Brody (22 page)

“It’s a reunion,” came a voice and I fell back into Brody.

An arm came around my sister, pale and laced with thick scraggly hair. That dark hair matched the scruff on his chin and the messy mass he had hallowed over his head. Nathan looked like he’d stepped right out of prison yesterday, far from the man he was before he went in.

Far from the illusion.

He had about a decade on my sister’s twenty-eight years. He had a maturity that should have sent off alarm bells for me from the jump, but I let him worm his way in. I let him because I think I needed something positive in my life, for my family, too, and he knew that. He
preyed
on that.

He preyed on me.

He got closer, tugging my sister toward him, and I drew into Brody. He glanced down at me, then passed a look over to Nathan. I felt a hand come down on me then, over my hip and pulling in. Brody left no space between us, and even tugged on Aiden’s backpack a bit, closing any gaps left between any of us. That got Nathan’s attention, boy did it. He grinned a bit, flicking something out of his teeth and onto the floor.

I cringed.

“I see you got yourself another,” he said, smirking a bit. “Tell me, man. Did she get you with that little cunt, too?”

The very words caused Brody to shift behind me, as well as causing the thick bile to creep up my throat.

Nathan appraised me after that, hard, and I closed my eyes away, feeling every moment as if touched, caressed.

You can’t let him get in your head. You can’t. Not anymore.

I opened my eyes, fighting back. I wasn’t that young girl anymore and he wouldn’t make me feel that way again.

“Because let me tell you something,” he continued, a weird twinkle in his eyes. “She ain’t worth it.”

If not for me and Aiden as a barrier I know Brody would have moved. I felt the impact behind me and I squeezed his hand. I squeezed and he stayed put. He told me he wouldn’t fight and I held his hand so he wouldn’t. He exchanged a glance with me and though, unheated, I could feel the questions there.

I looked away so he wouldn’t seek them from me anymore, but couldn’t escape Elena. She stared at me, so hard it hurt, and I knew she hadn’t missed what Nathan said no matter how high. It had been the reason for so many issues between us.

It had been the reason neither one of us spoke to the other anymore.

Smiling like he knew he got to all of us, Nathan kissed the top of my sister’s head, and the pull he did to do so, shoved her wounded arm into his side.

The pain made her entire body shudder.

My fingers dug into my side, doing all I could to keep from reaching out and grabbing her. I pleaded to her with my eyes. “Elena,” I chewed on my lip. “Please. You don’t have to stay. We can go.”

“Go where?” The very notion made Nathan laugh, but it came out all phlegmy, raspy. He sniffed, and I assumed, he had his fair share of drugs, too. He wrapped his arms around Elena, possessive in their nature. He lifted his eyes to us. “Where’s the fire?”

“Alexa?” It was Brody who spoke behind me, an urgency in his voice. His hand braced Aiden’s bag, and the next step, I knew he’d be backing us out.

With slow steps, he started to, and maybe that’s when Elena finally knew what was happening. Shimmying, she moved from within Nathan’s grasp and I think he let go only because of sheer surprise. She fled toward us and a hope bubbled up inside me. She was coming. She was leaving him and coming with us, but the light inside snuffed so quickly. She started tugging on Aiden’s bag, yelling things like, “You’re not taking my baby,” and “And he’s not coming with you.”

The struggle made Aiden cry, the tears falling down his cheeks. He kept saying he wanted to go with me and he kept
screaming
for her to come with us. And me? I was caught up in the fray, one hand holding my nephew to me while the other tried to hold on to a piece of Elena, too. Despite myself, what she did to me and made me feel in the past, I couldn’t let her go.

Nathan rolled his eyes. “Bitch,” he snapped my way. “Just let the boy fuckin’ go with his mama.”

He made lazy steps my way, but stopped so abruptly it got all of our attention. His hands lifted then, backing away, and a look behind me told me why.

Brody.

He pulled something out I hadn’t seen in so many days, but this time the gun didn’t scare me. I knew it was there to protect me and my family.

Elena gasped, holding on to Aiden, but my nephew didn’t direct any fear that way. I think because he understood the protection, too.

The gun was pointed at Nathan after all.

Understanding that, Nathan shook his head, his expression untelling. “Stay cool, my friend. It ain’t gotta be this way.”

Brody’s eyes narrowed into slits. “I’m not your friend and you need to go in the kitchen.”

Whatever friendly banter Nathan was trying to give him was replaced with anger. He took a step back and Brody matched it, going around us. He tilted his head back to me, but not his eyes. “Take them to the truck,” he said, but I put my hand on his back.

“Not without you.”

His eyes nearly closed at my words. Like they weren’t what he wanted to hear. Like they frustrated him. He took more steps and Nathan must have known to keep backing up with each one. Together, we all ended up in the kitchen, stepping over a dark brown liquid on the floor. A bottle of whiskey and a tumbler sat the kitchen counter not far by and the thought crossed my mind that he sent my sister into the kitchen to get him a drink. I wouldn’t put it past him.

Nathan backed out onto the open balcony. He kept his hands up the entire time, even while Brody slid the glass door closed and locked him in.

“It won’t hold him for long,” he said, but he didn’t lower the gun. He held it there and I had a feeling if he pulled the trigger it would hit Nathan point blank between the eyes.

It was time to go now.

Moving, I tugged at Aiden. He unfroze easy, but Elena, not so much. She stared at Nathan, shaking her head, and I feared she’d stay here. She’d let him out and he would come after us. Her son started to move though and gratefully, whatever invisible tether Nathan had severed with the steps. Together, they turned their back on Nathan and he was left there, outside with his hands raised.

Brody and I were the last to leave and I didn’t fail to notice what Nathan did before we left him. Lowering his arms, he lifted a single finger and pointed.

He pointed directly at Brody.

Chapter Twenty-One

Brody

I tapped on the door, my hand rested on it while I waited for it to open. A darkness hovered over the peephole and I didn’t blame her for checking. She should check. She should always check, always.

The door opened quickly and sugar brown eyes cast their glow on me. She’d wrapped me up quickly, hadn’t she? Even from the beginning. Even from that terrible day I found her.

Alex stared at me, her shirt loose at her shoulders and a towel wrapped around her head. Her soft lily scent filled the air even in the wide abyss of nighttime around me. She also looked worried, her mouth in a frown, and that’s something else I didn’t blame her for.

I pushed my hands into my jean pockets. “Can we talk?” I felt we had a lot to talk about, so many things.

She nodded, then turned widening the motel door of the room next to mine. A mother and child revealed, him at her feet while she braided his hair into thick, perfect rows.

Alex dropped her hand from the door, looking behind her. “I’m gonna talk to Brody for a second.”

Aiden leaned out of his momma’s hands and his worry challenged Alex’s when she opened the door. “Where will you go?”

She smiled at him. “Just outside the door. Right outside.”

He sat back and all the while his momma didn’t react, especially to Alex speaking. Her hands just continued to move, ignoring anything but what she was doing. Aiden’s hand lifted, waving to me.

My eyes couldn’t help crinkling at the kid. He was the one bright spot that managed to come out of this situation today. I lifted my own hand, waving him goodnight before Alex closed the door behind herself. She went to the railings of the second floor, laying her arms on them while I lounged back beside her.

“How are they?” I asked her. Though Aiden seemed all right he couldn’t possibly be and as far as Alex’s sister, she said nothing, absolutely nothing the entire drive here.

Which only amplified my questions for Alex even more.

Alex covered herself like she had so many times in my truck. If a guy didn’t know her, one might mistake her for being cold, but I had been around her long enough to know it was something she did when she was uneasy, nervous. She breathed. “He’s been quiet,” she said. “But I plan on talking to him a little before he goes to sleep. I’m worried. He’s been through so much.”

And she was right about that. I’d only seen a snapshot today and couldn’t imagine. He was a strong kid to even be functioning at all right now, hella strong.

“As far as my sister,” she continued. “She’s not talking to me.”

That also remained consistent, which brought me to what I wanted to talk to her about tonight. I had to admit I put that off until now, late in the evening. I needed time to think. I needed time to formulate the right words without coming across the wrong way. But no matter how long I considered, no matter how long I took, I still couldn’t come to terms with all that happened. Today, I saw a broken woman, one who had no intention of leaving her abuser. I didn’t think she ever had the intention despite what her sister had told me mere days ago.

“You lied to me, Alex,” I came right out with it. “You lied to me about your sister. You said there would be no way she’d stay with him. You said she’d do the right thing this time. I mean,” I paused for a moment, feeling my pulse tick and with it, my heart racing.

Calm down. Breathe.

I opened my eyes. “I feel like we pretty much took her against her will. She only came because we had Aiden.”

“I know.” The word came out whispered, light, and I knew,
she knew
exactly what she did. She knew exactly what would happen today.

“You knew,” I repeated, but not with a question. It had been a statement just as well as she was standing in front of me. I shook my head. “And you thought you’d take him? Just walk away and she’d let you?”

Her eyes closed over the lids, her lips tight. “I don’t know. I… I hoped to get her to come with us.”

She hoped. She
hoped
. I swallowed. “And what of the lie? Why lie to me?” Because that’s what hurt the most. For some reason she felt she had to.

Turning, those first few tears fell from her eyes and it pained me that I was such a big reason they were there. “It didn’t sound like you’d let me go,” she whispered, head down. “If I didn’t.”

She was damn right about that and she now confirmed what I believed that day at the cafe. She was going to go in there and get them. She was going to go in without a plan into a scenario that could have ended so badly.

I knew because I had to have a gun just to get us out of it.

Honestly, I didn’t know what frustrated me more, her complete disregard for the danger of the situation or her lack of concern for herself.

I pushed my hand into my hair, forcing myself to be here and out of the anger of my head. But despite myself, it was so goddamn hard to see through the haze.

If I’d lost her today…

“Things could have turned out so much differently, Alex.”

“I know,” she said, and pushing off the banister, she swallowed. “But it didn’t and I have Aiden. I have him safe and I have Elena.”

But for how long? She physically had her sister, but mentally, I wasn’t so sure. I gestured toward the room. “You can’t keep her here, Alex. And that guy?”

Thoughts of things he’d said sent me to a dark place again, a haze surrounding me I couldn’t easily come out of like I had before.

“Did she get you with that little cunt, too?”

I wanted to
annihilate
him after he said that, the only thing keeping me from doing so was my promise to the woman I loved. And I did love her. I loved her so damn much, but she was keeping things from me, keeping things from me even still.

“Why did that
guy
say what he did about you? About…” My heart raced, the pounding drumming through my head, but I couldn’t stop it this time. I couldn’t calm it.

A pent up breath shuddered through me. “Why did he say that stuff about you? About you and him?”

Because she couldn’t have. She couldn’t have possibly been with… with him. But then, she shrank before me, her eyes doing everything but looking into mine and my hand found her shoulder, my other tipping her chin to look at me.

“What happened?” I asked, making myself. So many things needed answers. So many things didn’t make sense, but I needed to know and she needed to be the one to tell me. I didn’t push Alex. I refused in the past as I didn’t want to pressure her. I always let her come to me, but here, now this was important. This was something I needed from her, but when she stepped back I knew I wouldn’t get it and when she shook her head, it scared me I never would.

Her hands went to her lips and only a few words fell from them.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her head continuing to shake. “I’m sorry, but I…” Tears filled her mouth, tiny streams down her cheeks. They went on forever and flowed freely.

“I can’t,” she finished, and I had no idea what to say to that. I had no idea what to
do
with that or how to even feel. Because after all this time and after everything had been said and done…

She still didn’t trust me.

She removed the towel and her hand pushed through her hair, so beautiful in even the simplest way. That’s why I’d fallen for her. That’s why I loved her.

Pushing my hands into my pockets, I straightened up. I forced myself to sober up.

“What do you need then?” I asked her. “What do you need from me?” The cold I never meant to surface, but damn if I couldn’t fight that in my voice. The tone had been the only way to mask other things, hurt amongst them. Pushing it down, I tipped my chin toward the motel room. “What do you need for them? I’ll help you with wherever you want to go or whatever you want to do.”