“I couldn’t function with all that shit going on in my head.”
Drew’s breathing was shallow and tight. He kept scratching the shell of his ear and pulling on the lobes. “You gave up on me, Grey. I needed my brother and you just threw me and everything else away.”
Nash grumbled and ran his hand over his hair.
“Fine, you gave up on Nash, too, but we all do eventually.” Drew couldn’t smother his smirk and I gave in to the urge to mirror him. It felt like the old days, if just a little.
“It didn’t have anything to do with either of you, okay?” I said.
“So we were just casualties,” Drew spat.
“This is bullshit,” Nash tried to sound calm, failing miserably. “So what about Lucie? What the fuck is going on there?”
“Enough.” Vivi sat next to him and handed him a cup of coffee.
Lucie approached me as if I were a dangerous, injured animal. A lead weight dropped in my gut when I thought what an appropriate comparison it was.
When she smiled hopefully at me, I returned it. She jumped into my arms and wrapped herself around me, planting kisses on my face and lips.
“I was expecting him,” she said, looking into my eyes. Lucie explained the basics of our fragile relationship and that she saw me in her previews.
That reminded me—she had one where I took Drew to the storage locker. Maybe that was today?
“Would you guys come with me somewhere? I … there’s something I want to show you.”
Nash growled incoherently.
Drew studied me and then stood. “Okay.”
Lucie squeezed my hands. I tried to be more bolstered by her support, but I couldn’t connect to that part of me. She wanted this to go so well, and I was too busy trying to sort my mess of mental fragments. I started to walk away when I felt that Lucie hadn’t let go. I turned back.
Her expression smug and amused.
“What?”
“You’re half-naked.”
I looked down. I still wasn’t wearing a shirt. Her simple smirk blew my distraction away and I smiled at her. “You make it easy to stay naked.”
“For fuck’s sake!” Nash yelled.
“Who are you, my father?” Lucie teased him. “I’m pretty sure you and Vivi hold the record for the most inappropriate overshares.”
He grinned. “Best stories, too. I’ve been published in magazines.”
Drew walked over to me. “Put a shirt on before he decides to come with us.”
“Suck it, Petunia,” Nash said to him, “I am coming.”
“Babe, you have court,” Vivi reminded him.
“Fuck.” Nash sounded as if he were crushing gravel between his teeth.
I jogged back to the bedroom and threw on a T-shirt and pulled on my boots. When I got back, Drew was waiting by the door. Lucie handed me a set of spare keys and kissed me one more time before she released me. Nash was still grumbling, but his expression was all business. Vivi whispered something to him.
I walked over. “Call me after court. I’ll meet you wherever. We can talk then, okay?”
He eyed me suspiciously and then copped a disinterested look. “Yeah, sure.”
“I promise.”
“And that means what to me?”
I couldn’t fault him that one. I nodded and gave him a number that would reach my phone. He punched it into his contacts and waved me off.
Drew held open the door and anxiously popped the knuckles of his free hand with his thumb. I passed him and stopped at the bottom of the stairs outside. A dirty wind swept past me and I hoped it would take my nausea with it.
“We’re going to Queens, so we’ll grab a cab, okay?” I said. I didn’t bother to turn, because I could feel Drew’s eyes burning holes into the back of my head. He reminded me of my drill sergeant, analyzing every twitch of every fiber of every muscle at every second.
“Fine.”
My body was so tight with tension that even the physical movement of walking to the corner was almost painful. Drew stayed silent, keeping in step.
“I ripped up Nash’s letters. I started to read them, but I could never get past the first few sentences. After a while, I couldn’t even listen to your messages. It was too hard.” My memories reanimated. Anything I’d listened to had burned into me like a brand.
“I kept pushing everything further down until I couldn’t feel anymore. Until I couldn’t feel anything.”
“You tried to kill yourself. I mean, for all intents and purposes,” he spat.
“I didn’t try,” I said and stopped, turning to face him. “I succeeded. I saw an escape and took it.”
His eyes burned. “Why? Why did you abandon the people who actually cared about you, who needed you?”
I stepped off the curb and hailed a cab. Drew followed me in. After I gave the driver the address, I sat back and took a breath.
Lucie. You’re doing this for her.
“Did it ever occur to you that what I was dealing with had nothing to do with you?” I asked, surprised at the resentment I heard.
“Goddamn you.” Drew’s anger made his voice tremble. “You should have just—”
“Listen to me!” I held up my hands as if it would actually calm him. “By the time it even occurred to me I could go home, it was so much easier to keep running.”
The seconds thudded by, tapping inside my head like a tiny hammer and anvil as he stared at me as if I were a moron. He scrubbed his hand over his face and cracked each knuckle individually.
I smiled, a reflex. He had always popped his knuckles when he was agitated. I suddenly missed him even more.
“What the hell are you smiling at?” he barked.
I hesitated, laughing, the tension in my muscles easing slightly. “I just … I did miss you.”
He chewed on his cuticles, blinking furiously. “Where were you?” he asked after several beats.
“Last week I was in Memphis.”
“Were you there for the ten years prior?”
I ignored him. Memphis was where I had to start. “I took a cab to the train station. The driver was in serious need of some personal hygiene counseling, much like you in high school.”
“You’re an asshole,” he muttered.
“The stench was horrible,” I continued, unruffled. “I was overcome with a memory of you telling me about the first time you met Charlotte. We were at my locker, and I told you how ripe you were.”
My voice started to pitch and gain momentum as the humor in the story made my cheeks burn. It had rocked me to my core when I’d sat in that cab, but right now, it was a strangely welcome feeling.
He was amused, but still befuddled. “So? What does that have to do with anything?”
I took a deep breath. “It felt like a fuckin’ heart attack. It was the first time I’d thought of my old life in so many years.”
“Twenty-three fifty,” announced the driver.
I pulled out cash and handed it to him, thanking him before stepping out. Drew followed me to the storage yard. My body seemed to know the way, even if I hadn’t been here in years. I dug a key from my wallet as we approached unit 5676 and opened it. Drew, clearly wary, followed me in and I flipped on the lights.
He looked around, his eyes wide. It took him a moment to speak, but when he did, he sounded livid. “Dad told me that you came while I was gone for spring break, packed all this up, and left.”
“He sent it all to me with a note saying he needed the space for his new office,” I said with a heavy dose of sarcastic gratitude. I walked over to my old nightstand and kicked a hole in the particleboard on its side. “I didn’t want it either.”
“So how did you get it back here?” he asked as he began to peek into boxes.
I started pacing. “Military helped me organize the shipment.”
“Dad said when you came to get it, that’s when you said goodbye.”
“He’s not my dad,” I snapped. “I’d never been back to that house since the day
I left.” I continued in a whisper, “and I’d already said goodbye.”
His mouth hung open with more words that didn’t come. He took in the boxes and contents of the locker. His face morphed between awe, anger, and sadness. Eventually he moved, trying to process his mental inventory as he went. Shuffling around, he lightly touched a box edge here or there. He’d bend a corner back and peer inside a few.
He smothered a grin and whispered to himself, “Shot glasses from Cancun.”
He continued to inspect random boxes, absently tracing his fingers along the dusty edges.
“I don’t see your guitar here.”
“It’s gone,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him I’d smashed it and set fire to the pile of wood scraps. It was a reminder of some great times that I hadn’t wanted to remember.
He kept moving, looking into several boxes twice. I tried to analyze every emotion crossing his face, until he finally stopped and stared at me, confused.
“Why would you send stuff all the way back here?”
“The last place I ever wanted to be was close to what I ran away from,” I reasoned simply. “This stuff was all too close. Best to leave it here.”
He turned and fell into the blue chair that used to be in my room. A mushroom cloud of dust erupted around him, forcing a coughing fit that transitioned into laughs.
“I was so mad this damn chair was gone,” he admitted, his voice hoarse.
I raised my eyebrows. “Why?”
“You are my big brother, Grey,” he said. “If I had a problem, you were the one I went to. Nash teased me, and Dad wasn’t personal like that. I couldn’t talk to Mom about everything. So when I needed to, I sat in this chair. You let me talk through it, and I felt better.”
“Nash was right, you are a girl,” I teased, disturbed with how easily our brotherly dynamic returned. It was comfortable. He was calm again and I was fucking nostalgic.
I’m freaking myself out.
“You’re a dick,” he said, laughing through his reply. “So, why didn’t you just throw all this shit out if you didn’t want reminders?”
“I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I don’t know why.”
He shrugged and stuck out his lower lip. “Maybe a part of you wanted to believe that one day, you could come home.”
I met his eyes but thought of Lucie and her incomprehensible confidence in me. “Maybe.”
It was silent for only a few minutes before the inevitable bomb dropped. Again.
“So where were you? What did you do with yourself?”
I could no longer avoid admitting what I’d become. I wanted to tell Lucie first, but perhaps I owed Drew this.
“It was military, but not.” My mind danced around the word. Killer.
I looked in his eyes and found he was open, accepting.
I shifted on my feet. “Almost two years after I joined, I was recruited into a black ops unit. I eventually started working alone. Independently.”
He eyed me strangely for a moment, and then I saw the spark. “What? Like that Matt what’s his name in that spy movie or something?” He half smiled, ready to hear the confirmation that I was joking.
I looked away. “Not exactly.”
“Look at me.”
I avoided his eyes for a few seconds longer. Relenting at last, I looked and saw hope in his eyes. Hope that he’d misunderstood.
“I spent years in such a dark place, survival meant pretending I didn’t exist. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t care about anything else.”
“Wait. Are you saying … like, killing people? For money?”
I studied the cement beneath my shoes. Inhale. Exhale.
“Grey!”
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Horror? Disgust, maybe? He sprang from the chair, a cloud of dust following him as he embarked on a tiny circuit around the tight space and popped his knuckles.
“I’m not proud of it, Drew. I wish I could tell you something different. Maybe I should have lied.”
He stopped. “What about Lucie?” he asked.
“What about her?” I felt defensive.
He coughed, hastily brushing off the dust that had resettled on his clothing. “Does she know?”
I paused as a litany of plausible excuses cycled through my head, none of which were true. The truth was it would be the end. “She’s my salvation.” And my undoing.
“You didn’t answer me,” he snarled. He already knew.
“I was never planning to hide it.”
“You fucking asshole.”
He advanced on me and shoved my shoulders. “What the fuck are you doing? Why are you doing this to her? To me!”
My heart slammed against the inside of my chest as if trying to break the bones surrounding it. “I never would have thought someone could make me want to live again—to be normal. When she found me, everything began to change. I don’t want that life anymore. I want to start over.” The truth of it almost knocked me sideways. I suppressed a gag.
Drew scoffed, tangling his fingers into his hair. “You don’t deserve her. You don’t deserve—”
“I know I don’t.”
“You better tell her. Tonight. Or I will.”
“Okay.”
A few tense minutes of pacing and uncomfortable silence passed.
“So am I in danger of being targeted now? Because you told me all this?”
It sounded stupid, but I had to admit it was a valid question. “Highly unlikely. What I do depends on anonymity. Only a handful of people know who I am and how I work. If Lucie decides that she can’t accept me, I’ll disappear and everything will go back to the way it was.”
He stood frozen except for his chest, rapidly rising and falling as he panted. “Are you going to run again?”
I fought a smile knowing that he was anxious at the thought of another vanishing act on my part than of my occupation.
“Only if she asks me to.”
“Oh, so you’d listen to her.” He turned to face me, his eyes hard with ill-placed jealousy.
“I need her.” The words came out automatically, and so easily, I was tempted to believe them. I didn’t know why I said that, but I did know how hard it was when I was away from her. After that first night, I wasn’t the same. It was the most comfortable I’d been around another person in years. I didn’t know how to accept that someone like Lucie could want me let alone how she made me feel, though she was certainly trying to help me do so. Regardless of my instincts to run, I was certain the farther away I got, the harder it would be to breathe.
Drew’s eyes locked with mine. We stared in contest long enough that my eyes began to burn. I vaguely recalled him winning most of the staring contests as kids. Finally, he closed his eyes and reopened them, the glare gone. He looked tired.
“I really don’t know what to think, Grey. I’m not sure who you are,” he said, “but I am glad you’re home.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Grey
Never Go Home Again
“Grey?” Lucie’s voice was charged. She sounded tightly wound and anxious.
“Hello, angel.” My gut felt hollow. I switched my phone to the other ear.
“Are you okay? What happened?” Lucie asked, panicked.
I waited too long to call. It had been several hours since Drew and I had left.
“I’m fine,” I said though I didn’t quite believe it. “But I’m not coming back yet.” I checked the rearview mirror of my new rental car. Everything I’d left in my hotel room was now in the trunk. I left instructions with the front desk to call me with any messages.
“Why not?” Her voice warbled. She sounded as if she was about to cry. The effect worsened when she tried to hide it.
I sighed. “I just … I need to be alone for a while, to think.”
She sucked in a quick breath. “You can’t think here?”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Don’t you know how hard it is to think clearly around you?” That much was true.
&
nbsp; She chuckled lightly, but it was forced. “You’re coming back at some point, aren’t you?”
I paused, perhaps a moment too long. “Of course I am. It just may not be tonight, okay?”
“Where will you go?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll talk to you soon.”
“And see?” Her voice went quiet.
“And see you.”
“Promise?” Distrusting.
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
~
Eighty-five degrees outside and my skin was cold as I crisscrossed the city without a destination. I barely noticed my surroundings, let alone heard anything outside the car. My mind was on Drew. Our conversation and everything in that stupid garage. I got so distracted, I nearly ran over a young couple crossing the street.
The blue and purple-haired girl was profanely verbose in her outrage while all one hundred and twenty pounds of her boyfriend pounded on the hood of the car. When I looked him in the eyes, he paled—if it were possible to get paler.
“Babe, let’s go. “Let’s go!” he shouted, dragging his still-swearing girlfriend to the safety of the sidewalk.
For a moment, I cracked a slight smile. Then I remembered a talent like intimidation wasn’t about to help me with this situation with Lucie, or with my brother. Well, brothers.
Lucie made me want to be a real person again. She made me feel worthy. And I couldn’t be worthy if all I had to offer was an all but unbeatable distance record for shoot and kills. Could I start over like I told Drew I wanted to? I had my doubts.
I gripped the steering wheel so tightly the skin on the knuckle of my left middle finger cracked. I absentmindedly wiped the blood on my jeans and left it.
Approaching the Brooklyn Bridge, I suddenly realized where I was going. Dread perched on my shoulders as I felt another trickle of blood over my knuckle. Even though I’d directed myself this way on a subconscious level, I hadn’t been this close to my childhood home since I’d left. I guessed it was as good a place as any to begin. Once in South Brooklyn, my skin began to itch. The neighborhoods had changed a lot in the last decade; parts that had been dodgy were lined with coffee shops and vintage boutiques.
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