Brody

by Victoria H. Smith

  Her hands went up to her hair, elbows on her raised knees up on the seat. “You could have died,” she sniffed, turning to me, and the water glassing her eyes was evident. “All it would have taken was the wrong hit. Him sending a blow into your chest or you—your heart could have given out in that fight and still you saved me. You saved me…”

  Her small body went breathy, her chest rising and falling, and I pushed a hand to her cheek, forcing those glassy eyes to look up at me. I leaned in cradling her face between my hands.

  “I was fine that day, Alexa. Nothing happened.”

  “But it could have!” she shot back. “It could have been the opposite of fine. It could have left you dead, but you did it anyway.”

  Her body shook, tremors under my hands and I brushed her cheeks with my thumbs, shaking my head. “I wasn’t thinking about me,” I told her, because I wasn’t. How could I? It was her. She was the only thing on my mind.

  “But you should have,” she said blinking her tears way. “You should have thought about that. If something happened… If I never got to know you…”

  She closed her eyes, leaning her forehead against mine and forcing my cap off her head. It fell to the truck floor, but she paid it no mind, pushing her tiny fingers into my hair.

  “If I never got to be with you…”

  I pulled her into my lap after she said that, holding her close to me; my heart. That space between my neck and shoulder dampened with her tears and I placed a hand on her hair. “Don’t cry. Don’t cry, it kills me.”

  “I can’t help it,” she said, sniffing as she lifted her head. “You know it could have turned out differently.”

  I did know that, but I also knew another thing. I ended up getting this job because of my heart condition and I ended up finding her because of this job.

  That could only be fate.

  But from the way she reacted, these series of events didn’t affect her the same way. She was scared. She was scared for me.

  “Alex—”

  “I want you to let me go at this alone,” she said, surprising me when she rose up and she reached out, touching my face so gently like she could break me. “I need you to drop me off. I need to go the rest of the way by myself. What if my sister’s ex turns up? I can’t, Brody. He could be a loose cannon and I can’t put you in any kind of situation where you’d get hurt.”

  I took her chin. “We already had this discussion, Alex. You already know I’m going. I’m with you on this and nothing’s changed on that.”

  “But that was before,” she breathed, sniffing. “I can’t let anything happen to you. I won’t let him have power over anyone else like…”

  The words left when her eyes closed.

  They left when I kissed her lips.

  Bracing her cheek, I put everything into it. I wasn’t going anywhere. I wasn’t leaving her. I already had to make sacrifices because of my condition and I refused to let her be one of them.

  Her lips fell from mine but not really. Bruised, they hovered over my mouth, her gaze that way, too.

  “He’s hurt so many,” she whispered touching my lips. “He’s already broken my family once. I won’t let him break us, too.”

  I brought my arms around her waist. “We don’t know he’s back and if he is, he won’t have the power. You said yourself your sister will make the right choice this time. He has nothing to hold power over.”

  Her gaze escaped then, fleeting, and I made her look at me when I slid my fingers along a strand of her hair. “Don’t worry, Alexa. We’re in this together.”

  Her hand moved up to cover mine. Her eyes closed and when she opened them, she closed the space, brushing our noses. “You don’t fight. If we see him, we leave. You don’t fight anymore for me. Promise me.”

  It was a promise I didn’t feel at all good about giving. The unknown met us in California, but I could promise her one thing. If he made an appearance, we’d come up with a new plan, a safe plan for all parties.

  “We’ll figure it out if we see him,” I told her. “But I promise no fighting. I won’t fight.”

  “And if something changes,” she said, slipping both hands over my heart, “here, you tell me. If your condition at all takes a turn, you’ll tell me.”

  She didn’t know it, but she was the only one that knew. I had told her more than I told anyone. I told her more than even my family.

  I smiled, dampening my lips before leaving a kiss on hers. I didn’t tell her she was the first to know. I wanted to show her instead.

  Her arms moved around my neck, her mouth opening with her kiss. “Can I do anything?” she asked pulling back slightly. “Anything to help? Maybe if you tell me what you take and what day and time, I can organize them. And do you watch your eating? I can help with that. With dancing, I had to do that all the time.”

  Smiling, I brushed her nose. “I could stand to eat better.”

  Her lips moved up in the corner in response. “Okay, we’ll do that. Aiden also has a special diet. He’s diabetic. We’ll all do it together.”

  Her words reached me in a place I didn’t expect. I’d been battling this alone since I found out. I had to, I felt like, for the sake of my family. They’d already been through a lot, so much in the last year with my pop’s own health scare and they didn’t need another burden to deal with. With that, I decided to take on the load myself. It had been so hard to deal with alone.

  So damn hard.

  I brought her closer to me, encasing her frame completely in my arms. “Where have you been?”

  She hugged my neck, burying her face there. “Trying to find you.”

  I captured her lips under mine, her breath, and parting her mouth, I let her know something. She wouldn’t not have a way of finding me again. I’d be here whenever she needed me and I had a feeling I had the same thing from her. And she showed me that, easing those thighs apart over my lap.

  She smiled, smelling like water lilies while she slid fingers down my biceps, moving her mouth to kiss my neck. My cock pierced my jeans, shooting up to seek that heat above it, but her hand made a fine replacement. She rubbed over me, undoing her shorts, and I laughed, easing her back a bit.

  I touched her neck. “I don’t want to get you arrested.” We were still on the shoulder of traffic after all.

  She simply replaced my hand with hers, sliding her zipper down and pushing my hand inside over her mound. Her lips hovered over my mouth. “You’re worth getting arrested over.”

  I’d never let that happen, though. And I think it was the same for her. We had to get on the road, but these moments we took if only for a few seconds before we did.

  A phone chirped in the air and we were denied that.

  Alex sat up with it, pulling my phone out of her back pocket. I’d been letting her hold onto it just in case. She frowned while looking at the front and when she crawled back over to her seat, I leaned in, watching to see what was up.

  “Aiden?” she automatically said. No, hello. Not one. Her hand gripped the phone. “Aiden, what’s going on? Are you there? Why did you call? Talk to me.”

  Pulling the phone away, she stared at it. “He’s not saying anything, but it’s one of his numbers. He used my sister’s landline.”

  I took the phone, pressing it to my ear. I didn’t hear him at all, but I did hear something, rustling. I put the phone on speaker, but held it out.

  That’s when we heard a scream.

  Alex ripped the phone away, horror on her face. “Aiden? Aiden, baby what’s going on?”

  But it wasn’t Aiden. The scream was female and it’s constant shrilling tone sent the hairs on my arm standing on end, as well as a sharp turn in my stomach. Alex screamed into the phone, but I could barely hear it over the one coming from my cell. She kept on, crying for Aiden to respond, but he wouldn’t. Eventually the screaming stopped, a break. Alex opened her mouth again to speak, but I stopped her raising my hand.

  “Maybe he can’t talk,” I told her. “Maybe he can hea
r us but he can’t speak out loud.” It was the only reason I could formulate that he would call and not respond. He wanted us to hear something. He wanted his aunt to hear something and that something was making a woman scream.

  Alex pulled the phone toward her mouth, her hand shaking. “Aiden, baby, if you can hear me,” she said looking up at me. “I’m coming. We’re coming.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Alexa

  Brody got us to California in half the amount of time it probably should have taken and it was a miracle we weren’t pulled over. Brody went well over the speed limit and nearly into triple digits; the clock on us, the clock on me. I recognized the voice too well through the phone. It was one that used to giggle alongside me, playing tag when we were children.

  Brody made me call the cops after I heard Elena’s voice. He had to because I could barely keep the phone in my hands I was shaking so hard. So he dialed for me, taking the call before I was able to take it myself and respond with vacant answers, the shock unable to recede. They called me back right before we hit city limits, telling me what I didn’t want to hear.

  “No one was there,” they’d said, making me think I was crazy. “Perhaps, you were mistaken.”

  But Aiden, he’d called from the house phone. No, I wasn’t mistaken and made the cops check twice just to be sure. By the grace of God, they had, staggering their arrival to Elena’s home an hour later, but again they told me the same thing. The apartment was empty. They’d checked through the windows. The apartment wasn’t in disarray and no one answered the door. They circled the complex, but again ended up with nothing. They told me Elena might have left and I should keep calling to check, so I did. But that didn’t ebb the feeling, the feeling Elena and Aiden didn’t leave. It was a feeling they were still there.

  Brody’s hand squeezed mine and I looked up at him.

  It will be okay, his blue eyes read to me, and they’d done that since the call, provided that reassurance so much stronger than words.

  I’d take them even if it wasn’t true.

  Elena didn’t live on the coast, her tiny spot rooted in the outskirts between occasionally planted palms trees within the concrete jungle of affordable housing. She had an apartment on third floor of a small complex, blue and white with brown shutters. From the outside, everything looked so normal, undisturbed like the cops said.

  “They could still be in there,” I told Brody now, and he nodded, unbuckling his seatbelt.

  He put his hand on the door. “I’m going to go check. Just make sure everything is okay, and then you can—”

  “No!” I grabbed him, bracing his arm. “You can’t. What if he’s in there? What if…”

  “Okay. Okay,” he said, bringing me into his chest, his hands, his body calming me down. His warm breath went down the strands of my hair, his fingers threading through. “What do you want to do then?”

  One thing was for certain, I didn’t want him to go inside. I didn’t want him, his heart, to take the risk, but if my sister was in there… If he left her for dead after doing something to her…

  I swallowed, asking Brody to circle the block instead. He asked me what we were looking for, but only I knew. I looked for any signs of him, a body, a car. He used to drive this old white Corolla, as the lot was empty of any vehicle at all, I had no idea if not spotting it was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “We can just take a look,” Brody whispered to me. We’d long since stopped, back in the parking lot. “Just let me take a look, Alexa.”

  Holding my arms, a shudder broke through me. That’s the last thing I wanted. That’s the last damn thing. His hand came to settle on my shoulder.

  “I’ll come right back if I hear anything,” he assured me. “Anything at all.”

  Brown eyes flashed before me, young ones that always looked for me and ears that always listened though miles away from him. If Aiden was in there, I needed to know.

  So sick, I nodded and not a moment later, a door clicked open, Brody’s truck door ajar.

  I can’t let him do this.

  I was out of the truck before I could think, but Brody, he was bigger. He was faster. He got me in his arms, bracing mine.

  “No,” was all he said. “No.”

  But he couldn’t stop me. He’d have to restrain me to do so and that’s something Brody Chandler would never do.

  “If we’re just coming back,” I told him. “Then I’m going, too.”

  He stared at me, long and hard, and for just a moment, I believed he might actually try to hold me back. Instead, he kissed my forehead, telling me to wait a second while he closed the truck door, the open vehicle still dinging in the air. Standing there, I let him, choosing to stare up at the apartment while I waited. For some reason, I believed doing that would tell me something. Brody took a minute and I turned, watching him straightening his shirt over his jeans while he made strides back to me. His arm came around my waist and then we went.

  We took the stairs with caution, Brody’s arm around me the whole way. We got to the third level, to my sister’s door, and everything really did look on the up and up. That’s when Brody’s arm left me, his hand poising to knock, but I waved him not to.

  Allowing myself to breathe, I pulled my sparkly bag around my front and took out the key designated for emergencies. I had it made from the one she forced me to give back after our falling out. I went to put it in the lock, but Brody touched my hand.

  “We shouldn’t,” he said, but I felt like I had to.

  “We leave if we hear something,” I told him, trying to keep the shake out of my voice. But I was scared, scared of so many things.

  His long fingers looped in mine. He kissed the back of my hand. “You let me go first.”

  God…

  Taking my key, he pushed it in himself, so quiet despite being so big. He slipped inside, the crack in the door giving me my own vantage point after he did. The living room clear, even the TV was off. She always had the TV on and music. She often played it while she cooked.

  Brody told me to let him go, but I couldn’t help letting my fingers push the door open wider and eventually, I stepped in, too. He’d gone somewhere, Brody, into another room and I somehow lost him.

  My heartbeat whispering his name with my steps. He didn’t answer and I felt like vomiting.

  “Brody,” I shuddered out. “Brody, where are you?”

  Nothing.

  My eyes blinking, coating, I forced bravery in my steps. I didn’t hear him, but was trying to be so quiet because that had been the original plan.

  I maneuvered around furniture, items of Elena’s history and mine. She got everything when I left. I couldn’t take anything with me and memories surfaced at an old blanket on the window. Mom had made that in the rare times when she had been sober. She used to read us stories underneath it, but now? Elena was using it as a window cover, something to block out the sun.

  Closing my eyes, my steps took me away from that. I traveled wayward and I didn’t know where I was going, but then I came across a room, one with plastic stars on the ceiling and army men on the bed.

  Aiden’s room was empty, vacant like the rest of the apartment I’d seen, and that would have made sense. But one thing in the room made the vacancy more than confusing.

  I picked up the action figure, life-sized with boxing gloves on, and the room tilted. I sank to the bed with it, feeling it as if it were still warm.

  “Alex?” came my name followed by a deep breath. “Thank God.”

  I looked up to see Brody coming to me, his hand on my arm before dropping to his knees. “I asked you to wait,” he said, his voice terse, frustrated. “You didn’t see anything did you? The rest of the apartment is clear, but…”

  The tears came in a wave I didn’t expect and as I attempted to pull in breaths, I discovered quickly the feat wasn’t easy. Hyperventilating, my shoulders shook and Brody’s hands came down on them. He guided me forward, making me put my face between my knees and I cradled Aide
n’s doll. I cradled it so hard.

  “Hey,” he soothed, his hand moving circles over my back. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll find them.”

  But what if it was too late? What if we found them too late? I rose up with the doll, the tears flooding more as I put a hand over my mouth.

  “He never goes anywhere without this,” the words came out choked. “Brody, something bad happened.”

  His face looked pained, pained for me. He squeezed my shoulder. “We will figure this out. We won’t stop looking until we find—”

  A noise made him pull me to him, noise coming directly ahead us.

  The shuffle in the closet sounded again, but this time, I had to listen for it and when I did, a near-muted sniff hit the air.

  I dropped the doll, rising up.

  “Alex, wait.” Brody’s hand came into mine, but I let go. I had a feeling I needed to for a second.

  I reached for the brass handle, but Brody got it first, shielding me with his big body. But he didn’t need to. He didn’t. I just had a feeling and that feeling proved to be something worth holding stake in at the sight of a little boy; a boy with coarse hair and brown skin. He lifted his head, it buried within the confines of his arms gripped around his legs. He did so cautiously and when he saw me behind watery brown eyes, the tear soaked cheeks pairing with them, my nine-year-old nephew lowered his knees. A large wet spot revealed damp pants and the puddle on the hardwood floor around him. His fear made my heart ache.

  I tried to be strong. I did, but tears fell and I was unable to stop them. I fell to the floor and he met me halfway, shaking in my arms. I couldn’t even ask him what happened, where he was, because I couldn’t form coherent words. The only thing I could do was quiet him, soothingly rubbing his back and telling him things I wasn’t sure of. I didn’t know if everything would be okay, if he’d be okay.

  I didn’t know what he’d seen.

  Steps sounded lightly, coming up on my side; Brody. His form blasted a fear in my nephew’s eyes and he cowered, crawling into my lap like when he was younger.