Foster Siblings 3: Brokedown Hearts (31 page)

In the face of David shaking his head, Brittany nodded even more emphatically. “You don’t think you’ve suffered enough for what you did to Chris and your ex-wife and this community and, heck, probably even your family. You don’t think you deserve real happiness with a strong, good man like Ben. Certainly not this fast. How is it fair that you get such a great guy after doing so many horrible things, you’re asking yourself on some level. And as long as you keep thinking that way, or until you believe you do deserve Ben, you’re going to rely on those old, destructive patterns to help you screw up your relationship with him.”

“But… It’s…” Scrambling, David grasped at invisible straws that kept slipping from his fingers. “That’s not what this is.”

Brittany shrugged. “Then maybe it isn’t. I just think you should be careful not to apply the same diagnosis to two different situations that, when you look under the surface, aren’t the same at all.” A quick series of honks sounded outside right then, and Brittany hopped to her feet. “Oops, that’s me.” She grabbed her purse off the foot of the bed. “I didn’t know when you’d be back, so a friend of mine is taking me to the walk-in clinic.”

As Brittany reached the door, David rushed to put his hand at the small of her back. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, that stomach bug won’t go away, though. In case it’s an infection and not a virus, I want to get an antibiotic to treat it.”

David glanced from the idling blue compact car to Brittany. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“Nah. One friend holding my hand is enough.” Up on her tiptoes, Brittany pulled David down into a hug and softly said at his ear, “You think about what I said and go fix things with Ben. Okay?”

Nodding—he didn’t know how else to respond—David let her go. “Let me know how things go at the doctor’s.”

“I will.” With a little bounce in her step, Brittany rounded the car to the passenger side and waved. “Bye.”

“Bye.” After waving back, David waited until he could no longer see the car before pivoting to go to his room.

Taking a minute to fish his key out of the cavernous pockets in his jeans, David traced back over his day. What Brittany had theorized about the choices he’d made today, that they were something different from his usual obsessive tendencies, nagged at him.
Maybe it’s a little bit of both
. David checked his phone again, wishing Dr. Fariday would get back to him so he could pose some questions to him about it.

David didn’t have any new texts, but before he could trade his phone for his key, Travis swooped in and knocked his hand away from the door handle.

A sharp sting radiated through David’s hand and forearm, and he grabbed his wrist. “What are you doing here, Travis?” Backing up against the door, his pulse speeding up, David rubbed his arm. “What do you want?”

Travis poked his finger in David’s face. “Stay away from my wife. Quit filling her head with shit about me that isn’t true.”

Riding the wood at his back, David shook his head. “I haven’t done anything like that. I swear.”

His face reddening with every second, Travis, his whole body vibrating, pointed at Brittany’s door. “You were just with her, talking up a storm right now!”

David cried, “But we weren’t talking about you!”

“You talked her into leaving me. For Christ’s sake”—fists clenched, Travis threw his arms in the air—“she’s living right next door to you. She left me and came running straight to you.” Travis stepped up to David and crowded him into the corner of the door. “Take back whatever you told her about me, or you and I are going to have a major problem.”

Combustible heat poured off Travis so powerfully that it infected David, and David exploded with life too. “I didn’t tell her anything!” David shoved Travis out of his personal space and circled his big brother. “I’m having a hard time with my own life right now, and I’m exhausted, and I’m tired of you yelling and threatening me. I didn’t tell your wife to leave you.” Giving Travis a taste of his own medicine, David poked his finger in the man’s face. “You did.”

Travis looked at David as if he’d grown another head. “That’s bullshit, man.”

“It isn’t.”
Good God
. David’s already great empathy for Brittany ticked up a hundred notches. But in front of him stood the one brother who hadn’t laughed at him when he couldn’t sleep at night after watching the
X-Files
every week as a kid, and this was the guy who’d helped him cover up a dent he’d put in their mother’s car after taking it for a joyride when he was fourteen. And as bad as everything had become since then, David couldn’t ignore the pang of longing Travis sometimes still evoked in his heart.

Travis still glared at David, though, so with a sigh full of exasperation, David said, “Listen up. You might not deserve my help, but I’m going to give it to you just this one time. Our family doesn’t like or respect Brittany, and in a thousand little ways, they let her know it every day. She sees it, she feels it, and it hurts her deeply. But every time you brush off her comments about it or tell her those little slights are in her head, you are adding to her pain. But it’s worse coming from you, because she loves you. I’m guessing that when you got married, she told herself it would be okay because you would have her back. Except more and more it’s looking like you don’t have her back.” David shrugged and finished, “It got to be too much, and she walked out.”

“It’s not that bad!”

“It is that bad!” David wanted to shake Travis, but with closed fists, he forced himself to keep his hands at his sides. “Listen to yourself, Travis. Hear what you’re trying to defend.” One specific memory from years ago hit David, and the nastiness of it still hurt his heart. Without wavering, he looked at Travis and stated, “All the way back to when you first brought Brittany home to Coleman to move in with you, even then Mom tried to get me to make you question the type of person Brit is, and to get you to think real hard about if she really was the girl you wanted to be dating so seriously. Me! She asked me to talk to you. That tells you how desperate she was to break the two of you up. That was when you guys were still only dating. I can’t imagine how much worse it’s gotten since your marriage.” David raised his brow and tagged even more pressure and responsibility on Travis’s shoulders. It was well past time this man felt the strain. “And then you go and tell her she can’t see me, the one guy in your family who actually sees her for the great person she is and loves her as much as you do, even though it might be in a different way. Now do you really think that’s a recipe to keep her in your bed?”

“But…but…” Looking all around, Travis stumbled to a white plastic lawn chair against the wall. He dropped his head in his hands and studied the cracked concrete ground. “I really didn’t think it was that bad.”

“It is. To her, it’s devastating. And she has to endure it while being so far away from her family. It was tough for her to leave Hialeah, but she moved up here for you. The next time you’re hanging out with Alan, Don, and Jason, think about how she doesn’t have her brothers and sisters around to do the same. She has to rely on the handful of friends she’s made here, and you. And you are actively trying to keep her away from one of those friends, me.”

Shifting to look out across the motel lot, Travis rubbed his hands down his face, pulling at the suddenly pale flesh. “She doesn’t even talk about missing her siblings that much.” His voice had gone soft.

David gave his brother the side eye. “Would you talk about missing them and wanting to see them more if the other person listening was you?”

Travis jammed his middle finger in David’s direction. “Fuck you. I listen.”

“But what she’s learned is that you don’t hear her. You don’t support her unless it’s something you firmly believe too.” Weary from his own problems as well as his brother’s, David plopped down in the seat next to Travis. “You’re hardheaded, Brother. You always have to be right.”

Hunched over, Travis looked David’s way. “So, what are you saying? You’re telling me to be more like you?” He snorted. “Brittany wants a gay husband now?”

“Fuck you too.” David shot the bird just as passionately as Travis had. “I’m telling you to stop being a bull with blinders on and listen to what she’s actually telling you. And to believe her when she does.”

“It’s hard.” Gruffness coated Travis’s voice, and clouds muted the light shades of sky in his eyes. “You’re telling me to believe my own family is actively disrespecting and being outright nasty to the woman I love. It’s hard to accept that.”

“It’s just as hard for Brittany to accept and live with her husband not believing her,” David pointed out, although he took the bite out of his tone. “Every time you don’t take her seriously, you’re bleeding her faith in you a little bit more.”

Wiping his hand over his mouth, Travis muttered, “Shit, I fucked up.” He shifted back in his chair, for all the world looking like the living dead. “I never put them side by side and compared them like that before.”

Empathy washed over David, and he reached out and put his hand on Travis’s arm. “It’s hard to face that your family won’t always have your back through anything. I know.”

Travis yanked his arm away. “It’s not the same as things were with you.”

Not backing down, David said, “It is the same.”

Travis jerked to his feet, no longer looking at David at all. “I have to go.” Without another word, he strode away.

The faster Travis moved away from David, the hotter under the collar David got. Before Travis could drive off, David yelled, “And quit harassing me too! If you leave me one more threatening note, I’ll take them to the police.”

“Fuck you!” Without giving David the courtesy of eye contact, Travis waved his arm and brushed David’s warning aside. “I haven’t left you anything.”

“Yeah, right.” David spun away, his whole body humming with the need for action—a desire to get into a physical fight, unlike anything he’d experienced in his life.

Here David had tried to help the guy, and the moment he’d thought he’d broken through, Travis had reverted to acting like a jerk. Finally Travis could see where he’d owned fault in dealing with Brittany, but he still didn’t accept he’d done just as much wrong in how he’d treated his own brother?
And then to deny he left me those letters…

Still blazing, full of energy he needed to release, David jammed his key into his lock and pushed his way into his room. Instantly the burn coating his skin cooled, and he shivered.
Something isn’t right.

With deliberate intent, David scanned the room, searching for something amiss. His bed was askew, but he’d rushed out this morning without making it, so that shouldn’t trigger the hairs rising on the back of his neck. His website work lay organized on the table with his secondhand laptop, and he had yet to pick up the clothes Ben had taken off him last night, but otherwise nothing appeared out of place. The small stash of food was lined up like soldiers by box size on top of the dresser, his laundry basket with detergent and softeners remained tucked securely between the dresser and the wall, and the remote for the TV was next to the phone on the nightstand, exactly where David always left it.

Still, rather than the hairs on his neck settling, the ones on his arms rose, along with goose bumps. Suddenly a little scraping sound and a soft
meow
trickled across the room.
Elsa
. His heart lurching into his throat, David rushed across the room, zeroing in on the closed bathroom door. Unless David had company and he had to use the facilities, he never shut the bathroom door. And no matter his frantic, distressed state this morning, he knew he hadn’t closed it then either.

David eased open the door. Like a bullet train, Elsa raced past him, between his legs, and scrambled under the bed. Elsa’s fabric fish was wedged under the door, and David rubbed his heart and laughed at himself. Here David had freaked out about someone entering his room, while the truth was as simple as Elsa playing enthusiastically and accidentally shutting herself in. He would have to make a note to buy a doorstop to prevent her from trapping herself again.

Taking a breath, David trotted over to the bed and stooped down next to it. Just as he crouched lower, about to lure Elsa out with the promise of a treat, the air conditioner kicked in, blasted through the room, and a three-by-five note card lifted from the muss of bedding and floated into David’s sight. The small unlined paper read: THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING. LEAVE COLEMAN TODAY.

Oh my God
. David snatched the card from the bed.
He came into my room.

Once again, Travis filled David’s thoughts. Except, as much as David hadn’t believed Travis’s denial of leaving the notes and making the threats, now he questioned his brother’s guilt. Travis’s denial had come easily and offhandedly, as if he believed David’s accusations to have come from thin air and thus couldn’t take them seriously. If Travis had something to hide, wouldn’t he have had a stronger reaction to the accusation and been more adamant in his refusal?

But if Travis hadn’t sent and planted these threats, then who had?

Jonah popped into David’s head. Quickly after, his ex Carrie did as well.

“David!” Ben’s voice boomed through the door. “It’s me.” A moment later the loud banging of a fist hitting wood echoed too.

Crap.

David shoved the note under his bed. Ben had enough to worry about with his brother. David wouldn’t burden him with this too. He shot up to his feet just as Ben shouted, “Let me in, honey.”

Gut-deep fears about what he’d done to Ben today hit David hard and overrode anything to do with the note. How Ben would react when David told him the truth took dominance, and new beads of sweat replaced the antennae hairs on his neck.

Ben knocked again. “Come on, David. It’s hotter than the devil’s cock today, and I’m sweltering out here. Open the door.”

Even as fear swamped David, Ben’s commanding voice made David’s heart skitter, and his hands shook as he opened the door. The second the door swung wide, Ben, looking big and glorious and sweaty in jeans and a white T-shirt, tossed his bag on the floor and dragged David into his arms. Flicks of amber and green glinted in Ben’s eyes, and without hesitation, he swooped down and invaded David’s mouth with a kiss full of ownership. Ben dug his fingers into David’s ass, held him close, and licked into his mouth and sucked on his tongue, teasing David with hints of hot and dirty play to come. Drawn in more completely than a moth to a flame, David wrapped his arms around Ben’s waist, rubbed against his heat, and moaned as he licked into Ben’s mouth too. Something sweet burst on his taste buds, and he licked again.