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“Dusty,” Easton says with a sharpness to his voice that tells me it’s not the first time he said my name.
“Hmm?”
“You sure are daydreaming a lot. That’s usually my job.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, you’ve always lived in your own world. Do you have space there for another?”
His face hardens, eyes looking like they’re disconnecting, and it hits me what I said. He’s been in his own world since losing Ella, and before that, they were in it together. They’d been each other’s shadows, closer than any two kids I’d ever seen.
“Fuck. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s fine.” He shakes it off, but I can tell it’s not fine at all. “You thinking about my brother?”
“No,” I lie, and one side of Easton’s mouth kicks up in a mischievous half-grin.
“Liar. You’ve spent your whole life thinking about Morgan.”
“Jesus.” I drop my head back and groan. “Does everyone know how I feel about Morgan except him?”
Easton shrugs. “I think he won’t let himself see it because he doesn’t feel like he deserves it. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but sometimes it’s a whole lot easier to spend life hating yourself and not letting yourself have anything good than it is putting the work in for something better.”
I frown, my chest suddenly feeling weighted. “I’m not better than Morgan.”
“Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. The truth doesn’t matter much, does it? What matters is how people feel and what they believe.”
I shake my head, unwilling to let myself entertain those thoughts. If I start thinking that way, that there’s a chance for us, it’s just going to fuck me up more. “Morgan doesn’t see me like that. And what would you know about it anyway? You were young. Hell, you were seventeen when Morgan left.”
“Being young doesn’t mean I didn’t know how to see the world. I think maybe that makes it easier to see clearly.” Easton grabs the buffer and turns toward the SUV.
“Is that what you do? Not let yourself have anything good? Punish yourself for things that aren’t your fault?”
“Aw, come on, Dusty. You’ve been around my family longer than me. You know it’s the Swift brothers’ way.” He nods toward the window. “Morgan’s been sitting in his car for ten minutes.” Then he lowers his mask and gets to work.
“Shit.” I spin around as if Morgan were behind me the whole time and heard everything we said.
I hear Easton chuckle before his machine turns on, a buzz between us now. I wipe my hands on a shop towel, then head outside. My feet take me straight to the passenger side of the car, and without giving it much thought, I tug the door open and plop down inside. “Why have you been sitting in my lot for ten minutes?”
“More like fifteen, to be honest. Why didn’t you come out if you knew?” He turns my way, cocking a dark brow.
“I just found out. Easton saw you.”
“Ah, so it’s him who left me sitting here. That makes more sense.”
“In his defense, you could have just come inside.”
“I was getting to that part. Hell, I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s not supposed to be this way between us.”
No, it’s not. We also weren’t supposed to go ten years without talking. “Then stop.”
“You say that like it’s easy.”
“It should be. It’s us.”
He pauses, stares at me, then nods. “Show me your dream, Dust.”
I’m assuming he doesn’t mean for me to hold up a mirror so he can see himself, so I say, “Let’s go.” Really, this is the next best thing. The pop and crackle of excitement and pride goes off beneath my skin as Morgan follows me toward Dusty’s Collision Repair. “This is the outside.” I point to the building, earning a chuckle from Morgan.
“Smart-ass.”
