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But his eyes watch me. His body is mostly relaxed, and his hand, unflinching on the steel between his fingers.
“Fuck, Tim!” I hiss my surprise and press a palm to my chest, while beneath it, my heart thunders with adrenaline. “Scared the shit out of me.”
He remains still. Comfortable. But his lips curl into a ghost of a smile. “You were the one sneaking. I’m just sitting.”
I cross the room and grab a chair. Setting it on the opposite side of the bed, I sit down so we become mirrors of each other. Then I glance to the gun in his hand and lift a questioning brow. “Got something on your checklist today?”
His eyes drop to the piece, a soft chuckle rolling along his throat. “Just equipped, I guess. I’m still waiting for him to bound out of his bed and tell us this was all a fuckin’ joke.” Slowly, he strokes the silver glint of the weapon he spent his entire youth learning to master. “No matter how long I sit here and see him like this, I can’t reconcile him with the prick who raised us.”
Turning my gaze to the dying Timothy, I study his gaunt cheeks, and his too-bony face. He was once a man of a healthy two hundred and twenty pounds. But now, lying in that bed, he can’t weigh more than a hundred and thirty.
“He’s wearing a diaper.” A ridiculous grin crosses my lips when I look back to my brother. “He would never go for that, if he had the choice.”
Tim snorts. “I take pleasure in knowing he hates every minute of this. If he had the energy, he’d probably put a bullet in his mouth and be done with it all.”
“Mmm. Probably.” Lifting my ankle, I rest it on the opposite knee and sit back to find comfort. “Besides wanting to shove a pineapple up Felix’s asshole, what are your thoughts on this Pastore party tomorrow?”
His chest bounces, just perceptibly enough for me to translate that to mild humor. “It’s a smash and grab. No matter how he wants to dress it up and call it something else, his plan has no more finesse than a couple of guys hooking their truck to an ATM machine and hauling it out of the wall.”
“Or burglars breaking through glass cases and stealing diamonds.”
“There’s no delicacy,” he says. “No sophistication.” His eyes come to mine. “Aren’t we better than that?”
“Are we?” I counter. “I thought we weren’t part of this at all.”
“We’re not. We’re walking once Micah is home. We’ve evolved past all the Timothy Malone bullshit. But since we’re here, and since we have to dosomething… aren’t we going to do better than those who’ve come before us?”
A cathartic laugh rolls through my chest and alleviates, for just a second, the longing I have for home. “You’re all twisted up. You want out, but you also wanna be remembered as stealthy and better than our father. That’s a giant fucking conflict of interest, Tim.”
“Don’t I know it. Common sense says we leave Felix to get Micah home on his own. We walk away, and go back to the life we’ve already created in Copeland. But loy—”
“Loyalty and family,” I cut in, “say we can’t leave them hanging.”
“Right.” Drawing a deep breath, he exhales again so it turns to a sigh. “Neither of us wanna be here. But just like you couldn’t let me come alone, I can’t leave Micah’s life in Felix’s hands. And no matter how much Felix is pissing me off right now, I can’t let him walk into Pastore’s home just to end up in a shallow grave somewhere we’ll never find him. We don’t have a good bloodline to work with here, Arch. But they’re blood, nonetheless. If we don’t take care of our own, are we even truly men?”
I think on his question, only to shrug. “That depends, I guess. Blood is important. But family trumps all that.”
“That’s what I—”
I shake my head. “Family means the people wechoose. It means Minka, and Aubree, and Fletch, and everyone else we’d save long before we save a Malone. It means Felix takes our loyalty for granted. We allow it for now, but blood sure as fuck won’t count for shit if I have to choose between him and Minka. If I had to pick to save him or Aubree, Aubree wins. If I had one gun to share, and Felix and Fletch both needed the help…”
“What?” he challenges. “You’d arm Fletch and not Felix?”
“I love Fletch like he’s my brother,” I counter. “You know that.”
“I do. And he’s my brother too. But so is Felix. He’s ourrealbrother. Love it or hate it, he’s family. So although you wanna say it’s not the same, I’m not sure you could save Fletch and toss Felix to the fire.”
“I won’t toss Fletch,” I declare. “Not in a million years.”
“No.” Setting his foot on the ground, he slumps back in his chair and looks to our father while the asshole sleeps.
He looks dead already. If it wasn’t for the machines telling us otherwise, I’m not sure I’d believe he was breathing.
“I’m saying you’d find a way to save them both,” Tim murmurs. “Because that’s who you are. You’re the fucking caretaker.”
In my pocket, my phone trills with Minka’s ringtone and sends my heart pounding with nerves. After all this time, living together, being married, waging a million fights that always end with fire and passion and making up, just thinking about her still makes my heart skip a beat.
I drop my hand so fast I slap my own leg, then I shove my fingers into my pocket and fish the device out.
