Brody (30 page)

“What kind of business is it?” I asked casually instead. Because this was the first time he’d mentioned this. It’s not like we’d told each other everything, but the reason why he didn’t concerned me. Mostly because the last time I’d heard of this business with his family. He’d been arguing about it with his brother. Though, I guess he didn’t know that I knew that as I’d overhead the exchange.

Placing the to-go containers to the side, I fell back and wrapped myself in his arms.

His hands gripped my biceps, his breath a warm constant sound near my ear. He squeezed, kissing my shoulder. “A furniture business. My pop designs things. He’s so great at that stuff.”

His voice sounded far away and I looked up. When I did, he was smiling a little.

His finger brushed restlessly against my arm. “I remember one year,” he said, looking down at me. “Money was shit. Mom had just left a year prior and I’d been at my third school at that point. We moved a lot while Pop looked for jobs and Christmas ended up being in this crap town. The neighborhood was
rough
, but it was all my old man could afford. None of us thought we’d be getting presents that year. Things had just been too hard. Money too tight and though, we knew we’d be coming back to Texas to celebrate the holiday with Gram and the rest of our family later, we never thought the day would be anything special. Pop just didn’t have the funds or the means to do it.”

“What happened?” I asked him liking this story for some reason. It was his voice I think. He was talking about something sad, but his voice wasn’t. It was content, peaceful.

He grinned a little. “A few weeks prior, he woke us up one day out of the blue. Like literally woke our butts up and told us to get in the truck. Pop can be kind of gruff so we all thought our asses were in trouble.”

I laughed a bit as he did.

His arms tightened around me. “And we drove. We drove forever. We ended up going to these woods. We got out and all this brush was around, wood for miles. Taking us over, Colton’s hand in his, as he was the littlest, Pop told us to pick something out. He told us to pick any piece of wood and when he did, he told us to pretend.

“‘Pretend that it’s anything you want,’” he paused, deepening his voice. He made it thick. He made it rough with his accent. He smiled. “We asked him what he meant by anything and he said it again. ‘Pretend it’s anything you want. Pretend it’s any toy you want.’ And so we did. I chose a spaceship and made the sounds and everything. My brothers being fools, they followed my lead and played. We played in the woods with pieces of wood. We made shooting sounds, guns, lasers, and even did some car noises. That’s what Colt chose, a car. It was the best day, and on Christmas? We found those same presents under the tree. Except they were real this time. Pop made them real. They were all wood and wrapped in newspaper and like in the woods, we played for hours. Hours.”

He looked at me after he finished and I had seen that contentment over his face before. He wore it while touring his Gram’s ranch. He wore it every day there.

“So when the idea came about for a business, Pop naturally went that way,” he continued. “Griffin, the one that plays basketball professionally, had been doing well in his starting season and offered to back it. Just a small loan to get things started. It took some nudging at first, but Pop eventually gave in. He hated working under someone else and then there was the stress on him.”

“Stress?”

His eyes went away for some reason after that. He laid his hand on his arm. “Um, yeah. He had a heart attack. It was last year. I guess working in construction was too much.”

The words literally chilled me to the bone. I couldn’t help it, all things considered, all things considering
him
and his own heart condition.

He moved on quickly. “But, uh, yeah. That’s what the party is for, the business. The ribbon cutting makes things official, but they’ve been already operating with private orders. I guess lots of folks need furniture in Miami. My brother has lots of connections since moving there.”

That all sounded so great for them, but I still had to wonder something. So many things had me wondering really.

Brody reached across me, taking a drink of his beer, and I watched him. Whatever contentment he had before, seemed to have evaporated and was replaced with thought. They moved over his face like an endless sea.

I dared to figure out why.

“Will you be taking some time off?” I asked him. “You know, to help with the opening?”

His eyes narrowed like he wondered why I asked. “No, they got everything covered. Hayden, my older brother, he’s taking care of the marketing and some other logistics on the business side. He has some schooling and Pop of course, has the designs going. He’s even using some of my younger brother’s stuff. Colton’s an art major at Texas State.”

He smirked with that, grinning. “I guess if his basketball career doesn’t turn out, he has something to fall back on. He’s actually pretty talented and Griffin, he’s got all the lawyers going and all that legal stuff. Pop has got this thing pretty solid.”

But where did he fit into all this? He said this was family business, but he didn’t really seem to be a part of it. And then there was that argument, the one with his brother. I never got to meet Hayden that day. He’d already left before I came inside and notified Brody about Elena, but I did see him peel out, his face flushed in his truck. That day, Brody said he had other interests and didn’t want to be a part of the business because of them. But he couldn’t have meant truck driving, could he have? Did being on the road really make him that happy? I didn’t know, but one thing I did know was being around family, being home certainly
did
make him happy and genuinely so.

“Are you a part of the business?” I asked, and though I wanted to hold my tongue. I couldn’t. I passed it off with a shrug. “It’s called
Chandler & Sons
, right? Aren’t you a son?”

His head moved within that candlelight spread around the room. His lashes flickered down and his fingers tapped the beer bottle. “They asked, but it’s not really my thing.”

“Why?”

He faced me, his lips turned down. He grabbed my hand, the pads of his fingers drawing invisible designs over the back of it.

“You know why, Alexa,” he suddenly said, but I didn’t, not really. My first thought was that it could be his concerns over his heart, but that couldn’t be it. His dad designed. His younger brother did, too, and the eldest did marketing and other things. The one in Miami of course financed, but none of these tasks were physical things. None of these jobs would hurt him or be something he’d have to worry about down the line for his health.

I put my hand there, right over his chest. “You don’t have to do anything physical. Doesn’t your dad have people that make all these designs for him?”

He considered that, his lashes flickering. “But that’s the thing, I was that guy. The physical? The labor? That’s what I did. I don’t do designing. I didn’t go to school. Hell, even Pop did some trade school.” His lips went tight, his brow knitted. Breathing, he gazed up and put his hand over mine. “I don’t do anything else but what I used to do and I don’t want them to have to figure something out for me, to put me somewhere like some kind of special case.”

It hurt my heart that he
believed
that. I shook my head. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be that way. They know you’re limited to what you can do. They’d understand.”

His eyes left mine after the words, his lips tight again. I could feel his frustration and for some reason and I… I didn’t understand.

Placing his drink down, he turned me by my knees, making me face him. His hands smoothed down to cup my hips and his mouth landed softly on my forehead. He breathed me in and I shuddered, holding his shirt to do the same.

His lips brushed my eyebrow. “You’re the only one I’ve told,” he admitted, pulling back. Those eyes softened in the corners, his hand coming up to hold my cheek. “I can’t tell them. I can’t have them worrying. You didn’t see them last year, Alexa. After my pop…”

Reaching up, I braced his cheeks. This made him keep his eye contact when he looked on the verge of taking it away.

He squeezed my wrists. “It shattered my family
for weeks
while he recovered and I can’t do that to them.”

It all made sense now. Why he pushed himself so hard at the ranch and why his Gram let him do so. He was pretending. He was pretending everything was okay for their sake.

My mouth came forward to close over his jaw and his hands, so strong, moved down to my shoulders.

“But how do you think they’d feel if something happened to you,” I asked, raising my head. “If you went down, if you got hurt, and they never knew. If it hit them out of the blue and they never got a chance to understand the reason why or were never given any opportunity to help.”

“That’s the thing. They can’t help. They can only worry and that doesn’t help anyone.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Support, Brody, is good for the soul. It’s just as strong as anything else you could do to take care of yourself. And that healing goes both ways, your family included.”

He had nothing to say to that, his gaze following the light in one of the flickering candles. His arm went around my shoulder and I came into his lap, holding him tight, holding him so long while he held me.

“You should tell your family,” I told him. “Because not doing so is keeping you away from them and not just with the business.”

“I…” he started, bringing his hand down my back. His mouth warmed the top of my head. “I’d be of no use to them.”

I closed my eyes, that hurting me so much. He did have use. He’d always have use. He was the most beautiful person I had ever met and good people like that? They’d always have their place in the world.

Because the world needed them.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Brody

I tossed and turned despite her being with me tonight. I usually didn’t do that. Not unless I was on the road and ticking down the countless hours. Whenever I was back home, in bed with my arms around her, I never had a problem finding sleep. Alex allowed me to do that. I had a place of peace with her, but tonight I couldn’t find that.

Sitting up, I pulled my feet over the side of my bed. I carried her there about halfway through the night. Usually, we slept in separate bedrooms seeing as how her nephew lived here as well, but since Aiden had a sleepover tonight, I took his aunt right here. We’d both fallen asleep on the floor and I didn’t want her back hurting in the morning. She had to teach a couple classes over the weekend and didn’t need to be aching or anything. I found my pants on the chair next to the bed and rooted through some other clothes scattered about on the floor. I wasn’t the cleanest person sometimes, but Alex had been helping me with that. I picked up a shirt and a warm hand touched my back as I was pulling it on.

Smiling, I turned around and pressed a kiss to that gorgeous, sleepy mouth. When I pulled away, her eyes were partially closed.

“You okay?” she asked opening her eyes a little more, and when she saw me, she frowned her full lips. “Where are you going?”

“Just for a drive,” I said, rubbing a hand down her shoulder. I figured getting behind the wheel would be the quickest way to get my eyes heavy. I used that tactic every day. “I’m having a hard time sleeping. I figured it would help.”

“Oh.” She made to get up, but I squeezed her shoulder. That mouth turned down again. “I can come.”

But I was already tucking her back in and bringing the blankets back around her. I kissed her forehead. “I won’t be gone long. You
can
sleep, so don’t waste it, okay?”

That made her smile a little, the humor in my voice, I assumed. She lay back, though, it looked like she didn’t want to and stayed put, letting me go. I told her I had my phone before I left. I always did and always kept it on for her. She had her sister’s phone of course, but didn’t feel comfortable using it. She didn’t want to keep it busy until she called, which was understandable. That didn’t mean she couldn’t have her own phone though, and the day we got one for her had been the happiest day. It kept me from worrying about her as much while I was forced to be away from her.

I tried not to think about my job as I got behind the wheel and started in on that drive. I pulled down the street, annoyed already by the bright lights of a tailgate. Folks were up at all hours out here. The people in the street took their time getting out on the road and once clear, I didn’t waste the opportunity. My foot hit the gas and I shook my head, heading down the block.

The encounter amped me up. The exact
opposite
of what this drive was supposed to do and I cursed under my breath, maneuvering out of my childhood neighborhood. Some real characters lived around here and I’d like to get out eventually and get Alex and Aiden out with me, of course. We could think about getting a house, but I was just gone so much. I wouldn’t be around to enjoy it with them, though, that would never stop me from getting one for them.

I cursed again, a never-ending sea of street lamps and neighborhood road surrounding me. Words filtered through my head and I realized why I was so wired. They were Alex’s words. They were her concern and I didn’t blame her. I had my own for a while about the decisions I made in my life and every day, I questioned them more and more. As far as tonight, the woman in my life made me see a little bit more why. She put it all out there. She made me face it, which was something I wouldn’t do before. I’d been an all-star lately at not addressing certain aspects of my life, my family and myself included.

Tapping the wheel with my fist, I turned it. I cruised a bit and realized the area was familiar to me. How at first, I didn’t know, but then I made it down a long road with large homes and wide views of the mountains. The area reminded me of Gram’s except nearer to the city. The houses weren’t stacked on top of each other and made the neighborhood a part of the vast land surrounding it. It was country meets city, which I suppose was why he chose it, my pop. He had both of his trucks parked in the driveway, his dark Escalade the biggest. It was a gift from my brother once upon a time. If Griffin was one thing, he’s generous and that’s something I’d forever preach in connection with his name.