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He stared ahead, seeing nothing. “It gets worse,” he said.
“Well, we’re here, and I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “So go.”
He took off his baseball cap and dropped it on the seat next to him. He ran a hand through his hair, and again I saw the two bracelets on his wrist. I was now pretty certain they had something to do with Andrew, though I didn’t know what.
“He tried suicide,” Nick said. “After the accident. Twice.”
The silence was deafening. I felt my stomach fall, twisting as it dropped.
“Our parents checked out,” Nick said, still rubbing his hand through his hair, as if that would coax the words out. “They couldn’t take it after the accident. They said it was too hard. They threw money at both of us, lots of money, and never visited, never called. So there was just Andrew and me.”
“Holy shit,” I said softly.
He sighed. “Andrew had to go to his friend’s funeral in a wheelchair. He had to adjust to being paralyzed. His whole life was fucked, his whole future. Our parents dumped us. It hit him too hard, for too long. It’s like this black hole that sucks you in, and all I could do was watch. I tried to get him into therapy, on meds or something, but he’s so fucking stubborn. And I couldn’t be there all the time.”
I was quiet. It was starting to make sense now, the deep undercurrents I’d seen between the two brothers. The history that no one else could touch. The love mixed with so many other things, like a chemical mix so unstable it can explode.
“When I was little,” Nick said, “people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. A baseball player, a fireman. I always said I wanted to be Andrew.” He sat back in the driver’s seat, leaning his head against the headrest. “I got my tattoo after his accident. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a pattern. But I felt like I should mark something that big on my skin. Make it something permanent that happened to me.”
“And the bracelets?” I asked him.
He raised his hand. “This one,” he said, touching the old, worn bracelet, “Andrew made for me when I was fifteen. And this one,” he touched the leather one, “I put on after he tried to kill himself the first time. It’s just… a reminder. That I have to be vigilant. That I can’t take it off.”
“Oh, Nick,” I said.
He lowered his hand again. “Andrew got better, or at least better than he was. He pulled through. But I don’t know if he could go back to that place. I don’t know what would send him there. I’m just a guy who doesn’t know a fucking thing. And I know I have to protect him against it, and I’m all he has. I almost lost him, Evie. You get it? I almost fucking lost him. Twice.”
I looked at his profile. I thought of the badass guy I’d met that first night, the guy who didn’t give a fuck. A guy who let everyone think he was a rich, useless waste of space. Because he couldn’t let anyone see what was going on beneath the surface. Maybe that was easier for him; maybe it was the only way he could cope. “And the comics?” I said. “How do they fit in?”
“I started those when Andrew was in the hospital,” Nick said. “I couldn’t leave him alone, but there’s only so much talking you can do, you know? So I started spinning this story about a hero called Lightning Man. He took to it right away. I’d come up with something, and he’d sketch it. He’d wake right up and almost be his old self again. So I kept it going and going. After he got home, he started redoing the artwork on his computer. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just what we do.”
I turned sideways in the passenger seat, drawing my knees up as I listened to him. “And if you publish it,” I said, “if you publish Lightning Man, the whole process changes.”
The look he shot me was so raw I nearly reached out and touched him. “If we publish it, then it isn’t ours anymore,” he said. “Right now it’s his and mine. If it isn’t his and mine anymore, then how the hell do I keep us both going?”
I did touch him then. I put my hand on his shoulder, slid it down his arm. Then I leaned in and kissed his jaw.
“Evie,” he said softly.
I didn’t relent. I leaned in even closer and kissed my way along the soft roughness of his short beard, to the warm place behind his ear. I kissed my way down his neck, letting my tongue taste his skin. I put my hand on his shoulder, then curled it around his neck.
He didn’t push me away. He sat still, his breath coming short, and he didn’t touch me. I nipped his earlobe and ran my hand down his chest to his stomach, aiming for his belt.
“Fuck,” he said softly, flinching under my touch. “Fuck, fuck.” He leaned over, tilted my chin, and kissed my mouth.
Immediately, I was on fire. It was the taste of him, the way he kissed me like there was no other purpose for him on earth. He pressed me back and opened my mouth and pressed into me while I ran my hands through his hair, over his back. Then down between us, tugging at his belt again.
He broke the kiss as I undid his buckle. “You want this?” he said roughly.
“Yes,” I said.
He ran a thumb over my lip. “Get in the back seat,” he said.
I did. I couldn’t explain how exciting this was, why my whole body was on fire. It was the fact that I’d seen him, the real him, everything he’d never showed me before. It was the fact that I liked who I’d just seen, a man who took care of his brother and hated to talk about it because he cared so much. It was the fact that he was still Nick, still the guy who drove me crazy, and apparently I really wanted Nick Mason to fuck me in the back seat of his car at Newcastle Point. Something about that made me feel dirty and hot and weirdly happy.
He got in the back seat next to me and slammed the door. “Get your clothes off and get on my lap,” he said.
I shivered. I was already undoing my jeans before he had all the words out of his mouth. I pushed off my shoes, my jeans, my panties, and climbed onto him, straddling him bare, I was so urgent for him. He slid his hands up under my shirt, over my nipples through my bra, then down to my ass, cupping it. In return, I tugged at his T-shirt and pulled it off.
