AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Naomi finished unpackingher last box. Finally! The place was beginning to feel like a real home. As she stepped back to admire what she had done, she heard the roar of a motorcycle, and a few minutes later, there was a knock on the door.
Her stomached clenched. She assumed it was Corbett, but she was afraid it might be one of Ayden’s boys.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“It’s me, Corbett.”
Naomi relaxed, but there were still traces of a nervous flutter in her stomach. She prayed he had some good news for her. Something that would get her out of this mess. Opening the door, she found him standing there with a box full of Chinese food and a six-pack of beer.
“You my new delivery guy?” she said.
“Yep. I added a twenty-five percent gratuity into the bill.” He grinned. “Can I come in?”
She realized she was still blocking the doorway. “Yes, please.”
Corbett entered and looked around. “Wow, you’ve been busy today. It looks great in here.”
She smiled at the compliment. “Thanks. I guess a person can find the positive in everything, even being arrested for stealing drugs and being suspended from their job.”
“I always thought you were an optimist,” he said as he sat the box down on the table.
Naomi looked at all the food. “Did you think I would be hungry?”
“Damn,” he said. “You haven’t eaten? I would have brought enough for two if I’d known.”
She laughed and pulled out some plates, silverware, and two glasses for their beer.
Corbett looked at the glasses and said, “Um, I’m not really as much of a heathen as I look, but Texas men don’t drink their beer out of a glass.”
Naomi sat down next to him. “Really? Who told you that?”
“My big brother, that’s who,” Corbett said.
“So, your big brother knows all, does he?” Naomi asked playfully as she fixed her plate. She didn’t realize until she looked up at Corbett’s face that he was suddenly sad.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” he said. “I just haven’t talked about my brother in a really long time. There hasn’t really been anyone to talk about him to, not anymore, now that my parents are also gone. His name was Conner.”
The grief in his eyes was unmistakable. Naomi felt terrible. “I’m sorry. Is he… I mean, did he…?”
“Yeah, he died,” Corbett said. “When I was in Afghanistan. I barely made it home for the funeral. Both of my parents went within a year after his death. I think it killed them, losing a son that way.”
“I’m sorry, Corbett. I don’t know how it feels to lose a brother permanently, but I’m definitely empathetic to brother issues in general. If you don’t want to talk about it, though, I understand.”
He smiled at her. “Conner was an amazing guy. He was smart and athletic, and of course, we looked a lot alike, so he was handsome too.”
Naomi laughed. “Was he as modest as you?”
“Not even close,” Corbett said with a smile. “He was a football star in high school, and my hero. He went to college on a full ride scholarship in New York. I was so freaking proud of him. When I joined the Navy, it was in part to try and make him as proud of me as I was of him. I hope he was.”
“What happened to him?” she asked.
“He hurt his knee his junior year. They wanted him back; he was the star quarterback. So they put him on a lot of meds, opiates. My mom wrote to me and said they had sent him home six months after that. He was addicted to the pills and refused to get help. My parents thought if he was home, they could help, but he wasn’t ready to get help. I like to think that he would have been… eventually.” He stopped.
Naomi could tell how hard it was for him. “You don’t have to do this, Corbett,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he uttered, taking a moment to collect himself. “He started using street drugs when the doctor wouldn’t prescribe him the meds anymore. I came home on leave that Christmas, and he was all strung out. I didn’t even recognize him as my brother. My mom and dad looked like they had aged twenty years; it was tearing the whole family apart. I dragged his ass to rehab, and I told him to get it together. I was so tough, like I knew what it was like. He left rehab two days later and bought a bag of heroin out of a biker bar downtown. They found his body in an alley the next day. The coroner said it was bad stuff, too potent.”
