"Man, that s.h.i.t looks hard. I can't even imagine."

Marcus smiled faintly. He wasn't worried. He wanted the challenge. Wanted to meet it and exceed it.

The guy ripped open the bag with a loud pop and stuffed a chip in his mouth, crunching loudly, like he was showing off how well his teeth worked. "My goal is to never need college," he said, then c.o.c.ked his head like he was studying him. "See you later," he finally said, then walked to the door and stopped to add, "Marcus."

A chill swept through him as the bell jingled and the guy left.

How the h.e.l.l did he know his name?

He glanced down at his work shirt and laughed at himself. His nametag was on. "Duh," he said, and he returned to his textbook.

Colin's bike pounded against the b.u.mpy trail, vibrations thrumming in his bones. He leaned into the curve, relentlessly focusing on the single track beneath the wheel and the 180-degree turn ahead of him on the descent.

Whipping past the switchback, he stomped the pedals, chasing speed, chasing adrenaline, and finding it on the hills of Red Rock Canyon with his mountain bike. Dirt churned up beneath him as he attacked the toughest trail, leaving the latest twists and turns in the never-ending saga of their mother in a swirl of dust.

When he reached the bottom, his heart hammered mercilessly, but he'd beaten his brother.

Michael had determination on his side, but Colin possessed that too, along with a more potent dose of fearlessness. Sometimes fearless meant you were faster on a downhill. Tonight, with the sun sinking low on the horizon, the time on the bike was therapy-it was necessary to shed the frustrations he felt over Elle, but also the guilt he still harbored over his mistakes as a kid. Riding a rocky downhill required extreme concentration, and the rattle and hum of the wheels on the ground had forced everything else from his brain, narrowing his focus to only the bike and the trail, and besting his brother.

Michael rolled up next to him, stopping his bike.

"Streak's still intact," Colin said, his breath coming fast as he wheeled to the water fountain at the base of the hill. "I continue to reign supreme on two wheels."

"Watch it. You're lucky I still ride with you," Michael teased, as he unsnapped his helmet.

After a drink of water, Colin let the therapy continue, this time with words. Because he wasn't done. The silt on the riverbed of the past had been well and truly stirred up tonight. "Michael," he said, stripping away the macho bravado. "I still feel like s.h.i.t for being friends with those guys."

His brother got off his bike, resting his palm on the seat. "You're not responsible. Your friendship played no role in the murder."

"But what if I hadn't been friends with Paul? What if I'd never known them? Would things be different?" he asked, letting the question hang in the air.

Michael dropped a hand to Colin's shoulder. "Forget the 'what if.' Focus on the real. And that's this: she didn't find Stefano through you," he said, his voice firm and clear. "She found Stefano on her own. She found those others on her own. h.e.l.l, for all we know she might have found them through her lover. The one thing I know for certain is she didn't find them through you being buddies with T.J's little bro when you were twelve and thirteen. That is not how it happened. But even if it had, for the sake of argument, let me ask you this. Who arranged for the murder?"

"She did," he said softly.

"Who hired Stefano?"

"She did." His voice picked up volume.

"Who planned a murder?"

"She did." His tone was strong and certain now.

"Exactly," Michael said, bending to the water fountain and gulping up a stream. As he rose, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

"But I've made the same mistakes she made," Colin said quietly, guilt st.i.tched into his voice, into his G.o.dd.a.m.n heart and soul. Most days, he didn't beat himself up. But some days, he did. Some days he was consumed with the emotion.

Michael raised a finger and pointed it at Colin. "You didn't do what she did. You made mistakes that are f.u.c.king forgivable. You made mistakes that hurt yourself. You made mistakes that a human being makes. You did not kill a man. You are not like her."

Colin pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose and exhaled, visualizing letting go of all this guilt.

Soon, soon, he had to say good-bye to it.

"Speaking of what ifs, have you ever heard from your 'what if' girl?" Colin asked as they loaded their bikes on the roof rack a few minutes later.

Michael shook his head. "Not lately. That's why she's a 'what if' girl."

As they left, Colin asked himself if he'd be happy letting Elle become a 'what if' girl.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Big dots of primary-colored light swirled in a speed race across the slick hardwood floors, as the music of the B-52s pulsed throughout the rink.

"All right, my crazy skaters, I want to see how excited you get when you go to the looooooooove shack." The directive came from Elle's sister Camille. Mic at her mouth, she worked up the crowds at the Skyway Roller Rink, where she was the manager.

A flurry of teens, sprinkled with a few moms and the regular crew of older skaters who still rocked out on the quads nearly every night, motored around the oval, picking up the pace to the popular skating tune. The song was an appropriate number for the conversation Elle needed to have with her little sister, considering Elle and Colin were having a "Love Shack" kind of relationship.

The getaway kind. The sneak-off-and-get together kind.

Or was it more accurate to say they'd had that kind?

That was why she was here: to figure out if she needed to cut things off with him. But she flinched from the mere thought of ending the sweetest thing she'd had in ages-their secret, s.e.xy, wonderful affair.

"That's right!" Camille shouted. "Skate like there's glitter on the highway!"

Camille held up a finger and mouthed one more minute. As Elle waited for the upbeat song to end, she dropped her head to her hand, Marcus's confession echoing in her mind. There was no way she could tell Colin about his brother. That would be wrong. It wasn't her place. But she felt awful knowing this news was barreling toward him and that any day he'd learn he had a long-lost brother.

There was something so very soapy about it, as if she could be reading the crib notes to a storyline on As the World Turns.

The character of the mother becomes pregnant before the murder of her husband. The mother hides her pregnancy during what turns out to be a speedy trial. She goes to jail six months pregnant. No one in her family knows about the baby in her belly. The only one the wiser-besides the medical staff at the correctional facility-is her lover on the outside. The lover whose hands were clean of the crime.

Elle shuddered as her sister encouraged the crowd to "bang, bang, bang on the door."

Then the half-brother is born in prison and handed over to his father, who moves far, far away from Vegas with his baby son. He's not required to tell a soul. There are no prison rules, nor federal ones, requiring a parent to disclose to half-siblings that they have a new little brother.

The father meets a new woman in San Diego, falls in love with her, fathers more children, and returns to Vegas a few years ago with his oddly blended family.

Elle had started to replay the rest of the story when the song ended and Camille introduced an MC Hammer tune then set down her mic. She nodded to the little gate at the edge of her DJ booth. Elle rose and followed Camille to the skate racks as she began straightening pairs of rental skates. Elle joined in, knowing the routine well from having helped out here before.

"So what's the story? Time to spill," Camille said in her no-nonsense tone as she tucked some laces into a pair of skates.

"The problem is, I can't even tell you what the problem is," Elle said, frustration thick in her voice as she adjusted the wheels on another pair.

Camille arched an eyebrow and stared at Elle with her deep brown eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just what I said. I'm sworn to secrecy."

"Well, unswear yourself, girl, so I can help out," Camille said, nudging Elle with an elbow. "Or do I need to tickle it out of you, like when we were kids?"

Elle stepped away and held up her hands in surrender. "Not the tickle! Anything but the tickle."

"Fine. I won't torture you like that. But tell me what's on your mind. I have ten minutes of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice queued up before I need to get back there, and I want to help you," she said as she worked her way down a row. Camille's dark hair was twisted into a looped-over ponytail, and she wore jeans and a T-shirt. She'd been managing this rink since after college. Both sisters had been avid skaters growing up, and Camille loved music and happy places, as she liked to say, so the job fit her perfectly. She'd been the one to encourage Elle to try out for the Fishnet Brigade a few years ago. Perfect therapy to deal with your crazy-a.s.s baby daddy, she'd said. Camille had never been fond of Sam, and with good reason.

Elle sighed and tried to figure out how to begin to ask for the advice she couldn't even truly ask for. "So there's this guy..."

"Ah, the plot thickens."

"And I like him."

"Oooh. It's even thicker."

"But it's not serious."

"Because of you or him?"

Elle stopped unknotting a gnarled lace to consider the question. Did Colin want to be serious with her? From time to time, he'd seemed to. But he never pushed her. He understood her boundaries. "Both of us are fine with the way it is," she answered before she had time to delve any deeper into why she'd been experiencing more moments when she wanted to shed the boundaries and erase the lines between them. To dive in full speed ahead, d.a.m.n the consequences. "But the thing is, I learned something about him and his family that he doesn't know."

"Oh, now the plot is mola.s.ses thick," Camille said, her eyes glittery with excitement from the prospect of a juicy tale.

"And I can't divulge what I know because of confidentiality guidelines as a social worker, and it's kind of a big thing, so I just have to wait and see if this other person will divulge it to him. And ugh, Camille, I just feel like a mess in here," she said, grabbing her belly. "I'm all twisted and turned, and I feel like I'm lying to him, but I'm not. I just can't tell him. It's not my secret to tell."

Camille's expression turned serious and she stepped away from the row of skates. She parked her hands on Elle's shoulders. "You can't solve every problem. If this is something you can't do anything about, you need to try not to let it eat away at you. You worry too much, and you take on the weight of everything. And I get it. You've had some tough s.h.i.t to deal with yourself."

"But do I keep seeing him while knowing this secret and not being able to say it?"

"Do you want to see him?"

Elle nodded. Easiest question of the night.

"If your hands are tied, your hands are tied. You can't untie them, just like you couldn't make Sam a better dad," she said, reminding Elle of how hard she'd tried to fix the things beyond fixing. "Lord knows, if you're having a nice time with this new guy, you deserve it. Let go of the things you can't control." Camille snapped her fingers. "That reminds me of a song. Lace up!"

Elle grabbed a pair of skates, tied them quickly, and rolled over to the rink, eagerly antic.i.p.ating her sister's musical choice for her life.

Camille returned to her perch at the mic. "Boys and girls, men and women of all ages. I need to take a break from Vanilla Ice because every now and then we must heed the advice of the one and only Ice Queen, Elsa."

Elle cracked up over her sister's choice. Only Camille could find inspiration in the insanely popular Disney song that blared through the rink. Maybe the verses of "Let It Go" weren't entirely on point where Elle's problem was concerned, but the chorus and the final few lines gave her something else she needed.

A reminder that this battle wasn't hers to pick and choose. It wasn't hers to fight or not fight. All she could do was stand on the sidelines.

Let the storm rage on.

Whatever was brewing in Colin's life wasn't Elle's storm. It would rage on of its own power, whether or not she saw the man again.

Later that night, Alex grabbed an extra composition notebook from the school supplies aisle at Target and showed it to Elle. "For planning."

"Always good to plan for school."

He shook his head. "Nope. This one is for State of Decay. I came up with a new strategy today, and I want to write it down and test it out, step by step."

She shook her head, bemused. "Look, sweetie. I'm glad you like the game, but your freshman year of high school starts in about a week, and you do need to start focusing on schoolwork. Maybe we should get you a history review book, and you can work on how World War I began instead of your zombie attack plan."

"Don't worry. It was the a.s.sa.s.sination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and I'll still bring home straight As," he said, flashing her a toothy smile. He wasn't exactly a straight-A student, but he earned enough of them that she didn't stress much about his grades.

She snagged the notebook from him and dangled it like an offering. "Tell you what, mister. I won't worry about your strategy plans, if you agree to review history facts like that one every day for the next week-before you spend any time on your new project."

He held out his hand to shake. "Deal."

She dropped the notebook into the cart. "And now, we are off to find a history review book."

He shot her a look like she was crazy.

"What? You just said you'd study up on history facts?"

"I will. But seriously, Mom. A book? Maybe an app with history quizzes or something instead?"

She held up a hand, but gave in. "Fine. But track it down by tomorrow, and show it to me."

He pumped a fist in victory. "Awesome. And listen, I came up with a whole new approach to State of Decay," he said, his voice rising in excitement as she rolled the cart to the highlighters. "That guy at the center, Colin, told me to."

She stopped immediately and tilted her head. "He did?" she asked, unsure what to make of Colin's chat with her son. True, the two had talked before. But still, she was d.a.m.n curious what they had chatted about.

"He said you just devise a strategy and follow it," he said, sweeping one hand across the other and pointing forward, like a general launching into battle. "But don't be afraid to change if it's not working."

As he dropped a yellow highlighter onto their pile of supplies, she had her answer. Funny that it came from Colin through her son.

Time for her to change her approach.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.