the furious in-and-out and gripped Eddie’s erection, pumping it off as the female waited for the payload like a porn star, mouth open, puffy lips licked in anticipation.
Sometime between the stroking and when the female’s face got glossed, Ad felt Devina leave the club. And it wasn’t a mirage. Her physical presence was not fakeable.
But she lingered, anyway.
As Eddie panted in recovery, the female on her knees ran her fingers over her cheeks and brought them into her mouth. Sucking them in, she dropped her lids and stared up at Adrian, all wouldja-do-me.
Staring down at her, he tried to draw in a breath, but there was a weight on his chest that refused to be budged, and for some reason, the only thing he could see was the tail end of all that fake black hair of hers pooling on the dirty bathroom tile.
Her frantic, sex-starved eyes belied her fragility: There was a lost soul behind her desperate stare, an emptiness that reminded him too much of himself.
Up above her, there was a paper towel dispenser stuck to the wall, its offering like a tongue lolling out of its dull silver head.
Taking her chin in his palm, he held her face with care and snapped a white towel free. With careful strokes, he cleaned off her delicate, pale skin.
“Not tonight,” he said hoarsely. “Not tonight, baby girl.”
She blinked first in confusion, and then in sadness. But that was what happened when you were forced to stop and see yourself clearly: Not all mirrors were made of glass, and you didn’t always need your reflection to take a good, hard look at yourself. The truth was something you wore sure as the suit of flesh that bound and gagged your soul until you were set free, and you couldn’t ignore it forever.
Leaning forward, he snagged her bustier from the sink’s counter, and like a child she held her arms up so that he could bind her naked breasts.
In attending to her, he felt as though he were taking care of the most broken part of himself . . . and all the while, Eddie played witness with his red eyes.
“Go on, now,” Adrian said when he’d done up the last of the fasteners. “Go home . . . wherever that is.”
She left on unsteady feet, but not because of the sex or the drinking, and as the door shut, Adrian settled back on the loo, put his hands on his thighs, and stared at the floor.
It was a strange night to realize his disease, but then, as was probably typical, when you lived with something a long time, you got used to the symptoms that told you what you had was fatal.
He had the cancer. In him. It had started growing long ago, this tumor no one could see. He’d let Devina in that first time he’d bartered something of himself for something he needed in the war, and she’d been taking over ever since then, inch by inch.
He had nothing to pull him out of the oblivion that was coming for him, not even Eddie.
And damn them all, she was doing exactly the same thing with Jim.
Looking up at his best friend, he heard himself say, “I’m dying, Eddie.”
Eddie’s tan skin went gray, but he said nothing. Hell, no doubt the only surprise to the guy was that Ad actually brought it up.
“I’m not going to live to see the end of this war.” Ad cleared his throat. “I’m just . . . not going to make it.”
CHAPTER 19
As Reilly pulled her unmarked into the driveway of a nice-looking clapboard colonial, Veck ran his hand across his jaw and wished he’d had time to hit a razor before they’d left HQ. Then again, a five-o’clock shadow was the least of his problems. He was well aware he had bags under his eyes and was sporting a lot of lines that he hadn’t remembered from even a week before.
He glanced over at his partner. “Thank you for this.”
She smiled in such an open and honest way that he was momentarily immobilized: Reilly was definitely not one of those women who needed drugstore crap on her face to get a glow on—it was all about who she was inside, not what was up with her cheeks and her eyelashes. And this expression? Pretty much made him weak in the knees.
He knew the reason for the radiance, too. He had a feeling it was because she loved where they were and who they were going to eat with: the farther away they’d gotten from work, and the closer to this house they’d become, the lighter and more delighted she’d appeared.
“Have your parents lived here long?” he asked as they got out.
“All my life.” She looked around at the big oak in the yard and the little white fence at the sidewalk and the cherry red mailbox. “It was an awesome place to grow up. I could walk to school through my backyard, and there were half a dozen of us all in the same grade within a six-block radius. And, you know, my dad was superintendent of schools—still is—so I felt like he was with me every day, all the way up to college. Nice thing, believe it or not.”
The street was not unlike the one the Bartens lived on, come to think of it. Very middle-class, but in the best sense of the term: These were people who worked hard, loved the crap out of their kids, and no doubt had neighborhood block parties and miniparades for the kids on the Fourth of July. Hell, even the occasional dog bark was audible nostalgia for him.
Not that he’d ever known shit like this.
“You ready to come inside?” she asked.
“Yeah, sorry.” He headed around the car. “What does your mom do?”
“She’s an accountant. They’ve been together forever—met in college, went to grad school at SUNY Caldwell at the same time. He was getting his PhD in education and she was trying to decide between number crunching and teaching. She picked the numbers because there was more money in it—and then found out she really loved the corporate stuff. She took early retirement last year and does a lot of volunteering around financial planning—well, that and the cooking.”
As they hit the slate walkway and approached the glossy black front door, he realized this was the first time he’d met a woman’s parents. Okay, yeah, it wasn’t under the context of a “date” situation, but, man, now he knew why he didn’t get close to anyone. Reilly was going to say his name, and her lovely mom and dad were going to get that frozen expression on their faces as they connected the dots.
Shit, this was a bad idea—
The door burst open before they got to it, thrown wide by an African-American woman who was tall and thin and had an apron over her jeans and turtleneck.
Reilly raced forward and the pair of them hugged so close, red hair mixed in with precisely executed dreads.
Then Reilly eased back. “Mom, this is my new partner—well, for the month, at least. Detective DelVecchio.”
Veck’s eyes went back and forth between the pair. And then catching himself, he quickly stepped forward and offered his palm. “Ma’am, please call me . . . Tom.”
The handshake was brisk but warm, and—
“Where’s my girl?”
The deep voice that boomed out of the house was something that Veck would have associated more with a drill sergeant than a school superintendent.
“Come in, come in,” Mrs. Reilly said. “Your father is so excited you’re eating with us.”
As Veck breached the threshold, he got a view down a hallway to the kitchen, but it didn’t last. A six-foot- four man stepped into the space and took it all up, his shoulders set like a mountain range, his stride long as one of Caldie’s bridges. His skin was dark as night and his eyes were black . . . and missed absolutely nothing.
As Veck thought about The Kitchen Incident from the night before, he nearly pissed himself.
Reilly ran ahead and threw herself at her father, obviously confident she’d be caught and held with ease. And
