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??Porn? Really?” I muttered, rolling my eyes as Vaughn and I slowed to stop behind my brother.
Beau shot me a dark glance, ordering me to hush with his glare, and kept talking. “Gracen said houses like this are typically on the market for about a month, so you still have a few weeks to come back and get anything else before it’s too late.”
“I would hate to leave my good porn behind,” Vaughn answered, only to send me a sly side grin.
I sighed and rolled my eyes, while Beau lifted a hand in agreement, crying, “Right?”
Men. They were just so weird.
In the front room, the couch and pile of boxes that had been there only a short time ago were already gone, as was the trash sack that I’d tossed Vaughn’s razor into.
Clearing my throat in guilt over what I’d done, I clasped my hands behind my back and tried to look innocent and unassuming.
But neither Vaughn nor Beau were paying attention to me. “Gracen also suggested we paint this room before he started showing it, but if you don’t want to—”
“No, no, that’s fine,” Vaughn assured, waving a hand. “Whatever he thinks is best.”
Beau nodded solemnly and followed him from the living room.
We passed the entrance to Duke’s room first, and Vaughn didn’t even pause or glance that way. But I did, swallowing as I realized this very doorway was the last place I’d seen his brother alive.
It was also where I’d first met Vaughn.
God, it hadn’t even been quite a year since then, and it felt like everything had changed since that fateful morning. It made me wonder what Vaughn and I would be doing right now if I’d just had the guts to tell Duke no, that I didn’t want to sleep with him, whether he was dying or not.
I doubted Vaughn would be moving out of his childhood home right now, plus he and I probably never would’ve spoken again—wait. We never would’ve even met, would we?
And Ava…
Ava wouldn’t exist at all.
Damn, I guess it was a good thing that I’d made that one really stupid decision. I hadn’t even had Ava in my life for three months, and I already couldn’t imagine an existence without her.
Everything happened for a reason, I supposed.
Hurrying after the two men, I found them in what had to be the master suite.
“This was my parents’ room,” Vaughn was saying, his voice echoing slightly off the bare walls and hardwood floors. “Then, this one over here was what we called the computer room. But really, it was mostly Dad’s study. After he died, it just became a junk room.”
My brother and I followed him quietly from room to room. “Then, this was my room.”
The floors were carpeted in here. He motioned toward a stain near the center. “That was from the last time my mom let me drink Kool-Aid in my room. I was nine.”
I smiled softly.
Vaughn pointed toward a cracked indention in the wall. “And that’s from a shoe when I threw it at Duke after he was being irritating and refusing to leave me alone. I’d just gotten my license, and Dad wouldn’t let me drive for a month after that.”
“Bentley threw a shoe at me once,” Beau remembered fondly. “A couple, actually.”
Vaughn turned toward us, looking thoughtful. “I hadn’t thought of any of those memories in a long time,” he finally admitted before adding hopefully, “I think moving out is already helping.”
And with that, he hurried through the doorway and down the hall towards Duke’s room like a man on a mission. At the entrance, he paused and stood there, silently looking in. A moment later, he stepped inside.
Beau and I glanced at each other, then hurried after him. When we reached the opening, we peered curiously around the corner to find him just standing there, looking at the empty walls.
All traces of his brother had been removed.
