AllFreeNovel
Share Us
ANDE
Having brothers was hard, because they were all bipolar.
On one hand, they wanted to annoy the shit out of me and make life impossibly harder than it needed to be. The constant nagging, ribbing, and teasing was something that I came to deal with despite the need to smother them in their sleep.
Then there was the other side of the coin. The one that literally caused them to turn into horrors with their overprotectiveness.
Not a single one of my brothers wanted me to do what I was about to do.
Yet… someone had to do it.
“Are you sure?”
I looked back at Quinn where he was standing at his car. “I’m sure.”
“It doesn’t have to be today,” he pointed out.
No, it didn’t. But it needed done, and my brothers got a queasy look to them every time it was brought up or mentioned.
Cleaning out Addison’s place was going to kill me. But it might very well break them.
They felt like they failed—we all did.
And being in the presence of all of Addison’s things, forever frozen in time, felt like a sucker punch straight to the gut.
That was why, when my parents came home with her things, as well as her ashes, they’d all gone straight to her house.
None of us, even my parents, had been ready to deal with the aftereffects of her ‘suicide’ yet.
Except, again, I reminded myself, it had to be done.
It’d been over a month. And now was as good a time as any. With Keene gone, I had a suddenly free day to do this. Or, at least, get it started. Because there was no way I was going to get through it all in the six hours I had before the funeral.
“No,” I agreed, “but it’s been a month, Quinn. It needs to be done. We’re paying for a rental that nobody uses.”
“You can use it,” he pointed out.
I could.
But I was going to head back out in…
That thought immediately stalled inside my brain.
For the first time since my bad breakup senior year, I wanted to stay here.
“You know,” Quinn said, seeing my hesitation. “You have a man now.”
I guess I did.
“And seeing your ex-piece of shit will be great when you have Keene at your side,” Quinn continued. “You don’t have to hide from the world anymore.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Does me hiding from the world, AKA taking travel nursing jobs that pay me so well I can afford to take six months off out of the year, really bother you? Or is the fact that I take Shayne with me what really bothers you?”
Quinn snapped his mouth shut.
Then his face completely closed down.
If he looked upset before, now he looked completely blank.
