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Da was going to push the issue. By fourteen, we’d all been versed in the life, so Seamus was prime for him to pump, but I wasn’t about to have that happen.
As I staggered forward, I ignored Conor and Brennan who were bickering like old hens and headed toward the elevator.
The shiny concrete floor held skid marks from where, over time, I’d driven around the corners too fast, leaving black tire tracks here and there, and the low-level fluorescent light fucked with my head some more. To get to the doors, I had to pass my four sports cars. Vehicles that had once been my pride and joy.
Funny how almost dying changed my perspective. How it made me see through all the crap to what really mattered.
I’d lived life on the edge for so long, and I’d seen nothing wrong with it.
But if I’d died from my own stupidity, Seamus would never get to meet his old man. And even if he didn’t want to, even if Conor was right and he hated me on sight, everyone needed to know their roots.
The elevator felt like a thousand miles away, but I made it. Nor was I blind to how my brothers moved behind me, just waiting for me to topple over. They did so in silence, knowing I was grateful, just as they knew how much I needed them for backup.
That was how we worked.
My brothers and I were tight. It was why we were pissed off at Aidan Jr. He was changing dynamics by being all secretive about his habit. Which was why Conor, who liked change the least out of all of us, had started giving him crap.
I didn’t blame him, but neither did I think it was wise to piss off a tiger who was limping around half doped up on Oxy.
The second I was in the elevator, the second it was moving, I felt like I could drop to my knees. The gravitational pressure was minimal, but it felt like I had a ten-ton weight on my back.
“Dumbass,” Conor muttered, when he carefully raised my arm and hooked it over his shoulder.
I didn’t argue, which was probably clue enough as to my status. I just stared up at the moving counter above the doors, and waited, fucking waited, to reach the penthouse.
There was silence in the elevator, like my brothers knew I was focused on standing upright, and when we were one floor from reaching my apartment, without even asking, Conor moved away just in time.
The doors opened.
To nothing.
As I struggled out of the elevator, I heard sounds.
My apartment had been empty since the day I’d moved in. No girlfriend, mistress, or one-night stand had stayed here. Not even my brothers if they’d come over here and gotten drunk.
The sounds were enough to make my heart tick over, simply because I wasn’t used to it. But when I heard footsteps, it stopped pounding, and instead took up a shit ton of space in my throat.
He looked like me.
That was my first thought.
He was smaller, leaner, and so youthful that I wasn’t sure I’d ever looked as young as him. His eyes were innocent, but they were haunted, and after what he’d been through, after a quiet childhood, I could understand that.
By his age, I’d been to drug dens, strip joints, and had seen men tortured.
The worst thing Seamus had probably done was get into an argument with some kid in class, maybe not pick up his dirty laundry, and get into shit with his mom over back talk.
Fuck, I wanted that for him.
I wanted that for him so much that my mouth worked as I tried to get my thoughts in gear. Tried to figure out what the fuck I should say or do.
He was me. Just miniaturized. With his blacker than black hair, pale skin that gleamed gold in the sun, high cheekbones, narrow blue eyes. Everything about him was me, apart from one thing.
His chin.
I knew that sounded crazy, but it was true nonetheless. His chin was his mom’s. I’d kissed that chin enough to know where the little crevice came from.
He stood there looking at me, just as long as I stood there looking at him, and my brothers didn’t give me shit over it. If anything, they slipped back into the elevator, and as the doors slid closed, they left me alone with my son.
