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“I’m so sorry about everything, Lise.”
My head snaps up. It’s as if she were reading my mind. I sigh. “You don’t have to apologize to me for my own brother, Avery.”
“I know.” She sets the phone onto the blanket. “Your brother has an extremely strong protective gene.”
I shift onto my side. “And it’s very annoying, by the way.”
A small smile changes her face. “To be fair, he is right an awful lot of the time.”
“Ugh. Don’t you hate it?”
“Yes and no. Honestly, if it weren’t for that protective streak, I might not be here today.”
I look up. She’s referring to her run-in with some drug dealer earlier in the year, I think. I ever only got a handful of details. Neither she nor Tripp was in a hurry to talk about it. “It was that bad?”
A shadow passes over her. “It was worse than bad. I still wake up with nightmares.”
Nightmares I understand.
She studies her fingernails. “You know, it might not be a bad idea to cut your brother some slack.”
Maybe, but I’m not ready yet.
“Interestingly, it so happens that the man you’ve fallen in love with has the exact same gene.”
That’s for sure. Marco is just like—
Hold the phone. I muster my sternest of looks. “I am not in love with Marco, Avery.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’m not, really. I—”
I’m in love with Marco.
Avery smiles as she watches the realization settle over me.
Oh boy. Sleep is no longer optional.
I pull the covers up to my ears. Avery takes the hint with a smile and turns off the lamp between the beds.
A half-hour later, I’m tired beyond words but still not asleep. I feel awful. I cocoon my feet into a nest of sheets and blanket, but it isn’t enough. I feel around my tote bag for the socks I bought in New Mexico and slip them over my feet. My head is pounding, and from there the pain radiates, popping up in all my joints. I hurt too much to go on the hunt for Tylenol, so I’ll sleep off the achiness instead.
And then, tomorrow, I’ll climb into my brother’s truck, the classic third wheel, head back to civilization, and probably never see Marco again.
Except on the nightly news.
Under cover of darkness, tears track down my cheeks. I’ve become my friends, haven’t I? To be completely honest, it isn’t so much that my friends turned me away in my time of need; they simply weren’t there anymore. They had moved on as I so desperately wished I had. Now, I’ve done the same to Marco, only worse. Shut him down and out whenhewas down and out.
Add another tally to my list of failures. This year is one for the record books.
Marco
I haven’t been living right.
Not a news flash, but here I am, for the third time in roughly a week, trying to sleep in my vehicle.
Some places may bill themselves as twenty-four-hour establishments, but then they start giving you the stink-eye after a couple of hours. By midnight, they were done with me.
