A Brother's Secret

by A. J. Downey

  “You had a life as Lexi, baby. I get it.”

  “Yeah, you get it, Kyle but Joey? Joey’s not going to…”

  “Problem?” Trigger called down from the second floor of the motel, over the railing.

  “No,” Kyle called up.

  “If there’s a problem, I bet I can solve it,” Reaver called down with a wicked grin.

  “Fuck you, no! You’re not solving anything,” I called back.

  Reaver cackled like a maniac in response and shot forward, disappearing into his and Trigger’s shared room. It was him, Trigger, Disney, me and Kyle on this run to Indigo Ink. Revelator had a wife and kids which made it harder for him to break away. He’d wanted to come, though. Was a little intent on it, actually; something wasn’t quite sitting right but hell if I knew what it was.

  “I say let’s get it done, get a few hours of sleep and take our happy asses back home,” Disney said and I felt bad.

  “I appreciate you coming,” I said and he smiled taking the sting out of his next words.

  “Then let’s go get your shit already. Faster you get it done, the sooner you ain’t never got to pretend you’re someone else or look back.”

  He had a point, but still, it was never a fun thing breaking someone’s heart all over again which I was bound to do here. Joey wasn’t going to take my disappearance, sudden reappearance, and subsequent vanishing all over again really well. He was bound to not take me pitching up with four unknown bikers from Kentucky real well, either.

  “Why does this bother you?” Kyle asked quietly and I sighed.

  “Not exactly a shining example of my finest hour, you know?” I said.

  “No, I don’t know… why don’t you explain it to me?”

  “Later,” Trigger called out and he and Reaver were back down from the rooms. “Let’s get this over with, grab a few hours and head back.”

  I sighed and felt my shoulders slump, nodding wearily and we headed over, the five of us, on four bikes. The shop was lit with its familiar blue neon and was as busy as ever. It was the middle of our day and I felt a huge pang of guilt. I mean, I guess it was better than me being dead which is where I thought I would be at this point, but nobody needed to know that.

  Disney went in ahead of us, Kyle held the door for me, and I slipped through. He was right behind me, followed by Trigger and Reaver and the first thing I did was pick up my portfolio and slip it to Disney. If it were the only thing we got out of this, then let it be so. I didn’t know what kind of reception I was about to get.

  Kit looked up from her computer screen and froze, her pink bubble gum she’d blown into an expert bubble, snapping. She took a full two seconds to pull it off her lips with her tongue and suck it back into her mouth.

  “Hey, Joey!” she called and her tone wasn’t friendly, but it wasn’t exactly hostile, either. More of an ‘oh, shit… I don’t know what to do with this one’ which was fine. I wouldn’t have been so uncertain, though. I would have been pissed off.

  The guns in the shop stopped buzzing, people looked up and surprise flitted across Lissard’s face; Djinn looked nonplussed, but this was Joey’s shop and as the king, it was his job and his place to deal with me. Joey rolled across the checkered linoleum floor and his green eyes burned.

  “And just where the fuck have you been?” he barked and I tilted my head. His voice was barely restrained and I knew this was going to be a knock-down drag-out.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said and let out a pent-up breath slow and controlled. “I don’t want any trouble, I just want to get my shit and go.”

  “No! Fuck that Lexi! You owe me a goddamned explanation!”

  “Fuck,” I muttered.

  “Which one’s yers again?” Trigger asked. I turned to look at him, standing behind me just inside the door, chewing on the end of a black e-cigarette.

  “Back wall, central station.”

  “No, fuck that! Who the fuck are you?” he demanded.

  “We’re her new friends,” Reaver answered and followed Trigger to the back. They had a couple of tool boxes that would hold my shit, but that fit nicely in their saddlebags. Disney held a third in case they needed it.

  “I don’t care about the gloves and saran wrap and shit. Just get my ink, there should be a rotary gun in the drawer, and whatever other essentials,” I told him.

  “Lexi, seriously, what the fuck?” Djinn demanded from the corner.

  “You disappear for a couple of months, no call no show on your clients, then just show up here rip out your shit and leave?” Joey demanded.

  “Like I said, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I’m sorry, but this is really for the best. You won’t hear from me again. I promise.”

  “Not good enough,” Joey came out from behind the counter and said, “Kit, call the cops!”

  “What for?” I demanded.

  “For robbing the place,” Joey said defiantly.

  “Oh, fuck you, Joey. All that shit is mine – bought and paid for with my own fuckin’ money!” I shouted, outraged. He grabbed my arm and made to haul me in but Kyle stepped between us, a gentle hand on Joey’s chest.

  “Don’t touch her.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Joey demanded and hauled off, and I got in it to win it then. I caught his wrist, stepped past Kyle and landed Joey on his ass. He slid back into some of the waiting area chairs, shoving them into the front window which shuddered with the impact but thankfully, didn’t break.

  “Woo hoo hoo! She got me with that one last night!” Reaver cried. God, had it really only been last night? Too much shit was happening too fucking close together. That felt like days or weeks ago already.

  Out loud I said, “No, different move,” adding dryly, “You’re not helping!”

  “Sorry,” Reaver muttered.

  Joey looked up at me like I had a forked tongue and I shook my head, “You don’t touch him. These guys are the least of your fuckin’ worries. You don’t have a clue who I am or what I’ve been through but he,” I pointed back at Kyle, “is everything. Now sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. I don’t owe you anything!” I turned to Kyle to check and make sure he was okay while Joey climbed to his feet. Kyle looked amused but what came out of Joey’s mouth made me freeze.

  “The fuck you don’t! I made you, Lexi Duran!”

  I turned slowly and spat in his face, “No, I made Lexi Duran. She doesn’t exist, asshole! She never did. This whole time, this whole thing is all a fucking lie! So suck on that, why don’t you!”

  “You fucking this guy?” he demanded, and of course, it always devolved into that, didn’t it?

  “Yup, every chance I can get and while the sex wasn’t half bad with you, it's fucking mind blowing with him!” I stared Joey down and if looks could fucking kill… I didn’t give a shit, though. I’d broken up with Joey to try and spare him some pain, but shit… this was all my fucking fault. The anger, the bitterness, the rage in his face was all a demon of my own summoning. Not my finest hour. Not by a long fucking shot. Didn’t matter what I did or who I was with, it always turned to shit despite my best fucking intentions.

  “Shit, fuck, goddamnit!” I muttered as pain replaced the anger in Joey’s eyes. They glassed over and I stared at the fucking ceiling and counted to ten. I couldn’t and wouldn’t ever fault someone for feeling a depth of emotion for someone else but the person he loved wasn’t me, she was a lie.

  “You owe me something,” he said and I nodded.

  “Yup, I do… but I can’t give it to you.” Guilt ate at me as Trigger and Reaver filed out, they’d pillaged my shit, filled all three of the tool boxes while Joey and I bickered and he shook his head, helpless.

  “Why are you doing this to us?” he demanded and I swallowed hard.

  “I’m not, there was no real ‘us’ and you can’t know how sorry I am for doing this to you, but it’s over. I’m done, and I’m going now. I hope you wind up with someone worth more.”

  Kyle’s h
and landed on my shoulder and he squeezed. It was like breaking up with Joey all over again but on a monumental scale.

  “Fuck, well, if you’re not Lexi Duran who the fuck are you then!?” he screamed as we went out the door. Sirens were fast approaching and I didn’t answer him. I was hoping like hell it wouldn’t be an unanswered question that haunted him the rest of his fucking life, because the look of betrayal on his face? It would damn sure haunt mine… At least he was still alive, though. At least I’d managed to do that right.

  25

  Data…

  “Don’t do this to yourself,” I said softly when we were safely shut into our motel room. Disney was sharing the other bed, but he was giving us some privacy, smoking a joint out front. She sighed out and looked up, her expression bleak and I knew exactly what she was up to. Blaming herself, taking it all on her shoulders and bearing the brunt of everyone’s pain with a heaping side of guilt.

  It was something that was quintessentially Mali. I just didn’t think it was something she could turn off. I dropped onto the end of the bed beside her and she looked over at me and just sort of keeled over, resting her head on my shoulder. She sniffed, and I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. I’d rolled the dice. She could have flown off the handle at me, vented some of that rage at herself and maybe some of the pain she was feeling. She was always super sensitive about hurting other people. Hated it, but sometimes, like now, it couldn’t be helped.

  I put my arms around her and just held her while her eyes leaked and she shuddered silently against me. I didn’t know how she could do that, sob without making a sound, but when she did, I could tell just how much she was hurting. The crying jag in Ft. Royal was her angry crying. When she wept with no sound, she grieved.

  “Who we mourning, baby.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice feeble and water logged, “Lexi, I guess.”

  I could see it. I nodded and held her tighter, kissing her hair, breathing her in, saying the only words of comfort I could for this impossible situation, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, it’s stupid…”

  “It’s not stupid,” I rejected the notion out of hand. “You built a life as her, relationships, and that’s a pretty powerful thing.”

  “But I wasn’t her, it was all a lie,” she argued pathetically.

  “May have been a lie, but you definitely were her. I wish I could make this one better.”

  “You do, I’m just… I’m just scared. I don’t want to hurt you, or anyone, like that again.” Then she said the words that send my insides heaving, “I totally didn’t expect you to show up. I thought I was as good as dead when I posted that message.”

  It hit me, like a stone dropped into a well, a leaden rock of reality disturbing the surface of my neat little pond I had constructed in my mind. I choked it down and sucked in a deep breath, letting nothing show on the outside how deeply and awfully her confession affected me.

  “Not on my watch,” I chided gently and then I held her close and closer because I really didn’t want to have to imagine a world without Amalia in it.

  I hadn’t realized she’d lost hope that hard, had never in a million years entertained the idea that my proud, brave, strong, woman would ever contemplate giving up. Shit, it fucking rattled me to my core. Scared me like no other, and made me feel helpless that it’d been that close. A near thing… but not on my watch. I’d swooped in and saved the day, but fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck… at the last fucking second!

  “I don’t know what I would do without you,” she said tearfully and looked up at me.

  I pursed my lips and searched her beautiful face and committed as hard as I had ever committed to her before when I said, “You don’t ever have to find out.”

  She threw her arms around me and I held her back and realized that for as strong as Mali was, she indeed had a breaking point and we were fucking at it. I needed to take her home.

  She was somber and somehow less the whole ride back. One word answers or noncommittal grunts were about all she could muster to the rest of the guys. Disney had helped by giving her a joint and standing outside the room with her as she smoked it. I watched them talk softly and a new friendship was tentatively born. Out of all my brothers, Disney knew a thing or two about hiding who he was.

  We didn’t sleep well. I think both of us were thinking too much, but neither one of us were really in a place to talk about it. At least not yet. I was still reeling from her admission. I knew she harbored a darkness in her. I think all of us did; me included. It was a very different animal all together knowing that she had thought about it. That it had been more than a mere moment of what Dani called ‘L’appel du vide.’ Those little self-destructive, fatalistic thoughts we all held inside of ourselves. Like standing on the edge of a cliff taking pictures and suddenly thinking that you could just take that one last step and it would be over and the thought of that is appealing… Even though you know you would never do it.

  What had led my beautiful, strong, brave, Amalia Rose into such a line of thinking looking at that blinking cursor on that thread? I wanted to know. What made her actually type the message? What made her click send, thinking it would bring almost certain death upon her and what made her okay with that?

  The stark reality that I could have lost her, were I not as good as I was at what I did, well, it gnawed at me, chewed me down to the raw, bloody, bone. When did things get so bad for her that she decided to answer l’appel du vide, which literally translates to ‘the call of the void’?

  I shuddered, thinking back to the conversation that Dani and I had had that late night when she had left Thirteen sleeping and had come out to the bar. She’d been having nightmares again but hadn’t wanted to wake him. I had been up at my systems doing work for a client. She’d poured a generous measure of alcohol and had sat watching me and we’d talked… and it was one of those rare moments I had felt Amalia with me because the feeling had been eerily the same. Dani, confiding in me, while I’d listened and just been there. It’d been so starkly reminiscent of the times with Mali under our tree, I could almost hear the distant rustle of the breeze through the leaves.

  I split off from my brothers when we reached the town. They looked up and over at my unexpected change of plans, but I gave Trig the hand signal for ‘home’ and he raised a hand, giving me the okay. Mali perked up a bit when I made the turn and settled in again against my back, but I could feel her damn near vibrate behind me in counterpoint to the bike. She didn’t know what was up and I could feel her tension over it. Still, she didn’t shout any questions or make any demands as to our destination, choosing to trust me, and for as tense as she was, the fact that she trusted me, even now, to do right by her, made me relax.

  When we turned onto my street, she jumped slightly. A lot had changed in the neighborhood over the years, so I figured between that and the deepening twilight, she didn’t readily recognize some things. When we got to the house she’d gone very still. I turned us into the driveway, the garage trundling open. The doors were new, automated, and something I had put in. There was a sensor that knew it was me by Bluetooth and my particular cell phone drawing near. My own design, actually.

  I pulled into the cavernous space and turned the bike around so it faced out and killed the motor. Mali got down groaning, her body likely as stiff as mine. I got off with a grunt of my own as muscles ached and screamed from too long kept in the same position. Neither of us was getting any younger, it seemed, but neither were we old and used up. I kind of dreaded this just being a preview of coming attractions.

  “You’re quiet,” I observed and she turned, working the chinstrap on her helmet loose.

  “It’s different,” she said. “From the outside, it’s the same house, but not quite how I remembered at the same time.”

  I nodded. “New garage door, new, more energy-efficient windows, and it’s been painted.”

  “The inside isn’t going to be the same at all, is it?” she as
ked and she sounded almost sad… disappointed.

  “No, but some things are. I promise.”

  She took a deep breath and steeled herself. I held out a hand and she reached out, our fingers tangling together. I hoped she liked it inside, but I’d had to change things. Make the house mine and transition it away from being my parent’s. I was living alone in this giant space with these old ghosts and it wasn’t healthy. I needed to make some changes, but I’d been pretty resistant to some things. Some things I kept as close to exactly the same as I could. Mostly, those were the spaces Mali and I had spent the most time in.

  “I guess I’m ready,” she declared. “If that’s what you’re waiting for.”

  “No, just soaking up the moment. I mean, you’re here, you’re home with me, and I can’t really tell you how long I’ve waited for this.”

  I swept a hand through my hair, chasing it back in front and out of my eyes. She nodded, her eyes traveling over my face and she smiled. “I’ve been waiting just as long,” she said and her voice was light, not judgey, not accusatory, just a gentle and sweet reminder. A reminder that though I’d felt alone all that time, she’d been with me in feeling the same things wherever she’d been at in the world.

  We still had so much catching up to do… Now we were finally in a place where we could do it.

  “Hungry?” I asked, leading her up the steps and into the house. She stopped inside the door, standing in the entry hall and gazing toward the living room, her eyes roving the familiar room with its unfamiliar furniture.

  “There are more pictures on the walls,” she said softly, turning to look at the hall walls and past the banister to the stairs to the walls beyond it.