Double Heat [Twin Ties: 3] (41 page)

“No. No one else,” he admitted bashfully, adding a moment later. “Can’t say the same for Evan, though.”

Evan gave him an exasperated look and Brennan gave an innocent shrug.

“What? It’s true!” Brennan argued.

“He’s right there still, isn’t he?” Charlie asked.

“Yep.”

“Remind him that I still want names.”

“He wants names,” Brennan said to Evan.

“I can hear him, jackass,” Evan sighed. “And I don’t have names.”

That wasn’t true. Evan did have some names, he just knew there was likely no connection to Charlie like there had been with Drew, and he didn’t plan to enlighten their father on his extracurricular sexual activities any more than he already had.

That didn’t mean Brennan couldn’t goad them both to make it clear the whole story wasn’t being conveyed for reasons none of them liked.

“Tell him he’s killin’ me,” Charlie groaned, sounding old and very tired.

“You’re killing him,” Brennan relayed.

“I can still hear him, jackass.”

“He says to stop calling me a jackass.”

“No, he didn’t!”

“Boys!” Charlie cut in. “Jesus Christ, the bickering.”

“So who wins the shittiest ex contest?” Brennan asked Charlie.

“That’s not funny,” Charlie said, getting riled.

“It’s a little funny.”

“I almost lost you!” Charlie shouted. Brennan pulled the phone away from his ear. Evan gestured to the bathroom counter as if inviting Brennan to set it down and walk away like he’d done. “I almost lost both of you, and what you both have gone through in the past few weeks makes me want to lock you both away where no one can hurt you ever again, no matter if you’re adults now. You’ve been through hell! It needs to stop!”

Brennan rolled his eyes again.

“So, it’s a tie, then?” he said when Charlie stopped to take a breath.

“There will be no goddamned tie breakers, you both hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Brennan smirked.

They ended the call. Evan stood looking down at Brennan, kneeling on the bathmat in all of that white light. Holding his sprained wrist protectively against his stomach, bowing his head slightly as he pushed the phone around on the mat, he knew he should get up. He should probably do a lot of things, but it was still easier to simply sit there, being quiet and still, trying to feel for Maggie’s presence.

“Come back to bed,” Evan said gently, holding out a hand for Brennan to take.

Letting Evan pull him to his feet, Brennan walked from the bathroom, making brief eye contact with him. It was funny, sometimes he would catch Evan’s eye and it would feel like they were falling back through the days and went right back there together, where so many terrible things could have happened to them so quickly, before anyone could get to them to stop it. He liked the feel of Evan’s hand on his back, though, as he was led to the empty bed. Climbing under the covers, Brennan did what he’d been doing constantly since they rented the room. He lay on his side, facing Alek in the other bed. It was good to watch Alek there, sleeping, reading, or doing whatever. It was a balm on the soul.

The backs of Evan’s fingers trailed down Brennan’s arm. Glancing Evan’s way again, where he was sitting on the edge of the bed, Brennan felt caught and sad. Because Evan knew why his brother liked to watch Alek there, safe and alive. He gave Brennan a strengthening, brave smile which he couldn’t return. Not yet. So Evan took his hand and stayed there with him for a long time.

Chapter 34
Renewed

Evan sat on the couch in Presley and Carter’s apartment. The place was small, with a combined living room, kitchen and eating area and two bedrooms, one of which was being used for storage of extra furniture, Carter’s guitar collection and Presley’s many pairs of shoes.

“Here. Have at it, man,” Presley said, passing Evan a mug of coffee. “You sure I can’t get you anything else?”

“Nah, I’m good. Thanks.”

The soft sound of guitar strumming filtered through the closed bedroom door where Carter was giving Brennan some pointers. It was good to see Brennan getting back into music. There was a lot of bottled up emotion in him that Evan thought would benefit greatly from being expressed rather than trapped inside.

Quiet shock had taken over Evan’s brother since they’d discovered Tommy in their apartment. It had started when Evan had run to the bedroom, hearing strange sounds coming from in there, only to listen at the doorway, trying to figure out what to do when it was clear Brennan wasn’t alone. Unfortunately, Tommy had been able to knock Evan over with a hard punch to his bad side, and it had all been downhill from there. Ever since Brennan had been forced to wear Tommy’s handcuffs, part of him was still in chains.

Evan had learned a long time ago that being quiet and still, letting the world have at you with hardly any protest, could be a comfortable way to survive hard times, but it never worked out well in the end. Real healing took strength and courage, but the process benefitted greatly from a solid support system. If there was anything Brennan and Evan could say, without a doubt, it was that they weren’t alone in what they were going through. Still, there was work to be done.

Brennan hadn’t been like himself at all—hesitating to make eye contact, not saying much, and sleeping more than was needed. He meditated by his altar every day. He lit candles and watched the flames dance. His physical wounds were healing, but the mental and emotional recovery had just begun.

Struggling with his own demons and trying to stand up for himself more than ever before, Evan stayed by his brother’s side constantly. Those days, they were indeed attached at the hip like they’d always been meant to be. He was so in tune to Brennan, it had become even easier to anticipate his needs, his moods, his thoughts, even his words. Sometimes Evan saw dark things in Brennan’s eyes that he suspected went unnoticed by the others. The darkness had kept him since Tommy had taken him. Evan had seen it settle there, in his sweet brother’s face, when he’d decided to sacrifice himself in the hope of sparing Evan and Alek. In a way, he’d been successful. They were all alive. They were whole. And they’d gathered around Brennan while he tried to get back to where he needed to—believing Tommy hadn’t won or been able to take anything Brennan couldn’t take back.

Seeing Brennan’s torment actually helped clarify for Evan where he was and how to keep moving forward. Drew was gone. The ugly truth had come out of the dark of his past at last. There wasn’t anything else he needed to waste energy hiding. The toughest part was being brave enough to accept he didn’t have to be strong all the time, and that it was okay to trust Luka, Alek, and even Brennan to take care of him, too. Faith that big didn’t come easily, but Evan was willing to fight for it.

“They won’t come out, will they?” Presley said, rhetorically, swirling his coffee. He sat beside Evan, both of them facing the bedrooms in the quiet of that Tuesday morning.

“Nah,” Evan answered, feeling choked up as Brennan’s sweet but gritty singing carried to them, faintly. It was the sound of a psychic wound being slowly leached, or the first indrawn breath after a sucker punch.

Presley gave him a sideways look and laid a hand on Evan’s back in a supportive gesture. Evan smiled in thanks, then cleared his throat.

“Carter’s having a hard time with it,” Presley confessed. “But maybe you already know that.”

“Yeah, I can tell. He’s been calling a lot but never has much to say. It’s good that he reaches out. Just being there helps a lot.”

“He’s been going to church, and that boy has
never
gone to church. He ain’t even Catholic. He goes to the gym with me too now, more than usual. Takes it all out on the bags, walin’ on ‘em like it’ll do y’all any good.”

“We’ve told him it’s not his fault. I’ve told him that so many times, I don’t know how to convince him,” Evan said urgently.

Presley nodded. “Yeah, me too. I think the ‘what ifs’ are killin’ him. He sees you, sees Bren, and how different everything is now and just... imagines it, I guess. How he was right outside. He was
right there
, with a gun, and could have... I don’t know. I don’t think he knows either. It’s good you guys came today. This’ll be good for both of them. Maybe Raed’s gettin’ a new singer.”

“Hmm,” Evan grunted, then chuckled. “That’d be cool.”

“How’s Bren doing?” Presley asked after pause. Evan sipped his coffee and sighed.

“A little better every day.” Evan told him quietly, under his breath, “It’s not even the rape. It’s Alek. That damned gunshot. What he thought Tommy was about to do to me. I see Bren opening doors like he thinks he’s going to find Alek, bloody and dying, on the other side.” He shook his head. “I know exactly what he’s going through. It’s another layer on top of what he felt with me after the attack at the bar, that fear he couldn’t let go of after I got out of the hospital. He learned how to be afraid like that with Maggie. I think even with her, he must have just chewed on all of his terror of being left alone once she’d died, and letting Tommy treat him like shit was a tolerable distraction from his real problems. He’s just gone through so much. He shouldn’t have had to go through any more. We’re all just making it worse for him.”

“That’s what happens when you love people,” Presley observed.

“Yeah.”

“You think he’s just not dealing with the rape part of it, or is he really okay?”

Evan sighed again, biting at his lip. “You’ve gotta look at it this way—Tommy had always been like that. Only no one knew it but Bren. And maybe Maggie had an inkling. Tommy pushed Brennan around, was too rough in bed. Brennan had built up a numbness to that part of it. It wasn’t a shock. It was expected. He probably thinks he would have been better off if he’d been alone, and I hadn’t been there, and no one had tried to walk in.”

“But what the fuck would that prick have done if Bren was
alone
?” Presley challenged.

“Nothing good,” Evan answered.

“He’s gonna testify? Brennan?”

“Yeah. Not that they need his testimony too badly, with all of the evidence they’ve got. I think they’re just going to use him mostly as a character witness, to show the jury exactly how bad of a guy Tommy is in order to get a heavier sentence. I kind of wish they’d leave Bren alone. He doesn’t need to go through that.”

“I dunno. I think putting it on record what he really thinks of Tommy might at least help him believe it’s really over, and Tommy is finally getting the message. We’ll see, I guess. How about you, kid? How you holding up?” Presley nudged Evan’s shoulder. Evan smiled over at him briefly.

Then, unexpectedly, Evan laughed. The sound breaking at the edges as it twisted into sadness. “I just feel so bad for Drew. Then I feel bad for feeling bad for Drew.”

Presley gave him a one-armed hug, which Evan leaned in to, trying to pull himself together.

“Sorry, it’s just... Alek and Luka don’t like to hear me say that. And Brennan....”

“Think of it this way,” Presley suggested. “The cops were gonna get him sooner or later, right? He’d be sent away on some fucked-up charges, and who knows what he’d have gone through in jail? I’ve heard kiddie diddlers don’t exactly fare well there. At least this way, it’s done. No more pain.”

“Yeah.” Evan drank his coffee, thinking that maybe later he’d light a candle for Drew later.

“You guys should talk to someone. A professional. They could help you work through all of this.”

“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” Evan said with a cold grin. “My dad thought the same thing, way back when. Therapy doesn’t work if you have no interest in opening up to a stranger, which I don’t. And Bren? I don’t know. Too much risk, not enough benefit, is how I see it. But maybe we’ll get there eventually. I don’t have a great track record with mental health professionals, but I’d think about going for Brennan’s sake.”

Carter and Brennan’s voices, mingled in harmony, interwoven in melody, carried to them, under-laid with the smooth notes from the guitars. “Are you really okay with going back to live in your old house?” Presley asked.

“I am. I miss it, as much as that surprises me, especially after all those years of dreaming of being able to go anywhere else. I’d never go back if Bren hadn’t been okay with it, but he thinks this is better than going back to the apartment, or somewhere new. It’s his call. I’m good with it if he is. He had to leave his old home behind, so maybe he likes having a new old home to go back to. With the renovations, it’ll be like new. We’re making it work for us. Thanks for hooking us up with your friends, by the way.”

“Absolutely. Anytime, man,” Presley told him. “Just glad to be able to help.”

“I know what you mean,” Evan replied.

A few more weeks’ worth of days sifted through the hourglass. Alek and Luka worked as much as they could, bringing in plenty of money to cover all of their bills while Evan shuttled Brennan back and forth from classes.

Evan saw Brennan begin to focus more and more on his coursework. As the semester drew to a close, it was like Brennan could see the end goal in sight and couldn’t wait to start working as a nurse, giving back instead of only receiving help. Evan visited Mike’s Garage a few times, while Brennan was in class. He liked seeing the guys he used to work with, and being back in a place that felt so familiar. When he was in the garage, though, he’d start to itch to contribute, to get in there and fix whatever was broken, or pinpoint issues that were causing problems. That’s when he would realize he’d be going back, sooner rather than later, and asking for his old job.