“You?”
Max sighed. He should’ve figured it was pointless to hedge. “Yep. I grew out of it… mostly, but I was the ultimate problem child for a while.”
Jed’s answer was drowned out by the thunder of tiny footsteps on the stairs. Tess barreled into the kitchen moments later. Max moved to intercept her before she could get too close to the stove, but Jed was quicker, catching her and reeling her in. “Watch yourself, little bug. Max has hot stuff in there.”
Tess pouted, but the reward of having Jed’s attention seemed to make it better. She made to climb up his legs the way she often did with Max. Max was puzzled when she paused and tilted her head to one side. “Which side is your owie on? I forgot again.”
Max couldn’t see which side Jed pointed to, but when Tess maneuvered herself up his right side, he figured whatever injuries Jed had must be on the left side of his body.
Behind Max, another set of small arms wound around his waist. He scooped Belle up and set her on the counter. As was her way, she’d snuck into the kitchen unnoticed. “Hey, bu… uh, sweetie. Want to help me mash the potatoes?”
Belle nodded, her dark curls bobbing around her face, and as Tess happily chattered away to Jed, Max set Belle to work.
Chapter Five
MAX PUSHED his plate away in disgust. Every holiday was the same: a horrible, awkward bust. The only change in scenery was Jed, and his silence only added to the strained atmosphere at the dinner table. And, Jed didn’t even bother to eat, something Max couldn’t understand.
Max found himself surreptitiously observing Jed as the oppressive attempt at the Brady Bunch dragged on. Jed’s profile was as unreadable as ever, but for some reason Max thought he looked different—wearier, older, and maybe even slightly thinner. Was such a thing possible in just a few days?
One thing was for sure: Jed was definitely distracted. Though his attention appeared focused on keeping Tess in line, Max could tell his mind was elsewhere. Little things gave him away—like the absent way he played with Tess’s long hair, and the way his gaze drifted to the back door, like he was imagining his escape.
Max wondered where Jed would rather be, and with who. Did he have a girlfriend out there somewhere? Or a….
Nick brought his hand down on the table with a startling slam. Belle jumped. Max reached automatically for her and pulled her from her seat onto his lap. He eyed Nick warily, ready to scoop the kids and walk if he launched into a drunken tirade. Being a douche bag was one of his favorite tricks to get out of dinner early.
This time, though, it appeared over before it began. Without a word, Nick shoved his chair back, glared at Jed, and left the room.
The children watched him go with wide, innocent eyes.
“Okay, kids,” Kim said with forced brightness. “Who wants pumpkin pie?”
No one, it seemed, from the silence, but Jed got to his feet, passed Tess to Kim, and limped to the kitchen counter to retrieve the store-bought dessert. Max watched in his peripheral vision, observing the careful way Jed carried his body and the subtle grimace he tried to hide. Again, Max found himself speculating on the severity of his injuries. The way he pushed his food around his plate was odd. Max wondered idly if the two things were connected.
Perhaps too idly. Kim waved her hand in front of his face as a phone rang somewhere in the house. “You’re spacing out a lot today. Are you feeling okay?”
Max rolled his eyes, unwilling to admit the real reason for his distraction, and pointed to Flo curled up under the table, asleep and content. “You’d know if I wasn’t.”
Kim wasn’t convinced, but Max was saved from her scrutiny by Jed coming back to the table, weighed down with pumpkin pie and four sets of dessert crockery. Four. Looked like he was done pretending to eat.
Max couldn’t help his curious glance, but Jed shook his head. The motion was slight—so subtle Max nearly missed it—but the message was clear.
Leave it alone.
Well, okay, then. Max shot Jed a quick, conspiratorial grin. With Kim’s watchful gaze burning a hole in the side of his face, he could relate to a desire for privacy.
Something akin to relief colored Jed’s expression. He leaned back in his seat and watched the kids demolish their dessert with a fond fascination that made Max smile. For creatures so dainty, they sure could put a hole in a pie.
Max was about done with his own pie when Nick reappeared in the doorway, an unlit cigarette in one hand, the cordless office phone in the other. He held out the phone for Jed. “It’s for you.”
Jed took the phone, his faint grin evaporating into a smooth, impassive mask. He held it to his ear and listened silently. Then, without uttering a word to whoever was on the other end, he hung up and walked out of the kitchen.
IT TOOK Max a while to settle the kids in their beds. With their parents yelling at each other downstairs, it was hard to convince them that everything was okay.
Tess fell asleep first. Max left Flo guarding the door and took Belle to her room across the hall. He took his time tucking her in. Kim was a hurricane when she was pissed. Combined with Nick’s drunken belligerence, they could scream at each other for hours. Tess’s room was at the back of the house. Unfortunately for Belle, the kitchen was directly below her.
“Is Daddy mad at Uncle Jed?”
Max measured his words. Despite Nick’s growing indifference to his children, Max held out hope that one day he’d remember how bloody lucky he was. “I don’t think he’s mad, bug. I think it’s going to take them a while to get used to each other. Uncle Jed’s been gone a long time.”
“That’s what Mom said. Is Uncle Jed going to leave again?”
“I don’t know.” Jed seemed attached to Belle and Tess, and fond of Kim, but Max didn’t know him well enough to judge whether they were reason enough for him to stick around. “I think he’s got some stuff to figure out before he makes a decision. Would you like him to stay?”
Belle nodded, her eyes dark and solemn. “I heard Mom tell him that he needs to put his head somewhere safe. It’s safe here, isn’t it?”
Max swallowed the lump in his throat. “Sure it is.”
“Then I want him to stay. He keeps Tess from breaking my stuff.”
At that, Max had to smile. Tess was like he’d been at her age: a notorious vandal. Nothing was safe, no matter who it belonged to. “I think he should—”
The shouting below cut off. Alarmed, Max twisted his head toward the door, listening for any sound of Kim’s distress. He heard nothing, so he bid Belle a hasty good-night and ran down the stairs.
He skidded to a stop by the kitchen table, where Kim sat alone. “I thought he’d finally clocked you. Don’t tell me it was the other way around?”
Kim pushed back her chair and scowled. “Stop it. You know he’d never hit me. If you must know, Jed came back and hauled him outside. I’m hoping they’re finally talking and not killing each other. Nick can’t go on like this.”
Max scoffed. “Yeah, sure. You think Nick would have the balls to get into it with someone like Jed? In case you haven’t noticed, Jed isn’t exactly a shrimp like you.”
It was a low jibe. Mocking Kim’s petite five-foot stature in the same breath as calling her husband a spineless prick was a bad idea. Fortunately, he was saved from her wrath by Nick skulking back through the French doors.
Max watched him squeeze Kim’s arm as he passed her. He wasn’t impressed, but it was as close to an apology as Nick ever got. Max glanced around for Flo, eager to make his escape before he let his irritation get the better of him, but strangely she was nowhere to be seen.
“She’s outside,” Kim said, reading his thoughts. “I think she was looking for Jed.”
The knowing smirk on her face confused Max, but she left the kitchen before he could figure it out. Puzzled, he headed for the back door, and sure enough, he spotted Jed leaning against the back wall of the house, tossing a ball into the darkness for Flo to retrieve. They looked like they’d been playing th
eir game for a while.
Max joined him at the wall and mirrored his pose. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
Jed kept his gaze on the shadowy gloom. “It’s not the worst I’ve ever had.”
Somehow, Max could believe it. “It’s not the worst I’ve had here either. Who was on the phone?”
“Frank.”
“Your dad?”
Jed launched the ball to the back of the sweeping garden without answering, then sighed, his face weary and resigned. “When were you going to tell me my brother’s an alcoholic?”
Again, Jed’s candor caught Max off guard. Kim was good at dodging the term, and it had been a long time since he’d heard it acknowledged so bluntly. “I thought you knew. Nick’s pretty good at hiding it, but he drinks a lot at home. I figured you would’ve seen it.”
“Does he hit them?”
“No! God, no. The worst he does to the kids is ignore them, and he’s never hit Kim. I don’t think he’d dare, and believe it or not, he’s not always like this. Kim says he’s been worse since….”
Jed rolled his eyes, his disgust clear. “He’s not putting this shit on me.”
Jed’s tone was even, but Max sensed the anger and resentment simmering beneath it. “I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault,” Max said. “It is what it is. The girls have learned to live with it, and he’s not so bad sometimes.”
“What about you?”
“What do you mean?”
Jed shrugged. “It can’t be easy watching him treat your sister like crap.”
“It’s not, but she’s an adult, and she makes her own choices. No one forces her to stay with him.” Max felt a bump on his legs and bent down to retrieve Flo’s ball. “It helps that I never really see him. He works a lot, and he tends to give me a wide berth. Doesn’t want to catch my gay-boy cooties.”
“Don’t let that bother you. He’s been hiding from mine for years.”
Max came upright slowly. He’d misunderstood. There was no way Jed was gay. It would explain some of the excruciating tension between the two brothers, but Kim would have told Max something like that.
Her knowing smirk flashed unbidden into his mind. Surely not…. “You’re gay?”
Jed tilted his head to one side. “You didn’t know?”
Max’s world seemed to spin on its axis. “I had no idea. Nick, uh, never said, and my gaydar’s pretty shitty. Must have something to do with my brain’s funky frequency.”
Jed nodded. Suddenly, he seemed completely exhausted. He turned his face to the sky and closed his eyes. “He told me about you. I guess I figured it worked both ways.”
Max couldn’t picture the words “my brother’s gay” ever leaving Nick’s mouth, but he kept the thought to himself. He was pondering what to do next when a noise from an open upstairs window set his teeth on edge.
Oh yeah. It wasn’t enough that he had to watch Kim let her husband treat her like shit, he also had to listen to them make it up. He pushed off the wall and whistled for Flo, intending to bid Jed a hasty good-bye.
Something stopped him. Maybe it was Jed’s unreadable eyes or defeated posture, but instead of walking away, Max reached out and touched his shoulder.
“Go get your stuff. Let’s go home.”
Chapter Six
JED BRACED his weight on the sink and pulled himself upright. He hovered a moment halfway, with his hand over his mouth, sure he would puke for the hundredth time that morning. He didn’t, but the sharp pain in his stomach sent him back to the floor.
It was past noon by the time he dragged himself into the kitchen in search of something to soak up the reluctant, solitary tramadol in his delinquent stomach. He put the kettle on the stove and slumped into a chair at the battered old table, dozing with his head in his arms in a drug-induced stupor while he waited for it to boil.
Sometime later, Max placed a steaming mug of tea in front of him, rousing him with a gentle nudge. “Still feel bad?”
Jed put his hands around the mug, absorbing the heat. The cold had never bothered him much, but recently he’d found he couldn’t get warm. “What makes you say that?”
“You’ve been pretty green since yesterday, and Flo has her eye on you. What’s up? Are you sick or something?”
Jed shook his head. He’d been sick every day of the week since Thanksgiving, but to answer “Or something” sounded lame, and he wasn’t about to explain the state of his faulty stomach. Screw that. He’d spent enough time talking about it, and where had it gotten him? Curled up on the bathroom floor of a cabin in the ass end of nowhere.
Max tipped some food into Flo’s bowl and slid into the seat opposite. “It’s quiet up here, isn’t it? It can get a bit oppressive sometimes.”
“It’s not that.”
And it wasn’t. Jed hadn’t been at the cabin long enough to figure out if he liked it or not, and he was still suppressing the urge to crawl back into town and throttle his brother.
Nick. Jed closed his eyes. He didn’t want to think about him. Instead, he let his mind drift to another kitchen he’d found himself in on Thanksgiving night. He’d been so eager to leave the Cooper house he hadn’t considered the three-mile hike to the cabin, but Max had. He’d led Jed to a beat-up old house on the wrong side of town, and Jed was halfway up the driveway before he recognized the Valesco family home.
The belated realization had thrown him. Until that moment, he’d found himself indifferent toward his hometown, but this warm, ramshackle house was different. It was the first time Jed truly felt like he was somewhere he’d been before.
His long-put-off reunion with Hector and Anna Valesco had been emotional. Anna had cried, and her tears got to him. Did he really deserve them after he’d run out on the family who’d treated him like a son? Probably not. Repressed guilt ate away at Jed, and he’d felt disoriented after that. Even Hector’s attempt to pass him money and Carla’s searching stare hadn’t roused him enough to make much conversation. It wasn’t long before Dan offered him and Max a ride back to the cabin.
“Don’t be a stranger. I know this isn’t where you want to be, but it’s good to have you home,” Dan had said.
He’d driven away before Jed could articulate an answer. Dazed, Jed had wandered inside the cabin and found Max waiting for him. Max took his bag to his room, made him a cup of some strangely addictive tea and disappeared, leaving him to his own devices. After that, as had become his habit lately, he’d spent the rest of the night watching the rain.
“Jed?”
Jed opened his eyes, startled. It seemed despite his best efforts, his head had found its way back to the table. “Sorry, what?”
Max grinned, but his gaze was concerned. “You really don’t look well. Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“No.”
Unfazed, Max folded his arms across his chest. “How about the CliffsNotes version.”
Jed sat up, considering his options. Kim had asked him similar questions, but he’d brushed her off with little trouble. The three-story townhouse was big enough to avoid her if he needed to, and the children kept her busy. The cabin was much smaller, and from the look on Max’s face, he wasn’t as easy to fool. “How much do you already know?”
Max shrugged. “Not much. Just that you split town a long time ago. I didn’t know you were a soldier until you got hurt. Nick never talks about you, though I guess I know why now.”
Jed snorted. They’d had the gay conversation already, and it was pretty obvious why Nick had kept it a secret. Time hadn’t healed his inbred intolerance. “Did he tell you what happened to me?”
“No. The soldiers who came to the house said you’d been shot and caught in an explosion. They didn’t say where or how, and Nick was gone before we could ask him.”
“That pretty much covers it,” Jed said dryly. He had no idea if Nick had been told about his preexisting gastroparesis diagnosis in the military hospital. If he had, he’d kept it to himself. “I can walk well enough now, but….”
“So
metimes it hurts like hell?”
“Something like that.”
Max shifted in his chair, relaxing his arms and leaning back. “Is it getting better?”
“It’s been worse, but I’m pretty much stuck with it, for the time being at least.”
Affinity flashed in Max’s eyes. “That can’t be any fun. There must be stuff you can do to make it better.”
“Probably.” Jed reached for the cooled tea and took a tiny, experimental sip. “I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.”
Max made a noncommittal noise; he seemed distracted. Jed waited, reading him with practiced eyes. Years of analyzing human behavior had taught him that, given enough time, someone like Max would always say what he needed to say.
He didn’t have to wait long.
“What happened to the bullet? Did it go right through your leg?”
“Yep. Through my thigh.”
Max chewed on his lip, his head tilted to one side, and this time, Jed didn’t have the patience to wait. He knew exactly what Max wanted because he’d fended off the same request from Dan. Only difference was, Max seemed to be searching for a diplomatic way to ask.
“Want to see?”
Max’s eyes widened, but Jed didn’t wait for a response. He stood, balancing himself on the table and reached for the waistband of his sweatpants.
Max pushed his chair back and held out his arms. “Lean on me.”
Jed hesitated. It wasn’t his nature to lean on anyone, but Max held firm, taking Jed’s hand from the table and lifting his arm over his shoulders. “Okay?”
In answer, Jed eased one side of his sweatpants over his hip and halfway down his thigh. He reached for the hem of his boxers, grateful for Max’s steadying hands, and rolled the material up to reveal the circular scar on the outside of his leg. With gritted teeth, he twisted to reveal the matching mark on the inside.
Max leaned forward, catching Jed off guard. He’d expected a reaction. Pity, horror, disgust—he didn’t much care which—but he was sorely unprepared for the sensation of a rough, calloused fingertip tracing the length of the surgical scar he’d failed to mention.
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