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Shaking off that thought, I focused on him.
Exhaling, I raised my beer to him. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“You know when I told you I wanted you to make me work for it,” he said, with a hint of complaint.
“Too late to change your mind,” I told him. “Unless you truly have changed your mind, and then I guess you can persuade me to come over there…”
“No.” Shaking his head, he huffed out a laugh then moved to sit on the end of his bed where he could face me. “I want to tell you this. I need to tell you this. Although I don’t want how you look at me to change.”
“I get that.” Maybe more than he realized.
Surprise flickered across his face.
“Telling you wasn’t easy… telling any of you wasn’t. It seemed to get easier toward the end, but maybe that was me ripping it open enough times to get all the ick out.” Turning the bottle around in my hands, I divided my attention between it and him. “I didn’t want all of you to look at me differently…”
Worry crept into his gaze along with a ferocious kind of anger. I’d seen that look in all of their faces.
“It did change how you looked at me,” I said.
“Little Bit…”
“I’m not saying it changed in a bad way. Though it did change. I used to be able to pretend no one knew what had happened. That…I wasn’t dirty or filthy or all the horrible things I’ve felt over the years. I could pretend that it never happened to me. I convinced myself that pretending was good. If I pretended long enough, it would be real.”
“You know none of us think any less of you.”
“I do know that…if anything, I see how much you all care about me when it comes up. Even if I didn’t see it in your eyes, I’d feel it in how you are all tightening the circle around me. You’re all letting me love you, and you’re all drowning me in love…it’s scary. Nevertheless. I think it’s worth it.”
He sat forward, bracing his chin on his hand as he stared at me. “You are your brother’s sister.”
“What?”
“You remember what I said about him being the bravest and the strongest kid I’d ever met?” At my nod, he smiled at me. “You have every ounce of his strength and bravery. Maybe even more. Maybe it’s just how you Hardigans are made.”
I laughed. “It could be in the name…”
That actually earned me a chuckle. The laughter eased some of the melancholy lingering in the air.
“Do you still want to tell me?” I said, “I didn’t mean to make it about me.”
“I know but thank you for trying to comfort me. I needed to hear that.” Tipping the bottle back, he drained the beer and then stood. Moving to the dresser, he set the empty bottle down. “When I joined the army, I didn’t do it because I wanted to save people or because I had any real interest in fighting overseas, or even going to school.”
Arms folding, he both looked at me and seemed to be a million miles away all at once.
“I’d been in and out of trouble as a teenager,” he admitted. “Once upon a time…my street name was Vandal.”
Surprise fluttered through me.
“I was an arrogant, stupid little shit who thought I knew how the world worked. I made money running drugs, getting in and out of scrapes, controlling my little piece of the streets—” He shook his head. “I was just stupid. I didn’t recognize that actions have consequences, not until you and Milo paid the price for my choices.”
Our mother.
“I’d done a lot of dumb shit, although I’d never gotten anyone killed. Never robbed two kids of their only family…especially after Jeff left.”
Jeff…
“Yeah, I knew your dad. I worked for him, too. He left when your mom got too deep into the product. Just walked away from his family, the prick. But the point was, I kept doing my thing and not worrying about who it hurt. When I ended up in front of a judge in the weeks that followed, he gave me a choice. Get my shit together, enlist in the military, and turn it around or face possible conviction and time in jail.”
No-brainer on that one.
