Page 34 of Cash

Penny pinched her lips. Not to stop herself from laughing but out of discomfort.

Shit. I was totally fucking this up.

I knocked my shoulder against hers. “Sorry. What I should’ve said was thank you for feeding me.”

“I thought you were dead,” she whispered.

“Well, that was a fair assumption. Eden left me in an alley. If the manager of the check cashing place hadn’t come out to dump the trash and saw me there, I probably would’ve been.”

“No. Not then. When I was at USC I had friends who were good with computers and…hacking. My best friend’s brother was the best of the group. We told him about how I grew up and about you and he started looking. Piecing your life together wasn’t easy. You’d run away from foster care. And believe it or not, there are a lot of Cash Phillips running around. And he had no idea if you were still in California or if you’d moved out of state. After we graduated and he didn’t find you I thought it was a lost cause. I had a brother somewhere out there, but I’d never meet him. My friend’s brother ended up working for the FBI and he never gave up trying to find you for me. Then one day he calls me, he’d finally found you. You’d gone into the Navy. You were a decorated SEAL but you’d died in combat.” She paused to suck in a breath. “But I had something, I had my brother even if it was a picture.” She paused again, leaned to the side, and pulled out a well-worn, wallet-sized picture. “I keep it with me. I take you with me everywhere I go. My baby brother. The brother I loved so much but who was taken from me in the cruelest of ways.”

I stared down at my basic training graduation picture. I remembered the day it was taken. The day that a packet was handed out to order copies to send to your family. A day that everyone in my compartment was excited about. I tossed mine in the trash. I had no one to send a picture to and I sure as fuck didn’t want one.

The longer I looked at the picture the more acid filled my gut. It was like looking at someone else. A stranger. A boy I didn’t recognize but bore a resemblance to the man I was. It was hard to believe but back then, my eyes seemed dead and that boy hadn’t lived through war yet. Just survived his childhood.

“I had no other option but to join. Three hots and cot meant military or jail. I figured I’d lose my mind being confined behind bars,” I told her. “There was this guy who lived out in Silver Lakes. We both knew I was homeless, but he never asked. Just told me where and what time he’d pick me up. He’d take me out to his house, pay me to do his yard work and mow his grass, feed me, give me a safe bathroom to wash up in, and drive me back. Then one day while I was in his house, I noticed the military memorabilia and asked about it. He grew up rough—not like us, but not great. He joined the Navy to escape. Moved up the ranks, made it his career, and retired after twenty-five years. I looked around his fancy house and I wanted that. I wanted someplace clean to shower without fear. I wanted food to eat I didn’t find in the trash or have to steal. It took me a while to get up the courage to ask him more about it. He took me to see a recruiter. He helped me get my GED. He didn’t give up on me when I failed the first three times I took the test.”

I’d found safety in the Navy.

But I hadn’t found a home until I went to BUD/s.

And when I earned my Trident, I’d found my brothers.

“I hate that all those years you were close and I didn’t even know it.”

I couldn’t deal with thinking about having a sister close and not knowing she even existed.

“I’m approximately twenty minutes and fifteen seconds into this brother gig but I still feel the need to ask about that best friend’s brother. You sounded awfully wistful when you talked about him. Was it one of those sappy Hallmark movies where you two dated behind his sister’s back? Do I need to cut his balls⁠—”

“You’re the little brother,” she reminded me. “And no, there was no romance. He had a girlfriend through college and married her right after graduation. Last I heard they had five kids and were blissfully happy.”

Five kids?

That sounded like torture—times five.

There was a stretch of silence I didn’t know how to fill. Forty years’ worth of catching up to do yet it didn’t seem important. Not that I didn’t want to know about her life, or get to know her, just that the past was the past and it was shitty. I didn’t need to trauma bond with my sister. I didn’t need to process that the woman who’d birthed me was a worthless piece of shit—I’d done that a long time ago. Then there was the issue that Penny might hold some affection for her despite how she left. And as much as it made me a total douche bag, I didn’t have it in me to help her through any emotional ties she might feel towards Eden.

“That’s why I acted so weird when I first saw you.”

“Right. I was dead. I took an assignment that required the whole team to go dark. Jonas, Smith, Easton, and I had no family so faking our deaths was easy. Theo’s mother is still alive and he has a half-brother. After being dead for ten years she was pretty surprised to find out her son was still alive. Not to mention, angry and hurt. His half-brother still hasn’t forgiven him and probably won’t but the rest of us had a smooth transition back to the land of the living. And that smooth transition is only because Zane took us all on. I don’t know where I’d be if I still didn’t have my brothers close.”

“I’m glad you have them,” Penny softly said.

I blew out a breath and gave the woman some honesty.

“I’m sorry, Penny. I don’t know how to do this. I’m not good with feelings and shit and I’m really not good with expressing what I’m feeling. Unless it’s extreme anger, then I’m great at it. I’m sorry I’ve been such an asshole to you since you’ve been here. I really should’ve given you the time you’ve been asking for. And now that I know, I just…don’t know what to say or do about it.”

“Right. I get it,” she whispered.

Fucking hell, I was screwing this up.

She’d been abandoned, too. That was an issue I knew all too well.

“No, you don’t get it. I’m not rejecting you or the idea of having a sister. I want to get to know you. I just…” Fuck. “Don’t know how. What I do know is I don’t want to hash out the past or compare childhoods or sit around a fire and tell you all about my shitty life. It was garbage. There’s nothing else to say. But I want you to get to know my brothers. I want them to know you. I want to be able to call you and grab dinner and maybe hang out. But I need us to start from here. I can’t go back to the past. It’s done and over.”

She was silent again and I was pretty sure I’d have more apologies to dish out after that not-so-eloquent speech.

Maybe I should have Kira and Nebraska out here to translate for me. Obviously, I need help converting my asshole into English.