"Oh, now that was the completely wrong thing to say," Marc purred, his hand curling into a fist, muscles bunching. He could see the color red-splashing in his mind as he plowed a fist into Tim's face. Red, one of the colors he saw pretty well, and just then he wanted to see it d.a.m.n bad, spreading out in a fountain over Tim's face. "I'm not going to wait to hurt you. I'm just going to do it now."

"Stop it, Marc."

It was probably the only voice that could have gotten through to him.

Slowly, he dragged his eyes away from the man he really wanted to beat b.l.o.o.d.y and stared into Chaili's face. She was crouched by Tim's head, her elbows resting on her knees. As he stared at her, she shook her head. "Don't. If you do, it's just going to cause you more trouble and you get enough of that on your own. You don't need to pick up my trouble."

Her vivid eyes rested on his, steadily. And she wasn't trying to get away from him.

Okay.

Blinking, he blew out a breath and looked back into Tim's face. d.a.m.n it, he wanted to see him bleed.

"You don't want me to hit him," he said slowly.

"No."

"s.h.i.t." Letting go of Tim's shirt, he remained crouched over him for a minute. "You want to watch what you say, what you do. Shut the h.e.l.l up, don't look at her...don't speak to her. Don't speak about her." Then he made himself look away from Tim before he did what he so badly wanted to do. As he straightened, he kept his eyes focused on Chaili, staring at her, only at her. "Leave with me. Talk to me."

"Ahh..." She backed away a step.

He narrowed his eyes and glanced down at Tim who was scrambling his way to his feet. "Well, I can always finish what I started, I guess."

Chaili rolled her eyes. "Now that's just juvenile."

"Fine. I'm juvenile. It will feel d.a.m.n good."

"d.a.m.n it, people are watching," Chaili hissed, stepping in closer.

"Like I give a flying f.u.c.k." He tossed her a reckless grin.

"You stupid son of a b.i.t.c.h." She continued to glare at him.

But as he took a step away, she caught his hand. "Fine." She glanced around and gave her ex-husband a mock look of concern. "d.a.m.n it, Tim, you should be more careful. You didn't hurt anything when you slipped, did you?"

"You crazy b.i.t.c.h, I-"

Nina-that was her name, Marc thought, leaned in, caught Tim's arm, giving him a wide-eyed look, shaking her head.

"Tim, dude, you always were a clumsy freak," Miguel said from behind. "You shouldn't go hitting the punch so hard. It's got a kick to it, ya know."

h.e.l.l, Marc had forgotten about him.

Shooting his friend a look, Marc tried to figure out what to do about getting him home when he had to get Chaili out of here before she changed her mind.

"I'm going to go call my lady," Miguel said, sighing. "I think I ate too much." He patted his belly and turned away, heading into the crowd.

As people started to press in closer, Marc pushed his way through, gripping Chaili's hand. "Let's go."

"Go?" Jumping Jack demanded. "But you just got here?"

"And I got who I came for," Marc said, still holding on to her hand, praying she wouldn't slip away. He could make this right, d.a.m.n it. He could do it. Of course, it would be easier if he could do it without talking.

Chapter Eight.

"Your ex is a bigger a.s.shole than I remember," Marc said after thirty minutes of silence.

"Yes." She stared out the window, her gaze focused on the lake. "Where are we going?"

He drummed a hand on the steering wheel. "I don't know. Where do you want to go?"

Sighing, she rested her head on the back of the seat. "Home. I'm tired."

"If I take you home, are you going to talk to me?"

"I'm talking now, aren't I?"

From the corner of her eye, she saw him gripping the staring wheel so tight his hands were almost bloodless. "You're not talking to me," he said quietly. "You're talking through me. Looking through me. Around me. I was an a.s.shole and I'm sorry and I'm trying to make it right and you won't let me and it's killing me."

She was pretty certain her heart cracked. Right down the middle. d.a.m.n it. She was ready to be done with him. She wanted to do be done with him. But how could she do that when he kept pushing himself inside her like that? And why now? When she was determined to excise him?

Part of her, the angry part of her that had waited and yearned for so long before giving up hope, wanted to tell him to f.u.c.k off. Another part of her still hoped. But the part of her that took control was the part that just couldn't stand to see him hurting. She'd loved him for too long. And h.e.l.l, he was a friend.

They had to find a way to make this right. Get things level, and then they could move past it.

"We can talk, Marc," she said, rubbing her thumb over the b.u.mpy surface of her ring. Remade, she told herself. She could remake herself again, remake the shattered pieces of her heart, but not until she handled this part first.

Damaged goods.

It b.u.mped around in his head, didn't want to settle.

What the f.u.c.k...

No. Not now. Not now, he told himself as he followed her up the stairs and into to her apartment. Dipping a hand into his pocket, he rubbed his thumb over the ticket stub to the Springsteen concert, felt the worn, smooth surface. He had both the stub and one picture from the pier with him, holding them like good luck charms.

He needed to do this and get it done first, see if he could get her to believe him, get her to accept him and give him another chance.

That was what he needed to focus on.

And yet, as Chaili turned around to face him, without him even realizing what he was going to say, he blurted out, "You were raped, weren't you?"

She blinked, looked a little thrown off. Then she sighed, pa.s.sed a hand over her face. "No, Marc. I wasn't raped."

"If you were, you can tell me. I mean...I want to kill whoever..." And he would, d.a.m.n it. He'd find him. Kill him slow and...

"I wasn't raped." She turned away and moved to the window, staring outside. "d.a.m.n that son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"What...h.e.l.l. You know what? Doesn't matter." He stared at the back of her head, willing her to turn, to look at him. "He's a dumb p.r.i.c.k, running his mouth off..."

Chaili reached for the hem of her shirt and dragged it off.

Then she turned around.

The first thing that caught his gaze was the tattoo. It was pretty, he noticed inanely. And there was no mistaking the pink ribbon, and the ribbon made up the body of what looked to be a b.u.t.terfly, the wings spreading out to cover the altered planes of her chest. The wings were vividly blue-green against her skin, the pink ribbon an elegant, graceful swirl.

The scars were surgically neat on her seemingly frail torso. One of them was all but hidden in the wings of the tattoo, but he could still see it.

Her skin looked so fragile, stretched tightly over her ribcage, the flat expanse marred only by the scars...and that elegant, graceful tattoo that told the story so very plainly.

Below it were the words: Hope. Courage. Will.

Stunned, he stared, the blood roaring in his ears, his heart wrenching in his chest.

Cancer...you had cancer and you never told me.

Tearing his gaze from her chest, he stared into her eyes. Swallowing, he rasped out, "When?"

"I had the mastectomy just over three years ago. Right before the divorce was final, incidentally." She threw the shirt down and sauntered over to the chair, flinging her long, lean body down in it, and stared at him, her chin propped on her fist. "As you can see, Marc, I'm pretty d.a.m.n damaged."

"The h.e.l.l you are," he growled, stalking over to her. He should have pounded Tim into a b.l.o.o.d.y, bruised pulp. Going to his knees next to her chair, he went to say something, but found himself staring at the scars again. At the tattoo. At the marks of the pain, the fear she must have suffered...alone. At the mark she'd given herself. How she'd survived. Risen above it. "He divorced you over this."

"Oh, he didn't divorce me because of the mastectomy," she said, her voice lazy. But the glint in her eyes was weird, a hard, almost manic little light. "He divorced me because he didn't really love me. I didn't really love him, either, so that's fair. Things had been rough between us for a while. Still, it might have been nice if he'd stuck it out with me until I was through the treatments, the surgery. But he didn't want to deal with me being sick. Maybe losing my hair-that really worried him. And I did. Man, he would have loathed that. But what really bothered him was the freak I'd be when the surgery was done... I lost everything, as you can see. It was pretty advanced and the only way to save me was to take it all. He didn't want to live with a deformed freak."

Snaking his hand out, he clamped it around the back of her neck and tugged her in, slanting his mouth over hers. "Stop," he rasped against her lips. "You're not a freak. You're not..."

And to his disgust, he felt something burning his eyes.

Shoving upright, he started to pace. "How in the h.e.l.l didn't I know about this?" he demanded, turning to glare at her. "s.h.i.t, Chaili, you're one of the few people I actually consider a real friend and I don't hear about something like this? What the h.e.l.l?"

"Maybe you would have...if you were ever here." She shrugged and crossed one leg over the other. "But you weren't. After you left for the '09 tour, it was eleven months before you came back home and by then, the surgery was done. What do you think I should have done? Whip up my shirt on one of the rare times you came by to see your sister?"

"I..." Groaning, he covered his face with his hands. Yeah. He'd stayed away for a long time because it was easier. He'd f.u.c.ked up so often, and it was so much easier just to hide from his life. He'd f.u.c.ked up with Lily. And there was the fiasco from a few years earlier with another girlfriend he hadn't ever told anybody about, not even his sister. His lawyer knew, but that was it.

Shera had warned him about Lily. She'd tried her hardest, he had to give her that.

He hadn't listened.

He'd gotten himself screwed over.

And the worst part was he knew he deserved it.

Why should he come home and try to have any kind of life when all he did was screw it up?

Still...

He hadn't come home and he'd spent years missing one of his closest friends and because of it, he'd ended up missing something that he d.a.m.ned well should have known about. Cancer, for f.u.c.k's sake. She had cancer.

And she'd been alone.

He stopped by the back window, staring out over the backyard. "You were alone through the whole d.a.m.n thing, weren't you?"

The rigid line of his shoulders, the way his voice was gruffer than normal had her heart shuddering a little. She couldn't block out how his voice affected her, but if she didn't look at him, maybe, just maybe she could get through this. Looking away, she said, "No. I wasn't alone. Shera was there. She hired extra help at the office so she could be around." Glancing over the apartment, she added, "She offered me the apartment here. I...well, I was looking for a place but..." The pride she'd had to swallow so often over the past few years crept up. She wasn't going into that with him. No way. No how. "It was just easier, being around somebody. She tried to give me some lame excuse that it would save her from having deadbeats trying to rent the place, but I think we both needed each other then. I never meant for it to be long term but here I am."

Broke. Busting her a.s.s to pay the medical bills. But mostly at peace with things, she guessed.

Or she had been. And then she'd made that fatal mistake a week ago. Reaching for something she was never meant to have, even if it was just for a little while.

A hand closed over her knee. Startled, she swung her gaze around and realized Marc had come back to her. Golden eyes, burning with intensity, stared into hers. "I hate that I didn't know. I hate that you didn't have somebody with you."

"I did. Shera-"

"It's not the same." His lip curled, a disgusted look on his face. "That son of a b.i.t.c.h walked when you needed him most. I never liked that b.a.s.t.a.r.d...you deserved so much better, but I never thought he was that low, to leave you when you'd need somebody the most."

She watched as his gaze dipped back to her chest and she fought the urge to pull her shirt back on. She'd come to grips with how she looked. She wasn't going to cringe away from her appearance. Still, this was worse than being stripped bare. Worse than being naked. She couldn't handle seeing pity in his eyes and she couldn't handle it if she saw repulsion either.

Falling back on the mocking humor that had been her shield for so long, she smirked at him. "It's a pretty sight, isn't it? Not hard to understand why he didn't want to hang around when this was going to be the end result."

"Stop it."

"I mean, I was never exactly stacked. I barely even filled out an A cup, but these days-hey, d.a.m.n it!" She went from sprawling on the couch to half sprawled against his chest. His hand cupped the back of her neck and the gold in his eyes all but sparked with anger. "d.a.m.n it, what in the h.e.l.l is your problem?"

Instead of answering that question, Marc banded an arm around her waist, locking her against him before he asked a question of his own. "Tell me something...how did you get hooked up with that stupid f.u.c.k? He doesn't deserve you. Didn't then, doesn't now. How did the two of you happen?"

Chaili tried for one second to twist away from him before going still, glaring at him. "What?"

"I want to know. How did the two of you get together? Why did you marry him? You already told me you didn't love him. So why marry him?"

"We met through a couple of friends," she snapped. "He asked me out, I said yes. We were compatible. After a few months, he asked me to marry him and I said yes. No, I didn't love him and, no, he didn't love me and we never pretended otherwise. But we clicked in other areas and that worked for us."

His eyes narrowed. "You settled for compatible. s.h.i.t, Chaili. What in the h.e.l.l does that mean, anyway?"

"It means I wasn't going to get what I really wanted, so I might as well be with somebody who could make me happy enough. It wasn't perfect but so what?" She couldn't look at him while she talked about this. If she did, he was going to see what it was she did want. Who she wanted. All but dying inside for want of him, it seemed.

His hand traced up her back and she shivered, her lashes drifting shut. One finger stroked over one of the scars along her side. All the scars were neat, faded now, but they were still scars. Still harsh reminders. She didn't even look like a boy. Skin stretched tight over her ribs. A few of the women she knew through the support groups had gotten breast reconstruction, but it wasn't an option for her and she doubted she'd bother with it even if she could afford it.

"You should go after who you want, not what's available," he whispered, pressing his lips against her shoulder.

Yeah. She'd tried that. Had ended with her heart shattered in her hands this last time around. And the first time she'd tried to go after Marc, he'd all but patted her on the head.

Of course, now those strong hands were stroking over her body, one palm curving over her a.s.s. The other hand fisted in her hair and dragged her head back. "Just how were you compatible, Chaili?" he whispered, staring into her eyes.