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CHAPTERELEVEN
Still tryingto process this bombshell, Noah watched transfixed as Andi stepped into the room beyond the glass. The man rushed to her and swept her into a passionate kiss. If the man had hauled off and punched her, Noah doubted he’d have been more shocked.
“I’m trying to be patient here, but I’m gonna need you to fill in some details. I thought your brother was killed in the Army.”
“No, Preston wasn’t injured in the Army, but my strong, brave, amazing brother was shot saving my life from a monster. To him, he and Andi have been married about two and a half years. He has no clue how long it’s been since he was shot—or that they have a child.”
And the hits kept coming.
Noah needed to sit, but the sofa was too far away.
“Preston joined the Army to take care of me. The summer he went to Basic, he arranged for me to attend this two-month long music camp. We told my father I’d won an all-expenses-paid contest. In truth, we’d worked with my piano teacher to arrange it, and Preston sent her money to cover the tuition out of his Basic Training pay. He also contacted an attorney, told her our story, and so when my brother came for me, he came armed with combat training and the law on his side. He and I had been compiling mountains of evidence against my father. We thought we’d need it to counter his lies, but in the end, we didn’t need nearly as much as we’d thought. He actually pulled a gun on the deputy who came to arrest him, and when the dirt settled, and after a plea bargain, my father was sentenced to twelve years in prison. But at eight, they granted him parole.”
Noah did a quick round of math, and something dark unfurled in his gut like baby snakes writhing to escape their eggs. “So that means you were about twenty-two when he got out of prison, but you told me he was still in prison.”
“Correct on both accounts. The monster has been sentenced to prison twice now.”
Noah ran a hand over her hair, just as he had the night ofAbuela’sparty when they’d stood by the water and she’d told him about the monster in her past.
Monster.
Hadn’t she just said her brother was shot saving her from a monster? Noah doubted her use of those exact words then or now was an accident.
Somehow, her father was the reason her brother was in that room.
Closingher eyes on the scene playing out before her, Emma placed her forehead on the glass and tried to find the words, but talking about Preston’s shooting always felt like reliving it. The fear, the shouting, the threats, the sound of the weapon as it exploded. Preston’s head snapping back, and his blood on the moving truck, on her clothes.
On her hands.
“They had released my father on parole about a month before he shot Preston,” she explained, “and he was pissed. Well, he was always pissed, but eight years in prison didn’t exactly make him nicer. And I was terrified he’d come for me and do what he said when he’d been sentenced.”
“And what was that,Bomboncita?”
“Kill us.”
Noah gathered her close, and she let him, burying her face in his chest, partly to hide her face as she said the rest and partly to absorb his strength.
“For months after he went to prison, I had nightmares about him tracking me down and killing me. Eventually, though, the nightmares faded, but they’d always start again whenever he was up for parole. And then, when he received parole, they were constant. My work suffered, and I kept having panic attacks. Years of therapy evaporated, and suddenly, I was that frightened child all over again. So Preston talked me into moving to Houston to live with him and Andi. Preston had just started a security firm with one of their Army buddies, and he was all but out of the Army by then. Andi, too.”
“Where were you living at the time?”
“Nashville. I’d recently graduated from Vanderbilt Law School. Preston was so proud of me, and he was so excited for us to be living close again. He and Andi drove up to help me move. We’d nearly gotten everything packed into the moving truck when the shooting started.” She gripped tight to Noah even as he gripped tight to her. “I can still hear each shot ring out,” she whispered. “Bang. Bang, bang. Bang.Then, time slowed to a crawl as my brother’s head snapped back. Oh, God.”
“I’m here,” he soothed. “I’m here. You’re safe.”
She didn’t feel safe. She felt as cold, scared, and exposed as she had that night. “The only reason I’m still alive is that my brother pushed me out of the way. Plus, Andi was there helping me move. She put two bullets in my father’s chest, but as horror movies always show us, monsters aren’t so easily killed. He survived with minimal damage while Preston—”
Her voice cracked, and she turned her head so that she could see her brother again. He and Andi sat at the table, huddled close, hands linked as they chatted.
“The longer Preston’s illness lags, the harder it is for Andi to come see him. She says it’s just too painful. He’s the love of her life, the father of her child, the man she’d pledged to spend the rest of her life with, but...” She paused, exhaled. “But for all intents and purposes, Preston is stuck in time.”
“What do you meanstuck?”
“He wasn’t shot directly. He caught a ricochet, and it ended up lodging in his hippocampus. That’s the part of the brain that helps encode long-term memories. The surgeon said trying to remove it would be too dangerous and that additional surgeries would do more harm than good. So here we are, four years later, and my brother can’t retain recent memories.”
“At all?”
She shook her head. “It’s always worse when he wakes up. He can’t remember the accident, what happened, anything from around that time. Like now, Andi can start a conversation with him. For a while, he seems okay, but he’ll get to this point where he knows she’s there but can’t rememberwhenshe got there or how. When that happens, he gets agitated because he knows heshouldremember.”
