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"Because we didn't know until about an hour ago." Ash's mouth barely moved as he spoke. Like me, he did his best to remain calm.
"An hour ago?" I echoed.
"Yeah, because…" He swallowed and tried to clear his throat. "They couldn't ID him until they tracked down his wallet."
My heart dropped. "The accident was that bad?"
"I didn't recognize him," Ash said in a low voice.
I pressed my lips together, trying to keep my emotions at bay. "How did it happen?"
My brother sighed and rubbed the stubble sprouting on his jawline. He was taller than me by a few inches, but for some reason, I still felt as if I could pick him up and carry him somewhere far less scary.
"He was street racing."
Confusion morphed into anger and then disappointment. I placed my hands on my hips and looked around for a second before I answered. I couldn't be quick to anger; not now and not here.
"I thought he stopped all that," I said when I finally felt able to speak without blowing up.
TJ was a thrill seeker. Combined with a knack for understanding cars, he figured out how to make quick cash on the side. The racers weren't sticklers for safety, and they sure as hell weren't above racing dirty.
"He needed the extra cash because of…me." Ash couldn't meet my eyes, so he opted for a spot on the ground.
"I could have guessed that much," I said, my blood pressure rising again. "What's going on with you? Why haven't you answered any of my calls?"
Ash stuffed his hands in his pockets. "I was trying to figure shit out before I talked to you because I knew…I knew…"
"What?" I snapped. "What did you know? That T was going to cover for you? That he was going to go back to bad habits because of you?"
"That you'd look at me like this." He gestured to my face. "Like I'm someone your perpetually disappointed in. It's the same look you've given Mom and Dad our entire lives, the one you started to give TJ after a while. I didn't want to be hated by you. I wanted to be different." Ash finally met my gaze, and the hurt in his eyes made the brown blur like chalk on a rainy sidewalk.
I was all twisted inside with a new level of guilt and shame. "I don't look…"
I stopped myself, because I couldn’t lie about it, not anymore. I didn't think the disappointment could be seen on my face, but somehow, someway, throughout the years, my cracks began to show.
"You're disappointed and hurt," he whispered. "I was trying to make sure I didn't add to that kind of pain."
I wished my lungs were filled with dirt. Being in the ground was more appealing than knowing I'd made Ash feel so afraid.
"That's not something should worry about," I said in a voice that didn’t have much energy.
"But it is." He straightened a bit, sure of this one thing. "I should worry because we let things go too far. We expected you to fix everything. I wanted to figure out my own stuff for once before coming to you, Sage. So, I took out a few loans, something to hold Mom and Dad over while I tried to go to school, but the money ran out and the bills kept piling up, so I asked Faye for help."
His girlfriend, the one whose eyes shined with a genuine love for him. I didn’t know if true love existed, but if it did, I would bet everything on them. No matter how many times they broke up, they found their way back to each other.
"I thought I'd be able to pay her back in time, but I couldn't. She panicked after a few days and told me she'd taken the money from her dad."
My eyes went wide. Faye's dad was a no-nonsense congressman who had tried to get Ash away from his daughter by any means necessary.
"He threatened to take me to court," Ash said.
"Under what charges?" I laughed humorlessly. "His daughter taking money out of his account?"
"You know he's way smarter than that. Even if he couldn't win, he'd find a way to put me in front of a judge. I couldn't afford that, so I took the money from our joint account to pay him back and shut him up."
"Faye should have known better," I grumbled.
"I shouldn't have put her in that position."
