A second later, another freight train arrived. This time, in the form of Bear barreling down the steps after them. Zach’s enormous German Shepherd hit me in the chest with so much force that I stumbled backward, feeling like I’d been involved in a minor traffic accident.
I laughed as I stroked behind both his ears. “Hey, buddy. It’s good to see you too.”
Bear whined and shoved his giant head beneath my arm while Jennifer wrapped herself around my waist and Lu grabbed my hand. As I did my best to hug them all at the same time, my chest started aching in a whole different way.
All across the country, it had had a Raquel shaped hole in it, but I still couldn’t believe I’d almost walked away from this. From Jennifer, Lu, and even Bear. Raquel was still heavy on my mind, but these people—and the dog—were my family.
And you don’t abandon family.
The screen door opened again and Zach came racing outside, stopping dead when he saw me. The confusion on his features turned into surprise, then concern, and then relief. A wide grinstretched across his lips as he jogged the few steps down to the pavement.
“Theo?”
I finally pulled off my helmet and offered him the best smirk I could muster through the heartache and his stepdaughters using me as a jungle gym. “Surprise?”
“I’d say.” He strode over and took my backpack, but he also looked at me so closely that I knew he was assessing at least seventeen different things at once.
My brother was nothing if not observant, which meant he’d see the exhaustion and the pain. The guilt, the remorse, and the longing.
He didn’t say anything in front of the girls though, eventually just reaching out to give my shoulder a quick squeeze. “It’s good to have you home, man. I’ll have your bed made up for you, but we need to talk when you’re ready, yeah?”
“Yep,” I managed, knowing in that moment that the adventure was fully over and the consequences had arrived. “Can I just have a shower first? Maybe a nap and something to eat?”
“Sure.” He grinned and fell into step beside me as we walked into the house that had once belonged to our family but was now owned by him and his wife. “I need to call Jesse and Nate anyway. They’ll want to be here for this conversation, but we’ve also been worried about you, bro. I can’t tell you how good it is to finally have you home.”
Home. The word echoed dully around my head as I looked around the massive entryway, wondering why it didn’t feel that way at all.
Jennifer and Lu followed me around as I went to say hi to Adeline, Zach’s wife, then finally left me alone once she’d yelled at them to come help her make me some food while I took a shower. The first few hours were warm and loving, but by sunset,I was in Zach’s home office, contemplating the best ways to fake my own death.
Jesse and Nate had arrived, a tumbler of top-shelf whiskey in everyone’s hand as Zach made himself comfortable behind his desk. It was the same one he’d always had, but it suddenly felt comically large and polished, even the whiskey too smooth for my tastes now.
Jesse sat in an armchair by the fireplace, looking for all the world like a responsible human being who’d never in his life slept his way around at least Florida, if not the world. Nate sat across from Zach’s desk with a tablet balanced on one knee, his eyes intent and curious on mine.
“So let me get this straight,” Jesse said, his whiskey already halfway done. “You broke down in the middle of nowhere, got picked up by some stranger in a pickup truck, and ended up in a tiny town in the desert.”
“Yes.” I groaned, leaning back in the armchair I occupied in the corner. “We covered all this when I spoke to you while I was still there. Why are we rehashing it all?”
“The better question is why you stayed there,” Nate said, frowning. “Also, not for nothing, but that dude who picked you up could’ve been a serial killer. Did you even consider the risks before you got in a truck with him?”
“Yeah, but at the time, the greater risk was dying alone of dehydration and starvation somewhere in Yuma County.”
As for why I’d stayed, that was a little more difficult to explain, especially without saying her name, but I didn’t really want to get into that right now. It hurt too much to even think about her, let alone trying to tell my brothers about how I’d left behind a woman who’d felt more like home than the mansion I’d grown up in.
“I liked it there,” I finally said, settling for the simplest explanation that was still true. “It was a good town filled with good people, so I stayed while my bike was getting fixed.”
Three skeptical expressions stared back at me, which was fair. None of us were really the rural-life, country-bumpkin type. Although I had a feeling that I was actually that type. I just hadn’t known it before.
Either way, they didn’t need to know. “It was a great time, but I’m back now.”
Jesse watched me for another second while he swallowed his next sip. Then he smacked his lips and leaned back. “A good town with good people, huh? Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I doubt that would’ve kept you there for so long. So what happened?”
He might not have come right out and said it, but I could read between the lines. My brothers could see that I looked like half my organs had been ripped out before I’d come home, and Jesse wanted to know why.
Why I’d shown back up in Chicago out of the blue, looking the way I did, without wanting to go into any detail about what’d happened while I’d been out there. Jesse in particular had lived enough of a life away from the Westwoods that he could probably tell exactly how close I’d come to the edge and now I had a sneaking suspicion he was trying to work out if I still might jump.
I held his gaze and shrugged. “Look, it was a great time, okay? I made some friends and got really close to them. We went hiking, camping, tubing, and all sorts of shit. It was like a whole different life and it was fun while it lasted, but it was time to come back to reality, so here I am.”
He searched my eyes for a minute before he nodded. “Okay.”
