PANIC

Chapter One - ROOK

Six Months Later

Denver, CO

The music pounds in my ear as I force myself up one more aisle of steps at Coors Field. This song always gets me trying a little harder. I hop the long step, then take a stride and pump my legs to go up two steps at once. I can’t do this very long, I’m still no Ford when it comes to running stadiums, but I almost make it to the top before I have to slow down and then finally stop.

I look for Ford, but he’s doing the lower sections today. Just a blur of a black shirt running much harder than me up his current set of steps. I jog in place until the song winds down and realize I’ve used up all my energy. So I stop and enjoy the view. This is why I come to the upper section these days.

The view. These mountains are gorgeous and I never get tired of looking at them. I’m off to the far right of first base. I’m not a baseball person, so I have no idea what that area on the field is called. Right field? I dunno. I’m not on the field anyway, I’m up in the stands, so it hardly matters.

The only thing that matters is that I can see the mountains and the way the reflected sunrise from the east lights them up all pink. Sometimes when Ronin and I are up there for the weekend or just for a ride, I have to pinch myself, that’s how pretty it is.

Colorado changes once September arrives. One minute you’re grilling outside and the nights are pleasant, the next it’s freezing-ass cold. Well, fifties and sometimes forties, anyway. Too cold to hang out at night in shorts anymore.

But the new crisp air feels spectacular on my sweaty skin right now. In fact, I get a little chill because I’m starting to cool down. I enjoy the relative quiet for a few minutes. The traffic down below is pretty loud, but it’s tempered by the ever-constant wind whistling across my ears. Colorado should be nicknamed the Wind State because it’s a regular thing.

Life is so weird. I still can’t get over how much things have changed for me since I stepped off that bus six months ago. I have a lot of money. Well, maybe not a lot compared to Ronin, but to me, a million dollars is too much to even comprehend. STURGIS will pay out at just under six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, plus the fifty grand I had from TRAGIC, plus the money the guys took from Jon when they set him up. I’ve got over a million, actually.

And I’ve bought nothing since before the STURGIS contract started besides food and gas and stuff like that. Not one thing. Not one article of clothing—I have way more clothes than I need. Not a stick of furniture—Ronin purchased all my furniture. Not even a car. Although this is gonna change very soon. I’m just too content to think about spending right now. I’ve never been a shopper and money has not changed that in me.

“Why did you stop?” Ford has made his way across the stadium and into the upper level while I was daydreaming. He’s even carrying burritos and drinks.

“I’m done. Besides, I wanted to enjoy the view. It’s our last time here, Ford.”

He smiles. He does that a lot these days. And not just at me. I’m not one hundred percent sure if this is normal, but I’m guessing not. September has rolled in and everyone in my new little family is suddenly a lot happier.

Elise is pregnant, so she’s one of those glowing moms-to-be. She’s tiny everywhere but her stomach where she’s just getting her fourth-month baby bump. No wonder she was so crazy all summer worrying about Clare. She was just as surprised as the rest of us when she did the pregnancy test the day we came back from Sturgis. Good thing Elise is not a partier or she’d probably be insane with worry because her mothering instinct is already kicking in. Antoine is beside himself with pride. He even asked her to marry him but she said, and I quote, “After twelve years I refuse to accept your proposal knocked-the-fuck-up.”

He’s still working on her, but she hasn’t taken his ring.

Ronin is happy too. He’s in charge of the GIDGET contract, which is not erotic modeling. Well, not really. It’s a retro pin-up catalog shoot for a new lingerie company. They aren’t really new, they’re some subsidiary of another huge lingerie company, hence the cash flow for this kick-off.

Spencer is back up in Fort Collins doing his thing. But I’ll see him tomorrow when Ronin moves me up to the shop for filming of the first season of Shrike Bikes for the Biker Channel.

Ronin and I talked about this decision ad nauseam after Sturgis. I won’t go into the boring details, but he was managing the GIDGET contract so it was only fair that I got to do the show with Spencer because they start at the same time. It’s perfect really. Our last flirt with this crazy world of modeling, then on to vague new things.

We haven’t gotten that far yet, so I’m not sure what that means other than not what we’re doing now.

“Here,” Ford says, handing me a water and my partially unwrapped burrito. I take it and dig in. “We’ll find something to take its place when we get up north. Don’t worry.”

“Hmm,” I say with my mouth full. “I don’t see what, Ford. That place is in the middle of nowhere. And winter is coming.”

He smiles at the film reference. “Snowshoeing. Cross-country skiing. Extreme croquet.”

I spit out some eggs as I laugh. “What. The. Fuck. Is. That?”

“It’s croquet, but not.” He sighs. “It’s all relative, I guess.”

“Sounds like my kind of game, actually. It’s for stoners, isn’t it? Like Frisbee?”

Ford laughs. “Maybe. We can skip the extreme croquet then. I’ll figure something out. How’s school coming?”

School. I’m in school. Sometimes I have to pinch myself, that’s how excited this makes me. Ford, ever the stealthy hacker genius that he is, rigged my mandatory placement test for the community college up in FoCo and got me registered for fall semester. It’s all online, so it’s not really life-changing like if I was living on campus at Colorado State, which is the big FoCo university, but I’m stoked. I’m taking basic shit. English composition, History of Western Civ, biology, and pre-algebra.

Yes, I’m a total math loser, but what can you do? One baby step at a time.

“How’s math, in particular?” Ford asks, like he’s reading my mind. “I know you hated that I put you in a non-credit class, but it was the right decision, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I reluctantly admit. “I’m barely keeping up to be honest. It’s confusing for me. I’m not a math girl.”

“Well, luckily you need very little of it for film school, so don’t dwell. Just do your best.”

Ford is very supportive of my academic pursuits. Very supportive. It makes me wonder sometimes. It’s not like Ronin isn’t supportive, he is. He wants me to follow my dream. But Ford is supportive in a different way. Like he’s invested in it or something. Like his success is dependent on mine. And that gets me thinking back to what he said a few months ago. About how patient he is. About him giving me the tools I need to fix my life, so I’ll stop looking for Ronin to do that for me. He wants me to be strong all on my own. Not need anyone.

I like that about Ford. It’s like he trusts me. Like he’s got faith in me.

It makes me have faith in myself.

“How come you don’t have a girlfriend, Ford?”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

“Oh,” I reply, embarrassed. “Do you?”

He looks away. “I have… women.” He looks back, smiling. “But they’re not girlfriends.”

I’m not even sure what to say to that, so of course I choose something totally inappropriate. “Are they… whores?”

He laughs. “No comment.” And then he takes a big bite of his burrito and shuts that conversation down.

“Clare’s coming home tomorrow.” I’m not sure why I fill in the silence with that tidbit of information—

“You’re nervous about meeting her.”

—but apparently Ford has a pretty good handle on my psyche these days. “Yeah. I still think about what you said, you know.”

He shrugs. “I’m not going to say any more about it. Ronin’s your boyfriend, you like each other. That’s all that matters.”

I stare at him for a few more seconds and let this sink in. “Good, that means you’ve lost interest in me and all that shit you said last summer about wanting me to leave Ronin is over.”

He laughs. “We’re friends, right? I’m happy with how things are going between us. It’s perfect actually.”

Hmmm. That’s weird. In fact, I’m weird right now. I shouldn’t be asking him this stuff but I can’t help myself. “Because you’re… what? Emotionally incapable of intimate relationships? This friendship is as far as you go? There’s nothing after this but the physical act of sex?”

“Yes, yes, and yes. You missed your calling. You should’ve been a psych major.”

“I cheat. Ronin told me about… well, he told me why he was so insistent on me not talking to you.”

“And do you agree with my diagnosis?”

“Not really,” I say, shaking my head. “You’re a bit on the strange side—”

He laughs again, his eyes darting around the stadium, like he’s thinking about this.

“—and I’m guessing you really are some scary smart genius. I totally see that. But you’ve done a lot of very nice things for me, Ford. And I never asked for it. I’m not always nice back to you, but I hope you know I really, really appreciate it.”

He drops the smile now and stares hard just past my head, like he’s thinking. I hold my breath as I wait for him to say something and when he finally begins to talk, it’s soft and low. “We fucked Mardee up pretty good. We were all tight—Mardee, Ronin, Spencer, and me. A sort of unit. Even though Ronin and I never got along well, it was different when the four of us were together. It was… just different. And you stunned me last summer when you asked me that question, Rook. I didn’t know what to say.”

“What question?”

“Who was I chasing.” He lets out a long breath. “Her. I’m chasing her. I’m trying to catch up with all the mistakes we made. It’s funny how you take people for granted.” He looks me in the eye for this part. “We took her for granted. We used her, we…”

I wait him out, patient, like he is with me.

He takes a drink and swallows hard before continuing. “Ronin blames himself for not paying attention to her, and Spencer blames himself for bringing her around the drugs, but we all played a part. You two really have nothing in common, but every time I look at you, I see her. And it just…” He stops to shake his head. “I just want you to succeed so badly. It feels good to watch you grow stronger.”

I’m not sure what to say. I knew this Mardee girl weighed on Ronin’s conscience, but it seems to go much deeper than that. There’s a lot more to this story than they’ve told me, but Ford was right about something else he told me last summer. I’m a keeper. A secret-keeper, just like they are. And I’m not sure I want to keep their secrets as well as mine. I’m not sure I can handle that right now.

So if these guys do have more secrets, they can keep them. I’m totally OK with that and I take my chance to change the subject before I learn something I might not want to know. “I am getting better, though. And you’re helping me. All three of you are helping me, actually. You with the running and school, Ronin with trust and relationships, and Spencer with the jobs. I’m so lucky to have you guys.”

“I’m enjoying you too, Rook. You’ve taught me a few things as well.”

I choke down a snort. “Like what?”

He begins to talk, but stops the words at the last second. His gaze sweeps across the baseball field below, then rests back on me. “Emotions have been… very difficult for me. It’s true what Ronin said. I wouldn’t say I have none, or that I’m incapable like my father thought. It’s not that I don’t or can’t feel things like that. It’s that I don’t want to. I just don’t care about people.” He throws up his hands. “That’s my dirtiest secret and now you have it. I just don’t give a fuck about people, I really don’t.”

I can’t help myself because these personal conversations with Ford are not common, so I ask. “Did you care about Mardee?”

“I did,” he says with a sigh.

“And she preferred Ronin?”

He’s the one who almost snorts this time. “Don’t they all?” He looks over at me. “Don’t you all prefer Ronin?”

I rest my elbows back on the concrete step behind me and then stretch my legs out. “You’re a nice-looking guy, Ford. So is Spencer. I’m not sure one could actually choose between the three of you. You’re all good catches. Equally desirable in different ways.”

He screws up his face. “How is Spencer desirable? I have never understood what girls see in him.”

I laugh. “Well, he’s like a big fun-loving goof-ball, but powerful and dangerous at the same time. He’s the bad boy girls fall in lust with and don’t mind taking orders from.”

“And Ronin?”

“Ronin’s just hot.” I grin over at him. “He’s the player all the girls want to settle down with. But he’s nice too. If Spence is the bad boy, then Ronin is the good guy. The knight in shining armor, like you said.”

“And me?”

I don’t look at him this time, but I can feel his stare like it’s heat. Waiting. “You’re… predictable.”

He belts out a laugh. “Well, I appreciate the ego stroke, Rook. Thank you.” He gets up and starts to walk down the stairs.

“I wasn’t finished.”

He stops but keeps his back to me.

“Not predictable as in boring or repetitive, but predictable as in safe. Even though I’m always adjusting when I’m with you, reevaluating things about myself and… you. You’re like an open book, Ford. What you see is what you get. So I’m not sure why your father thought that about you, I’m not really qualified to think too hard about it and make a better observation. But I’ll just say this. The reason I like you is because you’re honest. I know what I’m getting with you even though you keep me guessing. Because I always know that when you give me something, it will be good and you’re only thinking of what’s best for me. Ronin and Spencer are not better-looking than you, that’s for sure. You guys are just desirable in different ways.”

He turns around and smiles. “Good to know. Ready?”

I shrug because I can see through his act now—he avoids talking about himself in personal ways most of the time. He’ll tell me all about his college days, his jobs, professional things like that. But he hides from the emotional stuff, the things that cause him to feel too much. Not everything, mind you—he opens up every once in a while—but that open book has closed for today and I know this is his signal that talking is over.

I’m OK with that because I, too, am patient.