Page 143 of Boyfriend of the Hour

I bit my lip. As much as I hated to admit it, I could see it happening, especially before Nathan was a doctor with enough knowledge to spot things like addiction. He missed all sorts of cues other people noticed first. I could easily imagine him as a naive twenty-one-year-old. Handsome, shy, and kind—an easy target for someone like that.

Carrick shook his head like he still couldn’t believe it either. “She died trying to cook that shit herself with her dealer. Blew up a trailer and almost killed her daughter too. Isla still looks like she went through a war zone. It’s because ofherthat Nathan’s a fucking plastic surgeon instead of working at Huntwell, where he belongs. Dumb motherfucker is more interested in skin grafts than his own family’s legacy. Thinks it’s his ‘calling.’”

By the time he finished, my head was spinning. This explained so,somuch. “But-but I’m not a drug addict,” I managed to stutter. “And I don’t have a kid.”

“Yeah, you must be a real jackpot then,” Carrick said dryly. “Let me guess, you’re a stripper with a heart of gold, putting yourself through a Ph.D. program for that secretly massive brain of yours. Not it? Then maybe you’re paying for a sick relative’s cancer treatment. Still no? Hold on, I got this.” He snapped his fingers with a loud crack. “You’re a secret agent on a mission to expose the dark underbelly of New York. Am I on to something?”

I remained silent and stared at my knees. He knew none of that was true.

“Or maybe it’s like this,” Carrick went on mercilessly. “You’re a two-bit dancer from a broken family who’ve mostly given up on you. You barely graduated high school, and now you can hardly keep a job because you don’t have any real skills. Then my brother comes along, looking real nice, like a lottery ticket in glasses. Am I warm?”

I squeezed my eyes together, willing the tears that pricked to go away. How did he even know all that? Was it that obvious I was such a complete and total loser?

“Thought so,” Carrick said, appearing to take my silence as a confirmation. “Your ‘friend’ Vamos back there sings like a fuckin’ canary after he’s done a few lines. Even says you think you’re going to marry Nathan. I’m here to tell you, it’snevergoing to happen, sweetheart. Not on my watch.”

I bit my lip harder, willing the tears in my eyes to die down. I would not cry in front of this asshole. I would. Not. Cry.

“I’m not…I’m not like her. Lindsay,” I barely managed to whisper. “And I’m not using your brother. I’mnot.”

I wasn’t like her, I told myself. Iwasn’t. But even I had to admit, some of the similarities were close. Too close.

“Maybe not,” Carrick said as he settled back into his seat like it was a throne, not a dirty bench on the subway. “But maybe Nathan sees something in you he wants that he couldn’t have back then.”

“What’s that?” My voice warbled.

Carrick almost looked pained to say it. “Redemption. Justice. Once he gets it in his head that something is the right thing to do, he can’t ever let it go. Some might call it obsessive. I just call it naive.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. This was ten types of fucked up.

“I should have known the second he said you work in a bar.” Carrick shook his head. “He couldn’t save Lindsay, but maybe he thinks he can save you. Well, I’m here to tell you and him he can’t. Some things, somepeople, are beyond salvation.”

A tear streaked down my cheek before I could stop it. Was that all this ploy really was? Not a joint venture to free ourselves from limited futures, but a secret attempt by Nathan to make up for the past?”

Was I just a useless charity case to him?

A pathetic second chance to redeem himself?

“Where does he really think you were tonight?” Carrick’s gravelly voice cut through my self-pity. “That lounge where you met? Out with friends? Or does my strait-laced brother actually know that his so-called ‘fiancée’ spent her evening serving body shots and shaking it for gangsters?”

The look on my face clearly told him everything he needed to know.

“He wouldn’t care,” I mumbled. “He said he wouldn’t care.”

Carrick snorted. “That’s what all men say when they’re drunk on pussy.”

At least he thought we were actually sleeping together. It was probably the only part of the charade people did believe.

“You don’t understand what it’s like. I need this money. Not because of drugs or kids or anything like that. But because ofhim.” I picked at my threadbare coat and toed my Vans on the floor. “Do you have any idea how much it costs to fit in with people like you? I made him a promise, and I won’t go back on it. It’s only for?—”

I cut myself off before I could babble any further. Before I told Nathan’s secret. Before I told mine.

“I just want to help him too,” I said quietly. “And all he wants is his family’s support, so I’m here to help him get that. That’s all. What I do with the rest of my time is my own business. Not yours. If you care about your brother, you won’t hurt him with it either.”

Carrick seemed to peer right through me with those black, soulless eyes. And for several moments, I honestly thought he was going to tell me to fuck off. I was ready for him to deliver a threat. Say I wasn’t good enough for his brother and that if he saw me with Nathan again, he’d share with the whole world what I was doing, not just his brother.

God, I was tired. How many more men were going to use my secrets against me tonight?

In the end, Carrick just relaxed in his seat as the train came to a stop.