AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Truly.
But understanding how woefully she’d been prepared for me didn’t lessen the sting of a birthday without parents each year.
It didn’t help that my mother died on my birth date, giving birth to me, so it always felt wrong celebrating my life on the day of her death.
I had this baggage, but Bastian didn’t.
His parents were both alive and healthy as far as I knew, yet he didn’t look particularly happy as he sat in the corner of the bar on the day he turned thirty-one.
Maybe, like Tessie, he had issues with his parents abandoning him on his birthday. I’d seen his Uncle Vince stop by earlier to wish him a happy birthday and the chirpy call from Tessie, but that had been it.
Loneliness bled deep.
I knew that better than most, and I felt the craziest desire to cure his. I told myself it was because I still hadn’t thanked him for getting me home safely as I ducked into the fridge in the employee break room and pulled out a juice pouch from Squeezed!
Tessie would understand.
Making my way back behind the empty bar, I ignored how unnerved I felt at being the only one still here. The staff had left at closing. Graham had given Dana a ride home, and I’d offered to do closing tasks myself.
I cut the top of the juice pouch off, dumped ice into a whiskey glass, and poured the juice over the little square ice cubes.
When I set the glass in front of Bastian, I told myself it was a thank you for taking me home.
Nothing more.
I was such a fucking liar.
My fists clenched, and I watched the same hands that had been in me curl around the glass as he brought it to his lips.
“What’s this?”
“Your nightcap.”
“It’s juice.” He narrowed his eyes on me and studied my posture. “You buy these for Tessie.”
We’d never fully acknowledged my relationship with his sister.
I wanted to keep her out of this. Of us. Of this entire world. The little ray of purity in my otherwise dark world needed to stay pure.
But I was coming to terms with the fact that Bastian wasn’t entirely bad. I didn’t need to protect her from her own brother, and maybe I didn’t need to protect myself from him either.
Everything I thought I knew had been twisted during my time undercover. I felt like a baby taking her first steps, experiencing things for the first time.
I didn’t say anything as he took another sip. I slid a step back to go back to the bar, but he stopped me with a hand on my wrist.
“Thank you.”
My eyes dipped to his fingers on my skin.
“For what?”
“For the drink. For keeping these juice pouches on hand for Tessie. For keeping her company and helping her with her homework and school, but—”
“Happy birthday,” I cut him off before he said something that would piss me off.
Why did there always have to be a but?
I knew if I’d let him continue, with the way his parents had abandoned him today and how lonely he looked, we’d fight.
