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My phone dinged, and I looked down, blinking twice at the person whose name showed up there. Justin? My brother?
I hadn’t heard from him in a long time. Not since he left Layla penniless and alone in France.
Hope, I think… I think I’m in big trouble.
Thoughts of Max flew from my head. Yes, I bet Justin was in big fucking trouble.
5
Justin was only a little bit older than us. My mother had four kids in two years and had really suffered through it, from what I understood. She was an artist, a redhead like her four children, and when she’d died in her bed from an accidental overdose, two-year-old Justin had tried to care for us for over a day until my father got home. Four traumatized babies, starving, crying, and clinging to each other.
I’d always heard it was an accidental overdose. That was the running story. Somehow, everyone else had figured out she killed herself except for me. I’d only learned that fact a little less than two years ago from Layla, when she’d had to be hospitalized after her ordeal. Bridget had already known.
I waited for Justin to answer me, pacing around my apartment. Four locks. I’d gotten in and kept it four, somehow. This was like a point of pride for me. Exactly how many times did I have to lock my door in a building with doormen and my own paid security outside?
I paced from one side of the apartment to the other side. I wished Justin would answer. It wasn’t like we were close. We never had been, and our relationship certainly hadn’t changedsince he’d handed Layla a bad credit card and left her penniless after stealing from her in Paris, when we’d taken even a further downswing. He was a drug addict, and I had absolutely no idea how to help him recover.
But he’d reached out, and he was my family. That meant I had to pay attention. I had to help him.
Didn’t I?
I sat down on the bed and my phone dinged, only it wasn’t Justin. It was Max.Tonight was fun.
I couldn’t help my smile.It was.
I copied the message that Justin sent me and texted it to Zeke. I wasn’t sure what else to do. I supposed I could send it to Michael Li, but truth was, I didn’t know how Justin was being handled.
Before I could overthink, I sent Max another message. It was easier to be distracted by him, simpler to focus on that than what was happening with Justin. Max was a person who never had to know about my brother and the things he’d done to my sister. How it tore me up inside. One of them hurting the other. Layla was fine now. Happily married. She had a baby that Justin didn’t even know existed. How could that be?
Shouldn’t our shared history bond us?
Those were the thoughts that pushed through my mind as I texted Max.
Obviously, what you said is true. I’m very attracted to you.
I threw myself back down on the bed and stared at my ceiling as the phone rang. I picked it up. “Don’t make me regret saying that.”
“I’m not. But what I want to say to you next, I want to say, not text like some seventeen-year-old kid who can’t own his words, can’t hear his own voice saying things.”
I rolled onto my stomach. “You already had my attention. Now you really have it.”
“I told you tonight, I don’t do relationships, and that’s not something I just say. I tend to get what I want. I work for it. Sheer force of will sometimes. If I wanted to be someone’s boyfriend or husband or anything like that, I would be. I don’t.”
If only he knew how perfectly fine with me that was. “You get that I’m a little fucked up, right? I mean, I don’t have to spell it out, do I? I’m not on a path to traditional normalcy. Stop assuming I’m looking to marry you and go live in Connecticut with two kids and a dog.”
Although I really should get a pet. But not a dog. They needed too much attention. Maybe a goldfish.
“I don’t get you at all, Hope, and I’ve known a lot of fucked up in my life. I don’t know if you qualify or not. I just know I want to spread open your legs and put my mouth on you until you come on my tongue. I know that can’t happen as long as you think you’re in some kind of debt to me. I’m not taking you as long as things aren’t equal between us. So I’ll just say this. If we have sex, it all stops. You stop using your connections to help me out of some need to fix what can’t be fixed.” He was quiet for a second. “Or this stops right now.”
The last thing he said was very final. I didn’t think I’d get him to budge on that point if I wanted to. “They’re two separate things. Me wanting your body” —if only he knew how rare a thing that actually was for me. He was like magic or something—“and me wanting to get onions for you when you can’t.”
“They’re not to me.” His voice was so low, it moved through me like a gust of wind that almost knocked me over, even though I lay on my bed. “What’s it going to be, Hope?”
“I’ll stop with the food.” That was how badly I wanted him. It was like a desperate wanting, and I was terrified it would go away.
“Give me your address. I can be there soon.”
No. If he came here, then he might see through the layers I still had separating him from my level of not being okay. “I’ll come to you.”
