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“Fuck.” He thrust his fingers through his hair, and bit into his lip to stop the misery engulfing him. If he started bawling like a baby in front of his kid brother, he’d have to kill himself. “Why didn’t anyone ever tell me what a major league asshole I was being?”
“Hey, man, what gives?” Finn patted Ty uncomfortably on the back. “I was only kidding around. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t kidding around.” He gazed at his brother, whose face had gone ashen beneath his tanned complexion. And who looked a lot less relaxed and carefree than usual. Ty would hazard a guess Finn hadn’t expected to be handling his brother having a breakdown on a Friday evening. “I thought I was better than them. That what they had wasn’t real,” he said. “Wasn’t important. I was going to make something of myse
lf and find the perfect wife and be who I wanted to be and never end up letting my emotions turn my life into the chaos our lives were.” He leaned back, and Finn’s hand dropped away.
“What’s wrong with that?” Finn said, jumping to his defense, because when the Sullivan brothers had their backs against the wall, they always stood up for each other. “You’re a planner,” Finn added. “You’ve always been a planner. That’s just who you are, Ty. No one ever felt worse of you for that,” he said, one hundred percent earnest for once.
Wow, he must really look like shit if his brother was actually being serious for a change.
“Yeah, but I felt worse of Pop. When he went to pieces after Mom died. I thought he was weak, that I would never be that weak.”
“That was a tough time for all of us,” Finn said, looking confused and wary now, as well as earnest. “Especially for you. We all knew how close you were to Mom, how much witnessing her miscarriage screwed you up.”
“Wait a minute, you knew about the miscarriage?” How could Finn have known, he’d only been three years old?
“I didn’t know the particulars, not until years later, but Pop told me and the twins not to tease you about the nightmares.”
“What nightmares?”
“You had nightmares, for years afterward. Don’t you remember? You’d wake up sweating and crying. And mom would have to come in and hold you until you calmed down.”
Ty shook his head, but he did remember, vaguely. The night terrors that had haunted him for years. And his mother’s cool hand stroking his brow, the soft crooning lulling him back to sleep. ‘It’s okay Tyrone. I’m okay, we’re okay. You’re my hero, my sweet boy.’ And the ones that had returned for months after his mother had passed and the aching pain because she had no longer been there to soothe him and tell him everything would be all right.
Somehow he’d blanked the nightmares though, or blanked them enough never to have to acknowledge their significance. “And Pop told you not to tease me about them? And you didn’t?” This was new, too.
“You know Pop, he was usually a pushover. Mom was the one with the evil eye that could spot mischief a mile away and a smack which could keep your butt hurting for weeks. But he put the fear of God into us over that. And it scared us all so much when you had them, we never did mention it in the morning.”
“I never knew that,” Ty said. How many times had he sold his father short? Found him wanting? When he’d been a devoted husband, a loving father. Probably a better man than Ty would ever be. “I guess I owe the old guy an apology.”
“If you do, I owe him about fifty, so let’s not go there,” Finn said. “What’s going on Ty? Because you’re freaking me out a little here.”
He could have lied, he really wanted to. If he confided in Finn about Zelda, it would change the complexion of their relationship forever. He’d always been the older brother, the one who knew best, the one who had all the answers. And he’d liked lording it over his brothers. The way he’d tried to lord it over Zelda.
But he didn’t have the answer to this. And maybe Finn did. Finn had fallen for Dawn when he was still a teenager. And somehow or other he’d figured out a way to get past all the bullshit and rekindle the flame over a decade later when Dawn had returned.
And maybe it was about time Ty got off his high horse and asked someone else for help. Because if there was one thing Zelda had taught him, you couldn’t solve a problem until you admitted you had one.
“You know Faith’s friend Zelda?” he began.
“Sure, the model, right?” Finn replied. “With all the hair?”
“Not anymore. She cut off the hair,” Ty said. “She spent the Labor Day weekend on my house barge and we…” He hesitated. How did he explain the unexplainable? That while banging her senseless he’d fallen in love with her? In the space of a long weekend? Finn would think he was nuts. He probably was nuts.
“You what?” Finn prompted.
“We got together. At first, I thought it was just exceptionally good sexual chemistry, because the sex was awesome. But then we talked and I discovered stuff about her that made me realize she wasn’t at all what I thought she was… She’s been hurt so badly, lost so much when she was a kid, and even though she’s made a lot of mistakes in her life, she came out the other side a stronger and better person. She’s smart and funny and sassy and unconventional. She made me feel alive when I was with her. And I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to see more of her. A lot more.”
He stopped. Shit, he was babbling. What was wrong with him? He made a living out of his skills as a litigator and now the one time he had to explain something as succinctly as he possibly could, so his brother wouldn’t think Ty needed to go to the nut house, he sounded like freaking Oprah.
“Okay.” Finn didn’t look stunned or astonished. In fact he didn’t even look particularly surprised.
“Okay?” Ty asked, annoyed at the low-key response. His whole life had been turned upside down in the space of a weekend and that was all his kid brother had to say on the matter. Finn had always been laid back, but this was insane. “That’s all you’ve got?”
“Well, it sounds pretty intense, if you fell in love with her after only three days. But that can happen. It happened to me and Dawn after one night.”
“Yeah, but you were like seventeen and full of rioting hormones. I’m thirty-two, a graduate of Columbia, and a licensed attorney.”
