“Dex.” She reached across the table, covered my hand with hers. “They love you because you’re family. Not because you’re useful. Not because you’re a distraction.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually. Because that’s how they love me. And I’ve contributed nothing. I’m just the secret half-sister who showed up and complicated everything. But they’re still trying. They’re including me, trying to get to know me.”
“You’re not…”
“I know,” she said gently. “I know I’m not. And you need to know you’re not just the useful one. You’re their brother. Period.”
The certainty in her voice made something crack open in my chest. I wanted to believe her. God, I wanted to believe her.
“Your turn,” I said, changing the subject before I said something I’d regret. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
She smiled, accepting the deflection. “I’m terrified of deep water. I can swim, but if I can’t see the bottom, I panic.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. When we were in High School someone I knew got caught in a rip tide. They never found her body.” She took a sip of wine. “I haven’t been comfortable in water since.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah. It’s the problem with living by the sea, I guess. A lot of people probably have a similar story.” Her smile turned playful. “This got super depressing really fast, didn’t it?”
I laughed because she wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t even sure how such a simple question had gotten us to this point. Then I realized that I did know, it was because she was so easy to talk, and she saw me in ways that no one had ever been able to see me before. Right through the barriers, the bullshit, right to the center of me. And it didn’t make me want to run and hide. It made me want to hold her close and treasure her like the precious gift she was.
The food arrived, and we ate and talked. Real conversation, the kind I hadn’t had with anyone in years. She told me about Blue Point Bay, about growing up with Wren and all her other cousins, about her photography business and the clients she loved and the ones she tolerated. I told her about the garage,about the brothers when they were kids, about learning to rebuild engines from my grandfather.
We talked about books and movies and the stupidest things we’d ever done. We laughed until we were breathless, and somewhere in there I forgot to be nervous.
This was easy. Being with her was easy in a way nothing had been easy for a long time.
When the waiter brought the check, I realized three hours had passed. Three hours that felt like thirty minutes.
“I don’t want this to end,” Leigh said softly, reading my mind.
“Neither do I.”
“So what do we do?”
I paid the bill, stood, offered her my hand. “Come with me. I know a place.”
And then the nerves hit me full force again.
Twenty minutes later, I pulled off onto a side road I’d discovered years ago. It was a dead-end that led to a clearing overlooking the valley. The sun had set fully now, stars starting to appear in the darkening sky.
I killed the engine and we sat in silence for a moment, the view spread out before us.
“This is beautiful,” Leigh breathed.
“It’s where I come when I need to think.”
She looked at me. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”
“Thank you for dinner. For... all of this.”
“Dex.” She shifted in her seat, turning to face me. “I need to say something.”
My heart started pounding. “Okay.”
