’s somehow both sexy and sweet.
“Get it together, Frias,” I mumble to myself and press the heels of my palms to my eyes. Apparently, five text-only years with Neo was a mistake. There was no chance to build up my immunity to him in person. I grab the first aid kit and stomp out of the kitchen.
When I rejoin Dacker and Neo, Dack’s in the seat I vacated, and they’re hunched over Dack’s laptop. My friend’s eyes flutter like he’s being pummeled by sand whipped around by hurricane-force winds. “This is surreal. When you sent the screen shot… When you said you did it…” The tip of his nose looks like Rudolph and his head shakes back and forth without stop. “I didn’t know it would be like this.”
“It’s good to see my boys together.” The sound of Mrs. Price’s voice shocks me to a halt in my tracks. There’s a tinnier quality to it than I remember, but it’s definitely her.
Neo’s gaze meets mine, and in that moment, he looks every bit like the young boy who won his first science fair the year after his mom died. No matter how proud he was, his underlying grief at not being able to share his success with her shone in his perpetually optimistic eyes. Never to go away.
“How are you, lovey?” The voice asks.
Dack scrubs his hands over his face, knocking his glasses askew, then straightening them. “I’m good. Worried about this one.” He tips his head toward Neo.
I slide into the seat across from them, but as my butt hits the worn pleather, I wonder if I should leave and give them some privacy.
Neo decides for me when he turns the laptop screen to face me and says, “Look who else is here, Mom.”
If I were drinking something, I’d have spit it out from the sheer shock of seeing Mrs. Price smiling and waving at me from the screen. Her long hair, the same color as her sons, and her eyes as kind and filled with mischief as they were when she was alive. There’s a pause, then, “Colden, sweetie,” another pause, “you’re as handsome as ever.”
“Thank you. It’s… good to see you?” My gaze darts to Neo and Dack. What does one say to a woman who’s been dead for almost two decades?
Neo turns the laptop around. “We have to go now, Mom. We’ll talk to you later. Okay?”
Pause. “Stay out of,” pause, “trouble.” The same soft chuckle I remember from my youth floats through the speakers. “Love you.”
“Love you,” Neo and Dack say in unison, both of their voices cracking.
Neo closes out of the program and removes a flash drive.
“That was…” Dack shakes his head. “I didn’t understand the impact when you explained it.”
Neo attaches the drive to a leather cord around his neck. “There are still things I need to work on. The lapses are too long and—”
“How did she know it was me?” I ask.
Neo’s cheeks flush. “I added important pieces of our lives to the program.”
All the words lodge in my throat. Does that mean I’m important to Neo? Or was I included because Dacker and I are friends and I practically lived at their house? My breaths stutter as my overactive, hopeful brain insists there could be a possibility, no matter how slight, that Neo has feelings that are more than friendship for me.
Not that it matters. He’s still Dack’s brother. Still six years younger than me. I open the first aid kit and motion for him to give me his hands. But six years doesn’t seem as big of a gap now that he’s twenty-six as it did when he was twenty-one.
“You think Alexander is after your work?” Dacker voices the same question I’ve had since hearing Neo was drugged and abducted. There’s always something in the news about the race to perfect artificial intelligence by companies and governments alike. Didn’t Arlo show me something the other day?
Neo lays his hands out on the tabletop, palms up. “It never occurred to me when we were together. But…”
From across the table, I can fully view Neo’s handsome face, and having an excuse to touch him is a bonus. But with every splinter I remove and cut I clean, my chest feels like it’s going to crush in on itself. I will destroy the fucker who did this to him.
Dack and I remain silent while Neo contemplates his next words.
“One of the things I appreciated about him was his interest in my work. Most people’s eyes glaze over when I start going on about coding, research, and ethical uses of AI. But Alexander always seemed interested in what I had to say.” He sucks in a breath when I pull a splinter from his palm and his gaze shoots to me. “It was enough for me to push away my initial leeriness. That, and Dr. Lexton introduced us.”
Dack sits up straighter and cracks his knuckles. Knowing my friend, he’s making a mental list of all the people he’s going to beat the shit out of. “Your department chair?”
“Yeah.” Neo’s jaw flexes and he averts his gaze as I pull out another splinter.
I set the tweezers aside and pull my cell out. “What kind of leeriness?”
“He was so attractive.” Keeping his eyes averted, Neo smooths a finger over the palm I was working on. “Like movie star attractive, and I couldn’t imagine what he saw in a nerd like me whose idea of dressing up is wearing my black Vans.” A soft, self-deprecating chuckle punctures the searing red blinding me.
“Give me their full names.” My demand is harsh enough to cause Dacker to narrow his eyes in warning. I soften my tone and add, “Please.”
Dacker answers for Neo. “Alexander Atteridge, and Dr. Author Lexton.”
The tight line of Neo’s mouth as he frowns at his brother should not be attractive, but the flutter in my solar plexus proves differently.
“What does Alexander do?” I direct my question to Neo as I type the name into my search engine.
He releases Dacker from his death glare to bring those eyes that are so affable, yet inhibited to mine. “Finance. He’s a financial manager of some sort.”
“Call Boston PD and make a report,” I instruct Dack, who whips his cell out, thumbs a blur. “Looks like one of those companies is Golden and Tracks.” I look up from my phone to find Neo’s face paled. If I were behaving rationally, I would be worrying about what a man who advises one of the leading technology companies in the country wanted with Neo instead of how the asshole looks like a real-life Ken doll. From the square jaw to the piercing blue eyes and blond hair that swoops to look simultaneously tousled and meticulously styled, the man is everything I’m not.
Dacker stacks Neo’s empty glass on top of his empty plate. “Weren’t they in the news recently for developing something with AI?”
“I didn’t know.” Neo’s voice is small, frail, so different from the man he is. “They’ve been trying to recruit me for years. He never told me he worked for them. And I… I…” With a long, breaking groan, he drops his head into his hands. “I’m so stupid.”
Dack rubs circles on his back in the same soothing way he’s done since Neo was a boy. Unable to hold back, I reach across the table and squeeze his forearm. “You’re anything but.”
He peeks through his fingers. “Even when I sensed he wasn’t being honest with me? From the first time we met, I knew he was holding something back.”
“You can’t take responsibility for someone else’s deception.” Dacker’s expression screams he’s ready to fly to Boston and exterminate the fucker.
“I thought the cheating explained it. But…” Neo lifts his head, then lets it fall back, hitting the cushioned booth with a muffled thud . “That’s why he was so interested in my work.”
“But it doesn’t explain why he drugged you and locked you in a bathroom.” I text Arlo with a link to Asshole Ken’s LinkedIn.
Me: Get me everything you can on this guy.
Arlo: Is this a case?
I can practically feel him vibrating through the text. The kid wants to be super so badly. If I had a heart, it would break watching him languishing in the Eternity office, but he’ll be gone soon enough. They’re never there long.
Me: Helping a friend. Don’t get too excited.
Arlo: On it.
I tuck my phone away, then pick up the tweezers, motioning for him to give me his torn up hands again. “I need you to tell me everything from the first time you met asshole until now.”
An hour later, Neo’s hands are cleaned and bandaged, his eyes droop from exhaustion, and I have a timeline of his five-month relationship with jerkface. We’ve contacted the Boston PD, and Arlo, ever eager, has already sent me a preliminary report that shows Ken Doll’s LinkedIn profile is fake, with the promise of digging deeper.
Dacker nudges Neo. The younger man’s drooping eyes pop open. “You need rest. Go upstairs.”
“Okay.” Neo doesn’t argue or complain about Dacker treating him like a kid, which has been a pet peeve with his brother for as long as I’ve known them. Instead, he slides out of the booth, feet dragging, as he disappears into the hallway where the stairway to the upstairs apartments are located.
My phone rings and I pick it up without looking. “What else did you find out?”
“That you do know how to answer your phone.” April’s tone drips with condensation.
Shit. “Hello April. I believe Arlo sent the quarterly reports to you on Tuesday.”
“Yes. It’s good to have someone who understands the importance of data collection. But I’m calling because of your friend.”
The hair on the back of my neck prickles, and I push back from my chair. Dack tracks my movements. I smile and pick up the used dish and cutlery, intent on carrying them to the kitchen. “What friend?”
There’s tapping on a keyboard, then she says, “Neo Price.”
“Neo?” I drop the plate. It bangs on the table and the fork and knife fall to the floor with a clang. Hearing his brother’s name, Dacker jumps from the booth to stand close enough that I can smell the slightly sour scent from his refusal to shower for fear he’d miss Neo.
“I’m sure you’re aware the Eastern Criminal Alliance is having their bi-annual competition.
I vaguely remember Arlo mentioning something about it the other day. “Sure.”
“And I’m sure you know the name Paris Ridge.”
My mind races as I try to pull the familiar name forward. “Let’s pretend I don’t.”
On the other end of the phone, an exasperated sigh—which sounds eerily similar to my mother—pierces my ear. “If you read the bulletins I send, you’d know he’s the new president of the Boston Area Villain Association.”
The urge to throw myself over Neo to protect him from the bomb that’s about to hit is so strong, my phone creaks under the tightening of my hold. “And?”
“And they’re looking for your friend.” There’s no emotion in April’s voice. It doesn’t matter that I can feel my pulse pounding in my temple, she continues as if it’s just business. “Apparently, Mr. Price knows Paris Ridge as Alexander Atteridge.”
Dacker whips his head from side to side with such force I’m ready to catch it when it flies from his shoulders. “He needs to leave.”
“Is that Mr. Davis-Price?” April asks.
I push my friend back until his thighs hit the edge of a chair, then push him down until he sits. “Yes.”
“Put me on speaker.” I do as I’m told because, despite her love of paperwork, April knows her shit. “Mr. Davis-Price. Your assessment of the situation is correct. Your brother needs to be moved to a safe location.”
Dacker grips the bar towel in his hands so hard his knuckles turn white. “I hope you have some place in mind.”
“We have an agent in the area who will take Mr. Price to a safe house.” More clicking of keys.
The ice cold grip of fear for Neo mixes with the flaming hot desire to protect him at all costs. Fire and ice should cancel each other out, but they don’t. A fiery avalanche of emotion crashes over me. Cubes spurt from my free hand. Dack’s eyes widen. His shock matches my own. The last time I lost control of my power was when I was ten and my parents missed my fifth-grade graduation because they were called away for work at the last minute. They never saw me receive the good citizenship award.
“No,” Dack and I yell at the same time.
“Excuse me?” Not used to being told no with such fervor, April’s tone is forced calm.
Dack pounds the table with his fist, making it shake, then directs his answer to me. “He was fucking drugged and kidnapped, Cold. Neo. All he wants to do is make the world a little better for people. That’s the point of his work. For fuck’s sake.” My friend fists his hair, pulling on it like the pain will obscure his internal hurt. “He basically brought my mom back to life. Do you know what people would pay for that technology?” He gestures at the closed laptop on the table. “You saw it. He’s had more offers than I can count from companies and governments to buy his patents. More who want him to work for them. And he declines every time because he wants the technology to be used the way he intends it. To help people.”
“I know.” I clamp my hand on his shoulder and keep it there, wishing I could calm him as easily as I can push out ice cubes.
“ You need to get him out of here. Keep him safe.” He leans in, speaking into my phone. “I don’t trust anyone else.”
“Mr. Davis-Price—”
“No.” His fist pounds the table again. “You’re the only one I trust. You, Colden.” The pleading in his gaze holds the same tortured air as when the police knocked on the door that one horrific day looking for his step-dad.
“Dacker.” I look from him to the phone. Am I enough to keep Neo safe? I’ll do everything in my power to protect him. And I’ll fight to show April that. “I’ll—”
“Fine.” From the speaker comes April’s voice and the tap of keys, then, “Colden, all the information has been sent via the secure email system.”
I rub at the burning in my chest. “I’m ready.”