Verity were laughable at this point. It hadn’t taken long for him to get in deep—he was in way over his head—and unfortunately, after last night, he had zero interest in getting back out. His body was on fire for her. His mind couldn’t set her aside for more than a moment. His heart raced when he thought of spending time alone with her. The only direction he wanted to move, where Verity Gwynn was concerned, was forward.
And yet their discussion last night had added a whole new level of challenge to the possibility of a relationship between them. He and Verity had important things in common that she didn’t know about yet, but the way they handled those similarities was wildly different. So different, in fact, he had purposely kept certain vital particulars about his life to himself after she’d gotten upset with him about Ryan and group homes. And now, in the bright light of day, he wasn’t certain he’d made the right choice. He didn’t ever want her to think that he was deceiving her by omission. But the reality was that the situation was fucking delicate, and he didn’t want to fuck it up.
With almost no cars on the road this early, he had an easy twenty-minute drive north to Norcross. He slipped his access card into the card reader at the entrance to Bonnie’s Place and watched the black gate slowly slide open.
He entered the gated community, as he had a hundred times before, driving past two ten-unit condo complexes on either side of the landscaped road, all freshly painted a subtle gray with bright white trim and fronted by manicured lawns. Next, on his left, was the swimming pool and community center, with a wide wraparound porch, decorated with hanging baskets of hot-pink geraniums, and across the road from that, on his right, was the Laundromat, café, and sundries store. Turning right, onto Wellness Way, he passed two more ten-unit condo complexes on either side of the road, circled a roundabout with a bubbling fountain, and turned right again, onto Bravery Boulevard.
Pulling up in front of complex F (Is For “Friendship”), he cut the engine and looked up at the tidy building that Melody, who’d been born with Down syndrome, had called home since six months before her mother passed away from cancer.
Bonnie’s Place was exactly the sort of safe, caring, modern community that Verity had sworn last night didn’t exist.
It was a gated village for developmentally disabled adults, housing eighty residents in eight condo complexes that were staffed by a twenty-four-hour CM, or coach and mentor. It was Melody’s p.m. CM, Dawn, who had called Colt to tell him about Melody’s seizure. It was also Dawn who’d alerted the on-call doctor and seen to her care when her legal guardian, Colt, was nowhere to be found.
He checked his watch. It was ten of seven, so he hustled over to the basement apartment that the CMs shared and rang the bell. After a moment, Francisco, the on-duty CM, answered, offering Colt a wide smile.
“Hey, man!” he said, reaching out his hand, which was covered with the same sort of tribal tattoos that Colt favored.
Colt shook it, nodding at his Hawaiian friend, who’d been a CM at Bonnie’s Place since Mel had arrived, shortly after her eighteenth birthday. “How’s she doing?”
“Just checked the monitor. She’s still asleep.”
“Dawn left at five?”
Francisco nodded. “Yeah.”
“I owe her flowers. And chocolates. And my firstborn.”
“Nah,” said Francisco as Colton followed him through the apartment to the stairs that led to level one and two of the condo building. “She knew you felt bad.”
There were a total of four regular CMs—Dawn, Francisco, Brooke, and Lamont—who staffed Mel’s unit, providing direction and assistance for all manner of day-to-day needs, including personal grooming, health and safety, communication and socialization, and home management skills, such as meal preparation and home maintenance. The CMs made sure that the residents were on time for the shuttle that took them to their jobs in the local community, and stayed in constant communication with both their employers and parents or guardians.
Although the residents of Bonnie’s Place lived in their own apartments, with their own bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen, it also adopted a modified group home approach in that a CM was always available in the same building and regularly checked up on the residents. Aunt Jane had approved the installation of three video monitors in Melody’s apartment so that she could be monitored for seizures.
Independence with