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I waited patiently as he tightened a bolt with a wrench and then set it aside before climbing from the mouth of the pickup and yanking up a blue rag from his back pocket as he turned to face me. But he barely took two steps in my direction before recognizing me and falling to a disappointed stop.
“Oh.” His voice was flat and hard, just like his expression. “It’s you.”
When he spun away and returned to the truck as if to ignore me entirely, I followed in order to watch him work. I said nothing, just stood there patiently.
Finally growing fed up with my presence, he slammed his tool back down and glared at me. “I thought I told you the last time you came by here—and every other fucking time before that—to leave me alone. I don’t want anything from you, and you’re certainly not getting shit from me. So why do you keep coming back?”
I shrugged casually and glanced around the grease-coated garage. “Just checking in,” I answered before returning my gaze to him. “Making sure you haven’t changed your mind.”
He snorted. “Don’t worry. I haven’t. Hell will freeze over before I take a cent of that goddamn inheritance you keep trying to shove down my throat, all right? If our old man wanted to leave everything to you, your brother, and that bitch you call mother, it’s no skin off my nose. And there shouldn’t be any off yours either. Jesus, you act like you got a guilty conscience or something, always trying to pay your sins off by heaping that cash on me. But that’s bullshit. Most the crap that went down between Dad and me and her happened before you were even born. So just let it go already.”
But I couldn’t. Because he was right. I did feel guilty. None of it was fair, though. He wouldn’t be working here, barely making ends meet, if Lana hadn’t come along and fucked him over, cheating him from his birthright. While here I was, breezing through each day in my nice suits and perfect life for the very same reason, because Lana had married his father and caused the irreparable rift between them until he’d left everything to his two younger sons.
It was all too eerily similar to what had happened to Kaitlynn, and I hated it.
It didn’t matter if I was an innocent party or not; I’d come from Lana’s rotten ovaries. I couldn’t help but feel responsible for the way she’d treated him, and Kaitlynn, and everyone else. Besides, Isaac was my half brother. That seemed like it should mean something.
The very sight of me disgusted him, though. I could tell he saw her every time he looked at me. He saw the woman who’d wanted him and pursued him, the woman he’d rejected, and the same spiteful, malicious woman who’d married his father to get back at him for scorning her. And as long as he saw all that when he looked at me, then I was going to keep feeling guilty for it.
So I just kept coming back and torturing both of us, hoping one day he’d—hell, I wasn’t even sure what I wanted him to do. I wasn’t exactly the chummy, pal type that guys offered to go grab a beer with after work. It wasn’t like we’d ever become friends. I should stop trying to get him to not hate me.
Except I couldn’t.
“Jesus Christ!” he burst out, unable to look at me as he lifted his hand and shooed me along. “I told you I haven’t changed my mind. Can you stop creeping me out, just standing there, staring at me, and go already?”
I nodded and dug a business card from my pocket. I left one every time I stopped by, because I had a feeling he threw them away as soon as I left and he’d need a new one if he ever changed his mind.
Setting this one on the lip of the hood next to his wrench, I stepped back and said, “You know where to reach me if you need anything.”
He snorted as I turned away. “Don’t hold your breath, kid.”
I wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t stop hoping either. Even if that ended up being the very thing that doomed me.
Sighing as I climbed back into my car, I started the engine and glanced out the window at the darkening night. I had so many hopes. Hope that Isaac would finally accept me as a brother. Hope that Lana would stop being evil and actually want to be a true mother. Hope that Brick didn’t end up with some venereal disease. Hope that Kaitlynn got out of the slump her life had become. Hope that JFI would grow into the company Arthur had built it up to be.
Wish after wish seemed to pile on top of me until I felt like I was drowning in them. And even though I knew it was probably far safer to just stop wishing altogether, I kept on, even stacking more on top of long-buried, dust-coated ones. Meeting Gabriella had just inflamed the desire too.
Because now, along with everything else, I hoped for a chance to be with her as well.
And what was more troubling, I wanted to become the kind of man who deserved her.
But monsters who put down their own mother didn’t deserve angels, did they?
Meaning, all my hope was probably useless.
Chapter 24
Gabby
Something felt off.
It wasn’t the fact that Lana had been particularly disgruntled when she’d come home from work this evening either. That happy little nugget had actually been pretty awesome. It told me Hayden had most likely succeeded in not letting her sabotage Kaitlynn’s and his brother’s portfolio presentation earlier that day.
And things didn’t feel off because Papá had messaged me, saying he’d pick up Miguel from school. That was just another awesome detail. I think he was really going to pull himself out of this slump he’d been in since becoming an amputee.
I guess I could blame my antsy, restless anxiety on my failure to find any proof to doom Lana. I really wanted to help Hayden with his investigation on his mother. But I hadn’t found anything on any other day I’d worked there, and I hadn’t experienced this lacking something that left me feeling so desolate and unfulfilled now. So that probably wasn?
??t the source either.
