“Too fucking long to tell you about right now.” He gives me a questioning look. “Why are you down here with them?” I give him a curious look, and he rolls his eyes again. If he’s not ready to talk about it, I won’t fucking push him.
“I already told you. I was in town. They came out, they told me their concerns, so I went over to see if I could tell what was going on, and…” He trails.
“Just got in a little over your head?”
I hear what I’ve said and I’m expecting the hot-head to snap out, but he nods his head.
“Yeah…”
“I didn’t mean like you can’t handle it.”
“No, I fucking can’t handle it.”
“Which is why you came here?” I nod, knowing that he’s only here because he has nowhere else to go. And he won’t risk their lives. Okay, he won’t risk Liza’s life because of his pride. “Okay.” I pause for a moment. “Look, you don’t have to say that you’re in for us to help you. You guys are family.” Then I can’t help but laugh at myself. “What’s going on with you two?”
“Huh?” His voice raises an octave as his head flings back over to look at me. “What? Nothing’s going on.”
“Sure there’s not.” I can’t help but laugh again.
“If there was, it wouldn’t be your business, anyway.” He glares at me. There he is.
I can see his anger issues are still as prominent as ever.
“Not my business, okay? You made it my fucking business my whole life.” I can’t help but chuckle to myself. “Listening to you obsessing over her. And like the one time you tried to fight her boyfriend, and I got my ass kicked for it.”
He laughs this time. “I mean, I stopped him.”
“Eventually.” I laugh this time.
“I’m sorry.” I get serious for a moment. “I’ve followed every lead, and it’s come up with nothing, every time. I had to set it aside for a while cause I was getting careless. It was making me crazy, and Axe told me I was falling down the same path dad did.”
“I shouldn’t have been upset about that. I can’t even imagine.”
“And I’m sorry I held a bit of resentment about everything.”
“Oh no, I totally get that part.” He laughs. “I just couldn’t. I thought they were indestructible, and dad and I didn’t have the best of conversations the last time I talked with him. I held a bit of resentment about your relationship with him. I don’t know how you stayed here.”
“I refused to let Terri raise Drew and I couldn’t ask you to come back.” I pause before I start again. “I know this doesn’t fix everything, but…”
Liza walks past us and into the kitchen to the fridge.
“Thanks. We needed you to call us out.” Zeke says to her.
“Welcome.” We’re both confused when it’s said from the living room.
“Aha.” Tatum laughs as she spins around and looks at me.
“You won’t give in at all on this, are you?”
“Nope.” She pops the p before she walks over to and kisses me once. “Let’s get going.”
“Well.” I sigh as I look over at my brother. “We’re gonna need your car.” I watch the hesitation on his face before I laugh again. “Come on, man. He’s going to be expecting you to leave in your car. We want to lure him out.”
He scours as he reaches in his pocket, handing me his keys.
“You think you should change?”
“Nah.” I shake my head. “I feel like we look enough alike.”
