The Boy I Grew Up With

by Tijan

  Yeah. Heather would say something similar.

  I didn’t respond, but Bren did, reading my mind. “You can’t untangle her from your life, if that’s what you’re thinking. You two are entwined. You try to shove her away, you’ll destroy you both.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She snorted, going to the fridge. “You know what I mean.” Grabbing a water, she went to the patio door. “Wanna go outside?”

  I eyed her water. “Thank you for grabbing that.” She had been reaching for the beer, but changed her mind at the last second.

  She grinned, opening the door. “I know we’re not the conventional brother and sister, but I can show respect every now and then.”

  I barked a laugh, grabbing two beers and following her. Handing one to her, I took the seat beside her.

  She paused, so I shrugged. “Take it. Two of your crew members helped us today. One beer is not going to tip the balance of me being a crappy guardian one way or the other.”

  She laughed, opening the beer. “Give yourself a break. We’re better than we were before. That’s all we can take right now.”

  Fuck. “When did you get so wise?”

  She smiled around the beer. “I’ve always been. You just didn’t know.”

  She was right.

  “I’m sorry, Bren.” My throat felt thick, damn thick.

  I felt her surprise as she stared at me. She recovered just as fast, turning back and taking a drink of her beer.

  “I wasn’t thinking about you, or how my little sis might need me,” I told her. “I was just—fuck, I was selfish.”

  “You were losing your mom too.”

  Her voice was soft, and I studied her profile. She wasn’t looking at me, but I knew it probably burned her to say that.

  “Doesn’t matter.” My voice was a bit rough, hoarse.

  She looked over, meeting my gaze.

  I didn’t turn and look away, wanting her to see that I meant what I said. “I wasn’t there for you until he went away. I’m sorry.”

  She looked ahead again, holding her beer like a life raft, and she jerked a shoulder back. “I mean, whatever, Channing.” Her voice was tight, raspy. “You weren’t there. I dealt with it. Whatever.”

  Yeah. She’d said that already.

  “Still.”

  She shook her head, sighing. “Besides, Dad wasn’t that bad, not at the end.”

  I almost growled. “Didn’t goddamn matter.” I didn’t know who I was more angry at: him or myself. He was an abusive asshole, but he hadn’t been to her. I knew that much. While he’d yelled, thrown things, hit, shoved, taunted, and ridiculed me, he’d left her alone.

  He’d left our mom alone, and he’d left Bren alone. In that very small way, I was grateful, but only for that.

  “Look.” She expelled that word in a sudden whoosh of breath. “He wasn’t perfect. You weren’t perfect. I’m not perfect. At least we’re together.”

  I couldn’t move for a second.

  Bren said we were together. I never thought...

  If it’d been in a different context, I would’ve teased her about being sick and felt her forehead. Instead I felt punched in the stomach and so damned humble to have her as my sister.

  “I love you.”

  She glanced at me, hesitant, studying me as if I were a feral animal asking for a hug. Then she relaxed. I saw her swallow before she dipped her head in a nod.

  “I love you too.”

  So we sat there. We didn’t hug. We didn’t go into specifics. We didn’t even utter another word for five more minutes, but I’d never felt so close to my sister.

  I looked out at our backyard and the stars above, and I brushed a hand at the corner of my eye.

  Nope.

  I wasn’t crying.

  Not a bit.

  38

  Heather

  Channing was going to leave me.

  I could tell.

  We’d been here before. He wasn’t meeting my gaze all the time. He was being super nice, like he was already trying to say he was sorry. He was treating me as if I was the most fragile creature in his life.

  Like I said, we’d been here before, and fuck him.

  Honestly.

  Fuck. Him.

  It’d been three days since the attack. Everyone had gone back to their lives as if nothing happened. The only thing that changed was that Richter no longer drove through Fallen Crest or Roussou. In fact, Richter no longer drove. I hadn’t seen any of the bikers. I knew they were around—I’d overheard someone talking to Brandon about Traverse, so the MC was around. Just not the old leader.

  Then again, should I have been shocked by that?

  “Hey, boss.” Cruz lifted his head in a nod, making his way toward me where I sat at a picnic table in the back of Manny’s.

  Remembering the high school reunion, I realized there was a lot I didn’t know about Cruz. He was a pretty Latin lover—his words, not mine—and he’d been working for us for two years now. I knew he’d moved to Fallen Crest when he was little, originally from Tijuana, and he had luscious black hair and dark eyes. He was handsome enough to get quite a few of his groupies to come to Manny’s. But I didn’t know anything else.

  No, that wasn’t true.

  I knew he was quiet, hard-working, lean, smart, and never a problem. He showed up for his job, and on days he didn’t need to be here as an employee, he came as a customer. He enjoyed Brandon. Those two talked and laughed a lot together at the bar. Cruz came in to be there on nights when Brandon closed, and he was there most of the “not so busy” nights. I now realized that had all been purposeful.

  He paused, sitting across from me, and frowned. “I stink or something?” He smelled his armpits.

  “What?”

  He gestured to my face. “You look in pain. I know it’s not my outside—I’m pretty beyond measure there—so I thought I must smell.” He sniffed his shirt. His grin turned sly. “I don’t. I smell like fresh lilacs, and I know that because Ava just got a whole bouquet of them.” He paused a beat. “From Roy.”

  “Roy? Uber driver Roy?”

  He nodded, resting his elbows on the table and getting more comfortable. “Apparently he asked her to some dance, and she’s all giggling and blushing right now.”

  I laughed softly. “That’s awesome. Good for her. Him too.”

  He nodded again. “Mmm-hmmm, and that brings me to why I’m out here.”

  Here it was. I prepared myself.

  “I’d like to become your main manager, and I’d like to hire Katrina to be the manager under me, along with one of my cousins. He’s a really good worker. Lots of experience. He doesn’t live far. He’s here a lot already.”

  I knew who he was referring to. It was the guy he came with a lot of those nights when they closed with Brandon.

  I already knew I was going to do it, but I still groaned, rubbing at my temples. “You’re giving me a headache. You know that, right?”

  “I do.”

  There was a person we hadn’t named yet, a person who would be directly affected by this.

  He leaned forward, the easygoing smile going away. “She doesn’t want to be a manager. You know it. I know it. She knows it. She says otherwise, but I’m already doing her work for her. Hell, you’re doing her work for her, and you’re the boss. You’re supposed to hire us, not fill in for us. It’s not right, and it’s time to make the change.”

  He was right, and why did I feel this could be a metaphor for other parts of my life too?

  “Right.” I said it dully, because that’s how I was feeling. Like a dull, dumbass piece of shit. I’d let things with Suki go longer than I should’ve. She was excelling at the private gourmet dinners, but she’d gone back to not even being half a manager.

  It wasn’t meant to be.

  I sighed. “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Yeah?” He straightened up, his eyebrows rising. That grin started to spread again. “On everything? My cousin too? I have his resume with m
e, but he—”

  I waved him off. I trusted Cruz. I trusted Brandon, and he liked Cruz’s cousin. “No. It’s good. Tell him to come in next weekend to fill out paperwork, and we can figure out the orientation schedule. Katrina’s okay with this too?”

  His head moved up and down, his eyes dancing. “Oh yes. It was her idea, said she was tired of being ordered around by Suki. It’s the right call. It’s time, boss.”

  The way he was talking, I knew he expected me to let Suki go. He had another thing coming.

  As he started to get up and leave, I noted, “I’m not firing her, Cruz.”

  He rounded back to me. His eyes got big. “What?”

  I understood his fear. Suki was… Well, Suki was nuts, but Suki was family. Once you were in, I didn’t let you go.

  “She’s not going to be a manager, but she’s going to be around.”

  “Oh my God.” He dropped back to the bench and caught his head in his hands. “Oh my God. You have no idea. She’s a nightmare to work with.”

  I knew. I really did, but she was an asset. I pointed behind him. “Go in. Send Suki out, and you can call Katrina, let her know the good news.”

  “Oh no.” He stood, but it wasn’t quick. He kept shaking his head, and I heard that phrase on repeat over and over until he rounded the corner of the building.

  I didn’t want to do this. I knew what the rest of the day would be like.

  Suki would come out. I would fire her as manager. She’d be upset, get all blustery and start expressing how Suki was going to bring her wrath and damnation on this place. I would interrupt her, tell her I wanted her to stay on as the gourmet chef, doing her shows more often, and she’d be happy—or I hoped so—but it didn’t matter. She’d take the job change, and she’d do it without an attitude because I was not in the mood.

  This whole day had become about taking care of the shit I’d been letting go.

  Once we got through it and Suki went back inside, the normal grumbling out of her system because she wasn’t really sure if she should be happy about being demoted, even to the job she really wanted, she’d have a little extra bounce to her step.

  And she did.

  Then Ava came outside. She was grinning and blushing, and she gushed about the flowers. She was beyond excited.

  I smiled. I congratulated her. I expressed how happy I was, and then I teased her.

  I went through the motions, but inside I knew that after all of this, there was another part of my life I’d need to deal with too.

  Once Ava went inside, that same extra bounce to her step that Suki had, I knew the next person around that corner would be my brother.

  He appeared, laughing to himself and shaking his head. “You’ve had an eventful day.”

  I grunted as he dropped into the seat Cruz had vacated, then Suki, then Ava.

  “It’s hilarious inside. Cruz is beaming, but he’s wary of Suki. Suki is happy, but acting like she’s supposed to be angry, so it seems like she’s faking. Katrina came in, and she’s having a drink with Chester, the guy you just hired as a manager.”

  Chester? That was his name?

  Brandon rolled his head around and massaged his neck, “And Ava is acting like a giddy schoolgirl, which is annoying the fuck out of Suki. She’s so damn happy about her own thing that she wants to swat Ava down, but she isn’t because it’s all confusing the fuck out of her.”

  Confusing her? Welcome to the club.

  I groaned. “My headache is getting worse. I don’t think I want to know what Roy is doing.”

  “Roy took off. He pushed those lilacs in Ava’s hands, read a poem, and dropped to his knee. It looked like he was proposing, and then one of his buddies ran in with a poster and threw it at them. It hit Ava across the face, but Roy caught it and read it out loud, asking her to that dance. I swear she’s going to have a fat lip from that sign, but she’s not feeling a thing. I don’t ever remember being that happy about going to a dance in high school.”

  “Because you’re a manwhore. You don’t have the simple, pure outlook on life that they do.”

  He grunted now too. “You think?”

  Shit. Ava was a senior at Roussou Public School. That same year I’d been running Manny’s, having sex with Channing, and hanging out with Samantha and the Kades. The only thing that had changed from then till now was that the Kades had moved across the country.

  “Oh yeah. I can’t imagine Channing even thinking about asking me to a dance with a sign, much less me blushing because of it. If I was blushing, it was because his head was between my leg—”

  “Oh God, no!” He held up a hand. “Stop. Please. Do not make me throw up.”

  I laughed. “You think I enjoyed hearing your last stalker demand that you pull your dick out of the girl underneath you?”

  He groaned again. “Shit. I’m never going to live that down. But one, she wasn’t underneath me. I was the one und—”

  “Like I need to know that!”

  He kept on as if I hadn’t said a word, grinning. “And Becca is no longer my stalker.” He wiggled his eyebrows up and down. “In some way, you’ve acquired her as a stalker. I know she ain’t in Manny’s right now, sitting in a corner booth for my ass. She’s all about Congo being her man. Roy asked if she might need a ride home tonight, and she yelled at him to leave her alone, her man could rip his spine out of his back if he wanted to.”

  “And you think Roy left because he was embarrassed about Ava?” I drawled.

  “Yeah. I do. Becca’s threats are commonplace. I’m surprised she and Suki haven’t become best friends.”

  My eyes almost shot out of me at that thought. I shuddered. “I don’t even want to think about that…the shit they would do.”

  “Becca would set fire to some unsuspecting girl, and then Suki would go in and insist she show her the difference between using butternut squash or zucchini for fettuccine noodles.”

  I burst out laughing, and the more I laughed, the more I was grateful to Brandon.

  “Thank you.” I quieted, feeling a little release in my chest and shoulders. Things didn’t feel so tight between my shoulder blades either. “I needed that.”

  “Yeah.”

  I heard how knowing he sounded. “What?”

  “After your white-trash moment a few days ago, you’ve been working nonstop. And I know Channing hasn’t been crawling through your window. You want to talk about whatever’s going on?”

  I shot him a look. “Do you not know me?”

  He grinned. “I know. I’m the one who talks about feelings, but I’m kinda serious.” The grin faded. “What’s going on? And don’t lie and say nothing because I know my sister.” He pointed over his shoulder. “You’re always in there, no matter what paperwork you gotta concentrate on. You’re never out here, hiding. Why are you hiding?”

  “Brandon.” A low warning from me. “Don’t push this. I mean it.”

  “I don’t give a shit. My little sis is hurting, and I want to know why. What’s going on?”

  Fuck’s sake. I was just starting to admit it to myself. Now he wants me to spill my guts? That made me want to vomit. That’s a whole ton of feeling and expressing, and I was starting to miss being in a gunfight. Things were more straightforward there.

  “I’m just doing paperwork. That’s all.”

  His face scrunched up. He was going to argue.

  “Dad called.” I was lying, but I had to throw something up. I needed to distract him somehow.

  “What?” He leaned away from me. “Why? Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing. I mean…” Think, Heather. Stall. Be a big pain in the ass and evade him. “We bought Manny’s from him, but he called about opening up another Manny’s in Florida.”

  “What?!”

  I cringed.

  “He’s in his sixties. And he lives in a fucking retirement RV park. What the hell is he thinking?” Steam could’ve been coming out of Brandon’s ears. He gripped the table and jerked forward. “What’s B
rad think of this? He’s down there with him. He’s supposed to be watching over Pops and taking care of him. If Dad’s serious, he should be reining him in.”

  I was going to hell. “I think he wants Brad to run it, actually.”

  “Are you serious?” Brandon yelled, pushing half out of his seat. “So typical of Brad. Manny’s has been your puppy. Yeah, Dad took care of the books, but you took over everything else. He can’t do this. Dad can’t do this. If he wants to be a part of Manny’s, he needs to buy it from us fair and square. Brad can’t ride your coattails. No fucking way.”

  I began to pray, fervently and hard, that this wouldn’t erupt in to a full family battle, but until then… I nodded. “I know. What a dick.”

  “Yes! He’s always been a dick. I don’t care if he’s the oldest. He’s the biggest fuck-up of all of us.”

  Oh boy. “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  “I do.” Brandon stood and began to pace back and forth in front of me. “Thought he was going pro, then he blows out his knee in college. It’s not our fault his baby mama made him marry her. It’s not our fault he’s got five kids. That’s on him. Or that he hates his job. He can’t exploit Dad, and if he thinks he’s going to get a franchise from us for free, he’s in for a rude fucking awakening.”

  Well, fuck. Brandon was going to do damage if I didn’t stop this. I had no choice.

  I shot to my feet. “Okay, stop!” I thrust my hands in the air. “Just stop. Okay?”

  “What?” But his jaw was still clenched.

  I hadn’t expected any of that.

  “I made it up. All of it.” I lowered my hands, resting my knuckles on the table. “I made it up.”

  “What?! Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to talk about why I’m out here!” I yelled. “Okay? I don’t want to fucking talk about it.”

  “Oh.” But he was frowning, his eyebrows still pulled together. “You didn’t have to lie about that, and that’s a really shitty lie, Heather.”

  “I know.” My God. “I know.” I gentled my tone, falling back to sit again. I pulled my hands through my hair, cradling my head. If I could hide from my hiding spot, I would’ve. “I just really don’t want to talk right now, and I’m sorry. Dad didn’t call. Brad’s not exploiting him.”