While We Waited (The Reed Brothers #8) (2 page)

At the last minute, she turns back to face me. “If you hurt Star, or anyone else in my family, I will make you regret it. Do you understand?”

My heart stutters, but I nod.

They’re going to hate me when this is all over.

She’s kind of quiet in the cab on the way to the hospital. She texts a lot and makes a few calls, cursing when she doesn’t get an answer. She makes some small talk with me but she doesn’t really say much. Finally, she pays the driver and we get out. I run a hand through my hair.

She laughs. “You look fine,” she says.

“Will your adoptive parents be here?”

She nods. “Yep. You’ll like them, though. They’re awesome.”

We stop at the reception desk and they send us to maternity, where Jenny—I mean
Wren
—asks for Peck’s room. They show us to a waiting room, and we walk in, but it’s empty except for Jess—I mean
Star
—and a man in a wheelchair.

Star jumps to her feet when she sees me. “What’s
he
doing here?”

Wren glares at her. “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been trying to find you everywhere.” She holds up her phone and points at Star’s.

“Why did you bring him here?” Star asks. “He doesn’t belong here.”

Wren puts her hands on her hips. “Yes, he does.”

People start filing down the hallway, and I recognize some of the girls from Fallen from Zero, the band my sisters belong to. I also recognize Star and Wren’s adoptive parents. I’ve seen them in publicity photos. Her dad glares at me but he doesn’t say anything. He knows who I am, though. That much is obvious.

Star gets up and walks down the hallway. She’s pissed.

“Well, that went well,” Wren says as she flops into a chair. She points to the guy in the wheelchair, then at me. “Oh, this is our brother, Tag. Tag, this is Josh. Josh works at the tattoo shop I was telling you about, with the Reeds.” She’d mentioned the Reeds briefly when she was prattling on about nothing in the cab.

I shake his hand. “Nice to meet you,” I say. He has ink across his knuckles and pretty much everywhere else.

“Aren’t you going to see the baby?” Josh asks.

“Is it here?” Wren cries.

Josh nods and smiles. Wren shrieks and gets to her feet, then runs down the hallway.

I sit with Josh for a minute. The silence wraps around us like a warm wool blanket. It’s heavy and oppressive. “Where are you from, man?” he finally asks.

“From the past,” I say. “And apparently I should have stayed there.” But I need this. I need my sisters in so many ways.

“What brings you to New York?”

I shrug. “I needed a change.”
And a lot of money to pay off a girl so I can get a baby.

“So you thought looking up long-lost sisters was the way to go?”

I laugh, but it comes out sounding pretty insincere. “It was now or never, you know? I needed to be in the city. I just didn’t expect to walk into a mess.”

“Some call it a baby. Some call it a mess.” He holds his hands up like he’s weighing two things, lowering one and raising the other.

“Yeah, Wren filled me in on the way here. Babies are pretty special. A gift from God.” I find that people trust a God-fearing individual. So, I am one. Or at least I want him to think I am. My own faith is currently on shaky ground. But he doesn’t need to know that.

“I’m going to go and find Star,” he suddenly says. He starts to roll down the hallway and I stay in my seat. My sisters have to walk by me in order to exit, so I wait.

“See you later, man,” I say.

I wait. And wait. And wait…and when no one returns I’m worried that they left without me.

I get up and go down the hallway, peering into doorways until I see Josh in his wheelchair inside a room. I knock on the door and stick my head inside. “Can I join you?” I ask. I flinch inside, worried they’ll say no.

Star sits up and says, “No, you may not.”

“Oh, shut it, Star.” Wren motions me into the room and makes introductions. Sam Reed, who I recognize from TV, looks curious. And Peck doesn’t look like she appreciates my presence at all.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, Peck yawns. Josh says, “I’m going to go home so you guys can get some rest.” Sam takes his baby from Josh, who had been holding him.

“Where’s
he
going to stay?” Star asks, nodding toward me.

Wren heaves a sigh. “He’s going to stay in Peck’s old room for a few days.”

“No, he is not!” Star jumps to her feet and punches her hands into her hips. “
No!
”

Wren closes her eyes and massages her forehead. “The room is just sitting there empty. He doesn’t have anywhere to go.”

“And this is our problem why?”

“Because he shares our DNA!” Wren yells. The baby startles and Sam growls at them both. But inside, I rejoice because it has been a long time since anyone has taken up for me.

“Knock it off,” Sam warns.

“Why can’t he get a hotel room?” Star asks, her voice growing quiet.

“Because he doesn’t have any money!” Wren whisper-hisses back.

“Money,” Star bites out. “That’s what this is about.”

Yep. She pegged me in two seconds.

“He’s going home with us. That’s all there is to it.” Wren clenches her teeth.

“Then I’m not.” Star stares her down.

Wren sighs. She glares at our sister. “If that’s how you want it.”

“Fine.” Star leans over and kisses Peck on the forehead, whispers in her ear, and then kisses Sam’s cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then Star walks out of the room.

Sam nods his head subtly at Josh, and Josh follows her out, rolling in her wake.

“That didn’t go very well,” I say. “I should go and get her.” I get to my feet.

“You better not,” Peck warns.

I jerk my thumb in the direction she went. “But she’s leaving.”

“Let her go,” Sam says. “Josh will take care of her. He’s been taking care of her all night.”

Wren grins. “Oh, do tell,” she says.

Sam starts to tell us about Star dancing on a piano, so drunk she could barely walk. My conscience prickles a little, since I know I caused that.

“Star never gets drunk like that,” Wren says quietly. She looks worried.

“Josh will take care of her,” Sam says again. He doesn’t look worried at all. In fact, he winks at his wife and she grins at him, rolling her eyes.

“I feel bad that she’s not going home. And it’s all because of me,” I say quietly.

“She’ll come home when she’s ready,” Peck says.

The question is, will she be ready in time for me take care of things back home? I need for them to love me and to trust me. Then I need for them to give me money, and I can’t get them to do any of that if they’re not around.

***

I haven’t seen Star since I got here. She refused to come back to the apartment, and she has been away the three days I’ve been here. But Wren has been here. All it took was some reminiscing. Bam. Got her.

“Do you remember the yellow house on Chestnut Street?” I ask her.

Wren blinks her eyes furiously. “Yes, I remember.”

It was the house we lived in when Mom and Dad died. “Dad taught you how to ride that old pink bike on the sidewalk out front.”

“I remember.” Her voice is thick and tight. “That was before…”

“Before they died,” I finish quietly. I force out a laugh. “You scraped your knee when you fell off the bike and you wanted to quit, but Dad wouldn’t let you.”

She chuckles. It’s a watery sound. “He made me get back on it and stay on it until I could ride it around the block.”

“Then they couldn’t get you to come inside for supper,” I remind her. My breath catches at the look of devastation on her face. But I push on. “You wanted to stay outside all night.”

“The streetlights came on and I wanted to keep riding.”

“Dad sat on the porch and counted your laps around the block.”

A tear finally falls over her lashes and my gut twists. “I miss them,” she whispers.

“You got a good family,” I remind her. Not like the one I got.

“We didn’t at first,” she blurts out. Then she looks like she wants to take it back.

I drop the fork I’m holding and it clatters to the tabletop. “What?”

“Our first foster family…” She shakes her head. “Never mind.”

“Tell me,” I say.

“You don’t want to know.”

“I do.” It can’t be as bad as the hell I went through. “Tell me.”

“He was a pedophile, and she was clueless.” She closes her eyes. “Star bore the brunt of it.”

I suddenly want to throw up. “
What?
”

She nods. It’s a quick jerk. “Social Services took us out of there and we went to a group home. It was better.” She smiles at me. “Then we met Marta and Emilio and they adopted all of us.”

“I didn’t know,” I manage to respond. I can barely breathe, much less speak. No wonder she hates me.

“Star wrote to you all the time. She kept thinking you were going to come and rescue us.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. None at all. “That’s why she’s not here. She’s still a little sore over it.”

“If I had known–”

But she holds up a hand and waves it to stop me. “You were a kid.”

“I was glad you didn’t end up where I went,” I blurt out. I want to bite it back as soon as it comes out of my mouth. But it hangs there in the air between us.

She blinks her big brown eyes at me. “Why?”

“It wasn’t good.” I cough into my fist. “
He
wasn’t good.”

“
He
was family,” she rushes to remind me.

“There was a reason why Dad didn’t talk to him. Think back. Do you remember Dad ever having anything nice to say about him?”

She shakes her head. “Not really. But there’s a lot I don’t remember.”

“He wasn’t nice or good or kind. And he’s no family of mine. Or yours, for that matter.” I get up and start to clear the table. “Just thinking about him makes me sick.”

“What happened?” she asks from behind me.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

I take a deep breath. “He got paid by the state to keep me.” I don’t say more, hoping she’ll draw her own awful conclusions. “I was like their servant. I took care of their younger kids and kept their house clean.” And I took the beatings for the ones who were smaller than me.

“You weren’t an only child, at least,” she prompts. She’s looking for a happy ending, but I can assure her there isn’t one. Not in my uncle’s house.

She sounds so optimistic I almost hate to shatter her illusions. “I took care of everyone. I cooked and cleaned and changed diapers and put the kids on the bus. I nursed fevers and soothed nightmares.” I shiver at the thought of it. “And then they sent me to my room, when my chores were done, while they were a family and I had no one.”

“We didn’t know…”

“No one did.” I shrug and force out a laugh I don’t feel. Just going back to those days in my head makes my skin crawl. “When I was nineteen, I met a man who worked at a church. He had a daughter, and she made everything better. She helped me. We were the same age. Julia.” Just the thought of Julia makes my heart speed up a beat. She’s why I have to go back. She’s why I’m here at all.

“That’s good,” Wren says.

I force my own memories to the back of my mind. “Do you remember the time that you and Star decided to build a tree house?” I ask. I force her to slip back into the memories, and I go with her. And I’m happy for a little while, as I bask in the glow that is my family.

Suddenly, I realize that I’ve had too much to drink. My emotions are sitting directly below the surface of my skin. They’re not hidden down deep in my soul where I usually keep them. They’re floating just below my sanity, and they’re peeking through.

“I need to go to bed,” Wren says. She presses her beer toward me. She cracked it open but never drank any of it.

I have already had a six pack or so. I’m not drunk, but I’m losing my inhibitions and I’m sober enough to know it. I push the beer back toward her.

“I can’t,” she says on a laugh. “Not possible.” She narrows her eyes at me though, and I immediately worry. Did I say something I shouldn’t have said? Did I lie? Does she know it? “I want to give you something,” she says. She digs into her purse and pulls out a blue faux-leather bank book. She slides it toward me. “I set this up for you today.”

“What is it?” I ask. But inside my heart is leaping.

She winces. “I kind of went through your wallet to get your information for the account.”

“Oh.” I immediately wonder what else she found.

“I wasn’t really snooping. Just trying to figure out how to set this up for you.”

“Okay.” My heart is pounding. She just made all my dreams come true and she doesn’t even know it. She thinks she just did a good deed.