Dare to Love by Tara Taylor Quinn Page A

Steve and a couple of the other guys. He’d been on his way to the dining room, but his feet had carried him past the turnoff to the hotel’s restaurant and right on out into the night.
    And once he was out there, he’d kept walking. He hadn’t had to go far—just two miles. Two miles from downtown Columbus and the elite Hetherington Hotel, filth and squalor were the mainstays, hungry children and homeless people were everywhere and hopelessness was a way of life. It was the birthplace of “each man for himself.” It was the neighborhood in which he’d grown up.
    A couple of muscular teenagers watched him as he approached a crumbling street corner. They wore black leather jackets, even on this hot August night. Their heads were shaved, except for the ponytails that hung down their backs. They were leaning against a streetlight that hadn’t lit up the night since before Doug had been born. Their waistbands bulged. Doug knew they were concealing weapons. They watched him approach, checking him over for a possible take.
    He reached down, as casually as he could, and removed his wristband. He approached the corner just as casually, his spine straight, his body ready for action, his heart frozen. He wasn’t afraid. He’d survived the first twenty years of his life here. He knew how.
    Doug raised his hand to flick his hair back out of his eyes as he walked past the punks. He saw them straighten, ready to saunter over, to follow him, to intimidate him before they made their move. Their eyes flashed to the wrist he’d raised as he slid his fingers through his hair, and suddenly Doug was walking past them—alone. The guys were once again leaning against the light post, looking for action someplace else.
    Doug passed an old man humped over on a broken stoop, probably drunk, possibly dead. He walked on. A couple of kids were rooting through a dumpster in the alley behind D’Ambros’s. Doug watched them for a minute, then started walking again.
    He’d come here for a reason. He’d come here to remember not to care. Andrea Parker had disappointed him. A man didn’t get disappointed unless he allowed himself to care. That was another lesson he’d learned long ago—right about the time his mother had left him alone with his old man.
    Doug wanted to make love with Andrea. He wanted her to want it, too. But he didn’t want to care for her, or to want her care. He didn’t want her opinion to matter to him. It couldn’t. He couldn’t get soft. His whole life would be in vain if he got soft. He’d be right back where he’d been twenty-five years before.
    He reached an old brick building with graffiti spray painted all over it. The steps leading up to the building were cracked and broken. An iron post was the only remains of the railing that used to run along them. He stopped and stared, seeing the dim light filtering through cracked windows, and knew that it was not from lamps, but from naked bulbs hanging from ceiling sockets. Nobody here owned lamps. If they had, they’d long since sold them to a second-hand furniture store, or had stolen them so someone else could.
    He heard a baby wail, a young child laugh and a woman yell.
    He sat down on the sidewalk, leaning back against the old building, and let the memories wash over him. A teenage girl left the building, dressed in skintight clothes, walking on impossibly high heels and made up like a clown. Doug watched her saunter past without even noticing him. She had a destination. Doug didn’t want to think about where it was. He knew he could stop her—this time. But he knew that she’d be back out again tomorrow night, or the night after that.
    He felt a pang of regret, and then a sharper one—anger, maybe. And then he shook himself. This was life. He knew it better than most. It had quit bothering him long before he’d even known for sure where girls like that were