The alcohol still burned, but less with each sip.
I didn’t want to ask but knew I had to. I couldn’t pretend that tomorrow wouldn’t come. “What time are we supposed to be there tomorrow?” I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat, washing it down with another sip of bourbon.
Dad let out a shuddering breath. “The service is at nine.” He paused to take a breath and rub at his eyes like he was tired or sad or both. “Afterward, we’ll have the wake here. I wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse, but…” He shook his head. “I just thought here was better.”
I reached across the table to take dad’s hand and gave it a squeeze. There weren’t many moments in my life after he came into it that I didn’t consider him my dad, one hundred percent. Tonight, there was no question in my mind that whether he contributed half my DNA or not, he was my dad.
“It’s better,” I told him. “Is there anything I can help with?” Suddenly I felt like a chump for not asking sooner. I should have shouldered the burden of making the arrangements; she was my mom after all, and he was taking things pretty hard.
Dad shook his head. “I think we’ve got things settled.”
Running a hand through my hair, I gritted my teeth before saying, “I’m sorry dad. I should have been here more, helped with the planning and—”
He held up a hand to silence me and shook his head again. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve got practice and you need your head in the game. I took care of this because I wanted to and because I didn’t think you should have to. You’ve already lost a lot; I didn’t want to drag you through it.”
It made me feel worse. What a jerk I was to not think about how it was eating him up to set all of this crap up, so wrapped up in what I was feeling that I didn’t even think about how he was taking things.
I went to take another sip of bourbon only to discover that it was empty again. Grabbing the bottle, I poured myself another glass, thinking about my mother. She was a beautiful woman, even as she began to get older. When she’d been young, she’d been a real looker. The kind that made guys stop and stare as they passed her on the street. She could have been a model, I always thought, except that she was too short. She barely came up to my shoulders. But her face had been heart shaped and charming, her smile wide and alluring, like she had this secret that she wasn’t going to tell you no matter how many times you asked.
I remember that smiling face now and her laugh, like wind chimes or falling water or something else dumb and poetic like that. I wasn’t good at describing things like that; it had always been more of Ashley’s thing.
When mom had started going out with Dad—Hank, my stepdad, not the piece of crap that was my biological sperm donor—I’d been pretty skeptical. He seemed like just another loser who was going to dump her when things got too complicated. And I was generally a complication.
No one wanted a woman with baggage, no matter how hot she was.
But he’d stuck around. Hank had turned into the kind of father that my father should have been, the lazy bum. So then they started to get serious and suddenly we were having test run family dinners and I was getting introduced to Hank’s daughter, just a year younger than me.
Lemme tell you, I hadn’t been thrilled by the idea of a little sister. Everything I’d heard about them, mostly from my friends at school, was that they were whiney and annoying. The last thing I wanted to add to my life.
But Ashley wasn’t like that. She was kind and thoughtful and liked football, too. It was the common ground we’d found when we were trying to get over the awkwardness of our parents dating. She was cool like I hadn’t known girls could be cool, but not cool like she was a boy. She was just a girl who could talk about boy things while she was wearing those stupid purple dresses that she used to like so much.
For the longest time, that was her favorite color; purple. Royal purple, light purple, blinding neon purple. Anything that had that shade of bluish, pinkish, reddish whatever was suddenly a must have for her. It should have been ridiculous and annoying, but I just thought it was cute.
Not that I would let anyone know that of course. I was thirteen and working at the whole cool kid vibe, so saying something was “cute” wasn’t an option.
“I’m grateful for you kids, you know,” dad said, reminding me that I was sitting in the kitchen drinking bourbon with my dad. Thirteen-year-old me never would have believed it.
Smiling, I told him, “I’m the one who should be grateful. I got lucky and I haven’t forgotten that.”
Dad put down his glass to rub at his eyes. Although I tried to look away to give the man a little privacy, I could see the tears in his eyes.
Taking a breath, I pushed back from the table. “It’s kinda late. I think I’m going to check on Ashley, make sure she’s doing okay.”
“Sure, that sounds like a good idea.” As I turned away to head up the stairs, my heart suddenly hammering in my chest, dad called after me, “but if she’s sleeping, don’t wake her up. Let her sleep. She’s done a lot of traveling today and I’m sure she’s exhausted.”
I nodded, waving my hand over my shoulder as I continued to walk. “Sure thing.”
My feet sounded heavy on the stairs, like they were echoing off the walls and bouncing off the ceiling, bowling balls being dropped on hardwood floors. It was ridiculous, of course; you probably couldn’t even hear me unless you had cat ears or something. But that’s how it felt.
Maybe it was because I knew that Ashley was sleeping upstairs, curled up on her old bed, her breathing soft and even as she lay there.
I pictured her from high school, her honey blonde hair so long it nearly touched her butt and her skin just tan enough to use the term sun kissed. I remembered her laughing all the time, her smile broad and infectious, so open that you felt like you knew everything that was going on everywhere and that there could be no secrets when you saw her smile.
As a kid, she’d been kind of adorable. A little too lanky and a little too geeky to really be pretty or cute like some of the girls, but she was like an ugly puppy, so awkward that she was endearing. That had changed pretty fast after I’d met her, though. By the time she’d hit fourteen, she’d started to change. Dramatically. And I wasn’t the only one who noticed.
Shaking the image from my head—or, at least, trying to—I focused on heading up the stairs. The bourbon had my body feeling warm and a little tingly, but I wasn’t drunk. Not yet. There was a light buzz going on in my head which made me feel a little better. It was easier to deal with everything that was going on, the things that were eating away at me. It was liquid pain medication and liquid courage all wrapped up in one neat little bow and for just a second, a fleeting, split-second, I thought I could understand why my biological father would be weak enough to give up everything for the bottom of a bottle.
Then I realized that he was just an irresponsible asshole that was too weak to fight for the things worth fighting for and pushed him out of my mind completely.
I didn’t talk to the man even now and I didn’t foresee that changing anytime soon.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I made a quick left down the hall, passing the bathroom on my left and my old bedroom—exactly as I’d left it, even though I insisted that they use it for something useful—on the right. Straight ahead, her door already open, was Ashley’s room. I could just make out the edge of her purple bed through the open door.
I paused in the doorway when I reached her room, catching my breath. My heart hammered in my chest and I tried to write it off as the alcohol in my system, but I knew better. A buzz didn’t turn me into some lovesick teenager.
No, that was something only Ashley could do.
Carefully pushing the door the rest of the way open, I stuck my head inside. She was laying on the bed, purple pillows piled up at the head of her bed and not a one of them underneath her own head.
I stopped after only three steps into her room. My eyes were riveted to her sleeping form. It had b
een a long time since I’d seen her and as I felt something in me ache a little bit, I realized how much I’d missed her.
The last time I’d seen her in person, she’d been lovely, smiling and tanned and looking like something that walked straight out of a magazine. But my memory hadn’t done her justice. Staring at her now, I saw that she was, even more, gorgeous than before. It was as though she were a bottle of wine or something; she just kept getting better with age.
My eyes made their way up her long, shapely legs encased in comfy pants that clung like a second skin. I tried not to stare too long at her ass, round and perky, before moving on up, following the slope of her tiny waist and the full curve of her breasts.
She’d filled out so damn perfectly that I knew she’d been the wet dream of more than one guy I’d gone to school with.
By the time my eyes had gotten to her face, it was almost too much for me to handle. She was my sister; I loved her. It should have been that simple, and maybe if we were related by blood instead of by our parents’ marriage, it would have been. But we weren’t and it wasn’t and even years ago as a horny teenage boy who was trying and succeeding at getting into every hot girl’s pants at school, I’d been captivated by the one girl I couldn’t have.
Taking a slow, steadying breath, I reminded myself that my body had reactions to hot chicks and that was all this was. As for loving her, well, that was what siblings did. That was perfectly fine and normal.
Telling myself that did nothing to slow my heart rate or quell the strange and sudden desire that had filled me at the sight of Ashley since I was sixteen damn years old.
“You were not easy to live with,” I muttered quietly to her, not wanting to wake her, but unable to stop myself from speaking.
I’d grown up under the same roof as her for years and it hadn’t been easy. There had been slip-ups, lost towels, unlocked bathroom doors, and summer pool parties. Things I couldn’t avoid, because we lived in the same damn house and we were teenagers and my hormones had been all over the place.
Except now they’d settled—at least marginally—and those feelings that kept coming up hadn’t gone away.
I didn’t know what to do with them, but I knew what I should do with them.
Shaking my head, I smiled ruefully at my stepsister as she slept, and let out a sigh. Stepping back out of the room, I pulled the door half closed so that we wouldn’t wake her with our drinking, and left her to sleep off her jetlag. Whatever I felt and whatever that meant, I did love my stepsister and I was glad she was here. I needed her support as much as I needed anything else right now.
Chapter Three
The room was dark, but I could make out the lavender canopy above my head by the dim light filtering in through the open window. I blinked several times before I was able to clear away the confusion at seeing that canopy, remembering that I was home.
Unfortunately, that memory also made me realize that I was home for a reason and it wasn’t a happy one. The grief at Selene’s death overwhelmed me for a long moment and I blinked back sudden, hot and prickling tears.
I wondered how long it would take to get over her death, but then I remembered that I’d already lost a mother before and realized that I would never truly get over it. The pain would get duller, farther away, but it would never leave me.
It didn’t necessarily make me feel better, but I took some solace in knowing that eventually I would reach a point where I could think of her fondly without feeling as though someone was squeezing my heart in a vice grip.
Stretching, I let my body wake up before settling back in bed, listening to the sounds of the house.
The sound of laughter traveled up the stairs like little foot soldiers, echoing into my room. They were male voices, familiar and warm. I recognized my dad as he spoke, though I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then I heard his voice.
Danny.
My heart gave a quick jump and I suddenly felt a little breathless. He’s here, I thought stupidly. Of course he was there; this was home and my father—our father—needed him.
Pushing myself into a sitting position, I rolled my shoulders once, getting the last kinks out of it after my flight over here. The talking from downstairs continued and it warmed my heart to remember all the times my father and Danny had bonded, becoming a real family.
I smiled. We were a real family and we’d pull through the heartache of losing Selene just like we pulled through everything else. It wouldn’t be easy; she’d leave a whole in our world for a long time, but we’d fill it with love and happy memories of her. It was all we could do now.
I stood then, prepared to head downstairs to join the men in my life. Before I made it to the door, however, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Pausing, I took a moment to assess myself, though I knew that was ridiculous. It was my dad and my stepbrother downstairs, not anyone I needed to impress. They would think I looked good—or at least like me—regardless of how I actually look.
Still. I took a moment to comb out my tangled hair, running my fingers through it until the strands were straight and smooth. There wasn’t really anything I could do about my puffy eyes; I’d been crying and they’d know it. But I took out my eye drops and used them to clear up the redness a little. I still looked sad and puffy, but, at least, my blue eyes were clear.
For a quick, foolish moment, I thought about changing into something else, something prettier. I was wearing the black leggings I’d picked out for the flight because they were so worn and comfortable and had a sweatshirt over a lightweight, airy shirt that was comfortable, though not very good at accentuating my assets. Still, it was flirtier than the sweatshirt and it was light enough that it, at least, hinted at my curves.
Yanking off the sweatshirt, I fixed my hair one more time, made sure my minimal makeup didn’t look scary, and then chastised myself for even bothering with all of this. There was no one to impress, I told myself again, but I felt a little more confident just the same when I finally left my room.
I headed down the stairs towards the kitchen where the laughter was coming from. I walked in to see my dad and Danny sitting at the kitchen table sipping on an amber colored liquid that I was willing to bet was bourbon, laughing and talking congenially. It was nice to see dad in such high spirits and for a moment, I just stood in the doorway watching.
“She was furious,” Dad continued, in the middle of a story. “You had taken that new bike out without so much as a shirt on, much less a helmet or a jacket for the storm that was rolling in. Out to prove something, I’m sure, but when she got a hold of you—soaking wet and all scraped up—you looked like the devil himself had come to town.”
Danny laughed and I couldn’t help but smile. I remembered that day and I remembered why he’d been shirtless. He had been trying to prove something, but it was because I’d dared him to do it. We both knew that storm was coming and that it was supposed to be a real downpour—but no lightning, thank god. He’d gotten that new bike for his birthday and he was so busy bragging about how good he was at riding it, how many tricks he could do, how awesome he was, that I got frustrated with him.
Determined to pop that ego of his, I’d dared him to ride out into the storm, shirtless like some Viking warrior, and jump the little ditch that separated the little suburbian outlet from the park just down the way.
At the time, I’d felt confident that he wouldn’t do it—or couldn’t do it, either way—and that I would finally take him down a peg or two. Instead, he’d actually managed it and when he’d come back, cheeky and grinning (at least, until his mom had gotten a hold of him), I’d been sure that I would never hear the end of it.
And he had been a little impossible after that. I thought he’d spend the better part of forever bragging about it, but instead, he took me out the next day and started to teach me to do some of the tricks. I never got as good as he did, but it was enough to impress some of his friends from school.
Clearing my throat, I got the guys’ attention. “
Hey,” I said by way of greeting, my eyes trying not to linger too long on Danny.
Dad smiled at me but stayed seated, while Danny stood. “Hey, kiddo, how was your nap? Feel better?” dad asked, eyes crinkled with kindness.
I nodded as Danny made his way over to me. My heart gave another hard, powerful thump against my chest and for a wild second, I was worried that Danny could hear it.
He smiled at me and opened his arms. I fell into his embrace, wrapping my arms around his back as his went around my shoulders. For a long moment, we just held each other. It was a perfect moment, but it brings up things I’d been trying to bury. Things that had been coming up since my arrival home, though I’d worked so hard to move past them.
I couldn’t tell if we clung to each other for longer than was appropriate, but in that moment, I didn’t care.
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