no reason to put her through it. Because...he's going to be fine. I'll call her when he wakes up. I'll..." He felt Troy's hand on his arm.

"You can't face her, can you? Because you blame yourself."

Sloan ripped away and paced to the other side of the room. He grabbed his beer on the way past the table. "Why do you keep harping on the guilt thing?"

"Because I think you're drowning in the stuff and I think you need someone to throw you a life

preserver."

Sloan tipped up the bottle and wished the alcohol was strong enough to sear his esophagus instead of just give him a case of the warm fuzzies. He shook his head and the Earth seemed to sway beneath him.

"You're crathy."

"I'm not crazy, and you're too drunk to think coherently." True enough. But at that moment the idea of coherent thought struck him as overrated. He had no desire to think clearly and fully grasp the circumstances he found himself in. In fact, Sloan had drunk more in the last few days than he had in the last year.

"So?" he muttered. "You gave me the beers. I need something to numb me against your insane logic. So I feel a little guilty about sucking Craig into this. So what?"

"That's not all there is to it, and you know it."

Sloan set his feet a little wider apart to steady the Earth. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You still blame yourself for your father's suicide."

If there hadn't been a wall behind him, Sloan might have tumbled backward from the shock of that accusation. "What? Still? What makes you think I ever-" He shook his head, dumbfounded by the sheer absurdity of the idea.

"Come on, Sloan." Troy plunked himself down at the table with an air of exasperation. "I never said anything back then because I knew the wounds were still too fresh. But in the years after his death you walked around town like you weighed a thousand pounds."

"I'd lost my father, for chrissake. What was I supposed to do? Float around like a goddamn fairy?"

"No, of course not." Troy plowed his fingers through his thick, blond waves. "But it just seemed to me that there was more to it than that. It was the way you shut us all out. You still partied and hung out, but I could always tell that you weren't really with us. Someone who is grieving is supposed to lean on his friends, share things and accept support. The fact that you closed yourself off to all that-to all of us-made me wonder if there was more to it than just grief."

Sloan's only response was to slug back the rest of his beer. He didn't want to acknowledge Troy's allegations because that would mean acknowledging an entire menagerie of scary possibilities.

Troy continued, undaunted by Sloan's reticence. "I'm sure that's hardly an uncommon reaction, but it doesn't make it healthy. And it doesn't make it right. You have to know how wrong it is to blame yourself. It..." Troy seemed to choke on the words. He turned his gaze to the gathering storm. "It was his decision. No one else's. You have to accept that."

"I do," muttered Sloan. "Of course I do. I just said that. I don't feel guilty about Dad. Okay? Can we move on?"

Troy shook his head in frustration. "What about Bree?"

"Bree? How the hell did she get into this?"

"I think that's why you and Bree didn't make it. I think you need to face that as well. I think you pushed her away because of the guilt of letting down your father. You thought you didn't deserve her. You didn't deserve happiness."

Sloan studied his friend carefully. "Are you sure you're not projecting your own insecurities onto me?"

Troy's face remained carefully blank. "What does that mean?"

Sloan let out a drunken snort. "Like you don't know. You had a hell of a time accepting the fact that Carolyn wanted you. She had to practically beg you to marry her, and even then you doubted yourself, and her, at every turn." Sloan had spent the hours after Troy's bachelor party convincing his best friend that Troy Elliott could make Carolyn DeWitt happy. He'd finally succeeded, but Sloan knew Troy's battle with insecurity and poor self-esteem couldn't be won so easily.

Troy took a deep breath and said without conviction, "This isn't about me. It's about you."

The defense was weak, but Sloan didn't have the energy to pursue it further. Besides, Troy was right. This wasn't about him.

Suddenly a tidal wave of exhaustion washed over him. At that moment all he wanted to do was lay his head down on the table and go to sleep. The dark silence of blissful slumber beckoned to him like a Siren's call, but he had to resist. He had to stay awake a little longer. He might be irritated with his friend and his crackpot theories, but those theories had their roots in friendship and a sincere concern for Sloan's welfare. Sloan had to finish this conversation. He owed Troy that much.

"All right." He frowned at his beer. "What was this about again?"

A grin flitted across Troy's face. "You and Bree."

"Right. How I apparently pushed her away."

"Do you deny that you did?"

Sloan had to force his brain into action. "Maybe I did. But maybe it was for her own good. Do I have to remind you, that from the day Bree and I started dating we couldn't last longer than three months before we had a big blowout and broke it off. Maybe we didn't make it because we weren't right for each other. And maybe I was just trying to save us both the years of anguish it would have taken to figure that out. You ever think of that?"

"Nice try, but no dice. For one thing, you're not that selfless. And for another, that theory just doesn't wash. You two may have fought like tigers, but even when your claws were out and your teeth were bared any idiot could sense the energy that crackled around you. Even when you hated each other, you loved each other." Troy paused and swirled the beer around in his bottle. "And I think maybe she scared you too, because you were afraid that if anybody could see what was eating away at you, it was her."

"Well..." said Sloan with a resigned shrug, "if anything was eating away at me it wasn't guilt. You'll just have to trust me on that one."

Troy glared at him with those x-ray vision eyes again. "Okay. But what about now? What about in the years since you lost your mother?"

Sloan swallowed a clod of alarm that had congealed in his throat. "Lost?"

Troy didn't blink. He just kept staring at Sloan, burning off the sheen of fancy lies and Hollywood glitter that coated his skin like a protective armor. He forced a chuckle but the sound was as hollow as his lies. "I didn't lose her, I just misplaced her, that's all."

Troy's expression didn't waver. "I'm serious, Sloan."

Sloan lifted his beer and slurped another few drops. "Well, I'm not. I don't want to be serious. In fact I'm about as far from serious as you can get. And talking about my mother puts a strain on my silly quotient, even drunk. So, let's not talk about her." He plunked the beer bottle down and a little sloshed onto the table. He glanced at Troy's beer. "You're slowing down in your old age, Troy-boy. I remember the days when you could drink me under the table. You're getting too respectable. I think you need me to corrupt you again."

Troy blew out a long, slow sigh. He traced a finger down the neck of the bottle. "You're right, you know. I do miss you, Sloan. More than you can imagine. I've got all these great women in my life, you know? There's Carolyn and Bree and Franki. They're all sweet and smart and supportive, but..." He looked at Sloan and a host of indefinable emotions played across his features. "But I don't have a brother or a father. I haven't for years. And I haven't had a best friend since you."

He stopped talking and the thunder chose that moment to announce its intentions. A great clap that rivaled the birth of the universe rolled toward them over the water, and brought with it a wall of water. Rain pelted the windows and drummed on the roof, the sound sad and infinitely lonely.

Sloan had no idea what to say.

"I miss having a drinking buddy," continued Troy, "and somebody to complain to when the wife asks me to wash the dishes. I want to have a buddy who'll come along when I take David fishing-"

"I've given up fishing," muttered Sloan around the knot of emotion that had formed in his throat.

"So you'd sit on the shore and complain. Believe it or not I miss that too."

Sloan sniffled and gazed at his beer as if the answers to the mysteries of life and friendship could be found in the tiny bits of effervescence that floated to the top. "I miss all that too, but I don't know what to do about it."

"That's easy. Come home. You're successful. You have a name now. You could write anywhere in the world. Why not do it here?"

Sloan felt himself being tempted by Troy's words. They tugged at him, teasing him with promises that could never be fulfilled. "Because you all remind me of too much."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean? Remind you of what?"

To his own surprise Sloan exploded from his chair, but he lacked direction. He didn't know where to go, or what to do with himself, so he just paced to the window and stared out into the tempest, his vision clouded by a mist that had nothing to do with the storm. "Of him. And of her. I miss them, too. God, you can't know how much. And being here, and around all of you, just makes it hurt all over again."

Troy considered that in silence for a moment before saying, "I know you miss your dad, but your mom? You've never expressed any regrets over what happened. You still seem so angry at her. Are you sure she deserves that?"

"Yeah, I'm sure," he whispered as he leaned against the glass of the patio door. He knew it was insane but he had the odd sensation that his body was losing its cohesion. It must be a strange effect of the beer, but he felt about as solid as a puff of cotton candy. And he thought that if he just stepped out into the torrential downpour he would dissolve completely, leaving nothing behind but a sweet, sticky residue.

"I hate her," he heard himself say. "And I hate what happened. But I love her, too and I miss her. I want her back. I just can't have what I want." He closed his eyes and listened to the deep, rumbling echo of God's mocking laughter.

"Maybe you can, Sloan. Don't be so quick to dismiss her. You need to make peace with her. And with yourself."

But Sloan barely registered Troy's words. He couldn't focus on anything at all, because at that moment the clouds rolled right in through the glass and enveloped him in their cool, damp cloak of darkness. He let it happen and wondered idly if this was how it had felt for her. To just slip into oblivion, never to return.

Troy caught him as he crumpled.

"Dammit," he muttered as he draped Sloan's arm across his shoulders and began to drag him toward the guest room.

So much for his grand interrogation plan. Years of experience had taught him that booze tended to loosen Sloan's tongue and impair his judgment. And Troy had hoped that, combined with Sloan's fatigue and distraction over Craig's fate, might be just the ticket to coax Sloan into unburdening himself of the secrets he had tucked away in that battered and abused soul of his. But Troy's scheme had fallen to the effects of exhaustion and one too many slugs of the amber swill.

Troy dragged him into the third bedroom that now served as a home office and guest room in times of need. A secretary's desk in the corner housed his computer and a brass daybed heaped with a mountain of chintz-covered pillows hugged one corner of the otherwise empty room.

He remembered a time when this room had been bursting with furniture. A bassinet, crib, change table, and chest of drawers all painted in vibrant colors, had barely fit within the meager four walls. Posters of smiling clowns and purring kittens had decked the walls, and a giant teddy bear had peeked out from his spot behind the door. All of that had filled the room with a sense of purpose, and their hearts with a sense of hope. But those things had long ago been relegated to the depths of the basement, and eventually sold off to the highest fertile bidder. Only the parade of grinning, yellow ducks that marched around the room on a strip of wallpaper border remained to testify to the loss of their dreams of a house that echoed with the laughter of a half dozen children.

He settled Sloan on the daybed and pulled up the quilt. He tucked him in like a child, smiling as he recalled doing the same thing for his son...oh, about a million times or so. And then he thought how much he would miss it when David got too old to get a goodnight kiss from his old man every night.

David . God, how he loved that boy. Carolyn often referred to their son as their surprise gift from God. They needed to be thankful for the favors they had been granted, rather than dwelling on the things they had been denied. He was a treasure to be cherished. Their miracle baby.

Well, David was certainly a miracle, but not the miracle that Carolyn believed him to be. In a private meeting with the fertility specialist Troy had been given the results of his tests and he'd been told, point blank, that his sperm count was low. Very low. So low that even with "washing" and "concentrating" techniques, the chances of conceiving a child had been negligible. Of course they'd attempt it, but Troy needed to know the odds and make his decision accordingly. And so he had.

He'd decided that Carolyn's desire for children, paired with her strict Catholic upbringing, might just mean the end of their happily-ever-after. And so, with Perry's help and his father's money he'd made sure it happened. They'd lined a few palms and chosen a suitable donor-one who resembled Troy physically and wished to remain anonymous.

Carolyn would never know that the child she carried had been fathered by another. She had gotten the only thing she'd ever really wanted in life, and still her Catholic conscience could remain clear. They had a child, and Troy kept his family and his life intact. It had been the best decision at the time-the only decision. But it had tied him to his brother and father in ways he'd never anticipated.

Troy loved and cherished his son, wouldn't trade him for a thousand cuddly babies in golden cradles. But, ironically, David's very existence burdened Troy and had the potential to shatter his entire world.

Sloan muttered something in his sleep and Troy wondered if he, too, had lost his soul somewhere along the way. What made a man abandon the home and the people he loved? And what made him lie about things no sane man would ever lie about?

Considering the way Sloan had treated him, by all rights he should have come to hate Sloan years ago. But he'd never been able to bring himself to that point, and he still couldn't. People shook their heads with wonder, saying that Troy had let Sloan walk all over him, but they couldn't possibly understand. After all, how could he presume to judge his friend? Especially when he had his own set of sins to account for. Sloan may have disappointed him, but had he not told his own lies, and made his own omissions?

In a strange way he had taken a comfort in Sloan's fall from grace. It meant Troy wasn't alone in purgatory.

Now, looking down at the snoring, slobbering face of a man that Troy had known as long as he had known his own name, he knew he would do whatever he had to do to protect his friend. And his family.

Maybe the truth didn't really matter. Maybe forgiveness was the key. And maybe, just maybe, Sloan would do the same for him someday.

Troy just hoped he would never have to find out.

Chapter Fifteen.

Franki's eyelids drooped, but she determinedly forced them open and trained them on her patient. His eyes remained closed, the lids so pale as to be almost translucent. A fine spattering of freckles peppered his nose. They had been virtually invisible before beneath his California tan, but now even the kiss of the sun couldn't seem to camouflage his pallid complexion or the angry eggplant colored bruise over his eye.

She touched his cheek and felt its warmth. Small comfort, but she would take what she could get. At least they had moved him out of ICU. The private room was hardly The Plaza, but at least it was quiet and it meant that she was left alone with him occasionally. She was thankful for the nurses' reassuring presence, but still relished the brief reprieves from their watchful eyes.

Unfortunately, however, now was not one of those times. One of the duty-shoe brigade had come in a few minutes ago to check his vitals, and she seemed loath to leave. Franki tried to ignore her as she bustled about the room.

She tucked her legs up underneath her on the squeaky vinyl chair, and settled in to wait. She concentrated on the steady bleep of the heart monitor, but rather than keep her awake, the steady rhythm, coupled with her state of semi-exhaustion began to lull her to sleep.

But just as her eyelids began to droop, Craig stirred and she snapped to attention. "Craig?"

She glanced at the nurse but the woman just shook her head. "It doesn't mean anything. Don't get your hopes up."

Franki's heart sank back to her toes and she slouched back into her chair. Her eyes were just beginning to droop again when she felt a soft tap on her shoulder.

She looked up into the face of the floor receptionist, a girl so young and bright it hurt Franki's tired eyes just to look at her.

"Mmm?" she mumbled.

"There's someone out in the hall who would like to see you," whispered the girl.

Franki unfolded her legs and planted her bare feet on the floor. "Really? Who is it?"

"He says he's your brother."

The thickness of the ice that instantly coated Franki's heart rivaled the depth of the polar ice caps. "I don't want to see him." The girl's mouth set in a grim line. "I really wish you would. He begged me to beg you to come out and..." She pursed her lips again. "And he looked like he might cry. I really don't wanna see that."

Franki tapped a finger on her leg and glanced back at Craig.

"Don't worry," said the nurse with a smile. "He'll still be here when you get back."

Franki didn't appreciate the humor, but she supposed that was true enough. Besides, maybe she needed to stretch her legs and loose a little bit of the tension that had built up over the last few hours. And there was no one better to loose it on.

She stood and tugged her shorts down to cover a measly bit of thigh. "All right. Lead the way."

"He's just outside," said the girl as she led Franki toward the door. She stopped with a hand on the pull. "You can't miss him."