“None taken,” I replied uneasily. I handed her one of the waters, and she took it before turning away to look out the window. I grabbed the Tylenol bottle from the table and knocked back a couple of tablets while watching her.

We were silent for a while, both lost in our own thoughts. There was tension between us, but it was familiar and not entirely uncomfortable. I had known Lace Lowell practically all my life. I’d never forget our first meeting at the apartment where we lived at the University House. I had been seven. She had been five.

“Get the door Bry.” My mom was cooking in the open galley kitchen, but her voice carried easily across the small space separating it from the living room where I’d been sitting playing my video game.

“Sure, Mom.” The sizzle of the cooking meat and the aroma of garlic and cheese from my favorite flavor of Hamburger Helper filled the apartment. It made my stomach grumble. I dropped the controller onto the soft throw my mom used to make the old couch from Goodwill look nicer and stomped over to the door. “Who is it?” I asked before opening it just like she’d taught me to do.

“Dizzy Lowell,” was the muffled reply.

I grinned. Dizzy was my new best friend, and yeah that was his real name. His mom felt that way a lot before he was born. He sat in the desk in front of me in Miss Harper’s second grade class. We traded Pokemon cards at recess and played this really fun game at lunch where we tried to gross each other out mixing different items from our lunch trays. Today, Dizzy won. He had stuffed his bread roll into his chocolate milk carton and added ketchup. I’d laughed so hard at the face he had made that milk had come out my nose.

“Hey,” he said when I opened the door. His long blond hair was all messed up. My mom would not have let me out of the house with my hair like that. But Dizzy looked like that all the time. His clothes were usually dirty, too. “I had to bring my little sister with me. Is that ok?”

“Sure.” I opened the door wider and watched the little girl follow him inside. Her hair and eyes were the same color as his, and her small hand was fisted in the material of his worn out jeans.

Dizzy stopped in front of our TV. His mouth dropped open. “You have Pokemon!” he shouted.

I nodded. “I told you. My mom says we can play until dinner is ready.”

Dizzy spun around and squatted down in front of his sister. He put his hands on her shoulders. Her bottom lip stuck out and she looked like she wanted to cry. “Lace, don’t be afraid, ok? Bryan’s cool.” He tugged on one of her braids and helped her up on the couch. “Sit here, right next to me.” She watched me with her light brown eyes, but she didn’t move or make a sound the entire time we played. That was weird. I was used to my younger sisters. When they were awake, they were a royal pain in the rear. They got into all my stuff and they never shut up.

“Bry,” my mom called out after we had been playing for a while. Beside me, Lace squeaked and tried to climb behind her brother’s back.

Shoot, I thought. We were just getting to the good part.

“Time to stop.” My mom came in. She was drying her hand on a kitchen towel. Lace started shaking. My mom frowned as she looked at her. “I’m going to wake your sisters from their nap,” she said in a soft voice. “I’ll be right back.”

“Why’s she so scared?” I whispered to Dizzy after she left the room.

“Lace is afraid of grown-ups.” He turned around and touched her back. “Come on. Stop hiding. It’s time to go.”

“Wait,” I said. “Maybe you can stay a little longer. Let me ask my mom.” When my mom came back in the living room, I gave her my best puppy dog eyes. “Can we have five more minutes, please,” I begged. “We’re almost done.”

She leaned over the couch and ruffled my hair. I knew her answer before she said it. Puppy dog eyes worked every time. “Dizzy,” she asked using a soft voice. “Would you and your sister like to stay and eat dinner with us?”

“We can’t.” Dizzy stuck his hands in his pockets and stared down at his dirty sneakers. “My mom wants us in our rooms by six.”

“Maybe Saturday for lunch then?”

“Sure.” Dizzy gave her a big smile before asking to use the restroom. He went to the back and my mom returned to the kitchen. I snuck a peak at Lace. She had her legs pulled up under her chin and her arms wrapped around them. I was the man of the house and my mom told me my job was to take care of the girls. It made me sad to see Lace looking so scared. I wanted to make her smile.

I scooted closer to her. She put her cheek on her knee and watched me. I stuck my tongue out at her and rolled my eyes. Her lips twitched. I put my hand under my arm pit and made the farty sound a couple of times.

She giggled.

Yes. I slid right beside her, happy when she didn’t move away. “I like your eyes,” I said in a soft voice like my mom had used. “They’re pretty.”

She gave me a smile so big I noticed that her top two front teeth were missing. “Are you Printh Charming?” she asked me with a lisp.

“Uh-uh.” As if.

Dizzy came back in the room and grinned at me as he flopped back on the sofa. He must have heard that last bit.

“I am going to marry you someday,” Lace said with a nod like it was a done deal. “When I am growed up and pretty like Cinderella.”

I started to laugh but choked it back when I saw how serious she looked. It seemed so important to her that I found myself agreeing. Even though I knew Dizzy would never let me hear the end of it.

And here we were all these years later and Lace Lowell still had the ability to tie me up in knots. I still wanted to protect and please her. But because of War I was powerless to do either.

Some fucked up fairy tale I was living.

She stared out the one way windows. There was nothing to see. It was dark and we were parked between two buildings with only an occasional flicker of white from blowing snow to break up the monotony of the view.

“What’s Avery Jones like?” she asked turning abruptly to face me.

I tensed, thought a moment, and chose my words carefully. “Helluva guitarist.”

She swallowed. “And?”

“And nothing.” I shrugged. “She’s back with Marcus Anthony now if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Sorry. I saw some pictures.” There was an edge to her voice that hadn’t been there before. “It seemed like she might be important to you.”

I seriously contemplated telling her right then and there that she was the only woman that had ever been important to me when I heard the door slide open behind us.

“Guys it’s four fucking a.m.” Voice gruff with disapproval, War’s appearance brought our intimate predawn reunion to an end. Looking wan and strung out, the lead singer of Tempest shuffled into view wearing a pair of red boxers and scratched his bare chest. “Come on back to bed, babe.” He held out his hand to her while shooting me an irritated glance.

She patted my knee and I took the cue to scoot out of the booth ahead of her so she could exit.

War threw a proprietary arm around her shoulders as soon as her bare feet hit the floor. “Night, Loser.”

“Night, Asshole.”

War gave me the finger before he closed the door.

I stared at it for a long time. Nothing had fucking changed. Twenty thousand people screaming my name during my guitar solo at the Garden, plus two twins, but none of that mattered to me. Not when my best friend had the woman I’d always wanted.

2

My mind remembered how badly Bryan Jackson had hurt me, but my traitorous body wanted me to forget. It wanted me to go back, wrap my legs around that washboard waist of his, curl my fingers into his tatted biceps, fuse my mouth to his and beg him to make me moan instead of those twins. Fortunately for me, my mind overruled and the nail prints in my palms were the only casualty I sustained after this particular run in with Bryan.