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I blush. I’m a little…distracted. “Yes?”
He smiles knowingly, the gorgeous prick. “Where’d you go this morning?”
“On a walk around the lake.”
“Oh.”
“And then to Preston’s.”
Silence.
“Preston’s?” He sounds surprised.
“Yeah. He invited me over. He was…” I debate telling him he was baking cupcakes. Does he know? When I answer, I turn my attention back to the suitcase. “…smoking on the porch.”
“What did y’all talk about?”
I hesitate. Think of something. “Just shooting the shit.”
It isn’t a lie.
The bathroom door creaks all the way open, the air still, but he doesn’t say anything. I don’t look in his direction this time, but I don’t need to. I already have a pretty good idea what I’ll find—a worried brother with his eyes fixed on me. Because if he weren’t worried, he probably would have made a joke or ask if shooting the shit was a journalistic term.
He proves me right. “You’re leaving him out of the…” He lowers his voice to a loud whisper. “…article, right?”
I turn to face him again, still kneeling. “Of course,” I whisper back.
He steps out of the bathroom, his crisp white button down untucked from his jeans, the sleeves rolled up above tanned forearms. Bare feet.
How is he always just as distracting when he’s dressed?
“Scarlett?”
“I’m not,” I say, a little too defensively. But not because I’m fibbing, but because I’m annoyed that he thinks I might be.
“I’m serious.”
“Promise,” I say.
His eyes flicker to the door, and he keeps his voice low. “He gets enough shit from Mom and Ruby. He doesn’t need it from the rest of the world.”
I just let him rant. I don’t know what else I can say.
“And he had nothing to do with that night.” His jaw clenches. “He was eleven. He was a kid.” He then pauses for a response.
“He’s not in there at all,” I assure him. “I only visited because he invited me.”
That seems to ease him, though I didn’t say anything new.
To make sure and drive his point home, to make sure I fully understand, he says, “The ‘inside look’ this weekend is for Mom and Ruby and Dad. Even for me. But not him. Never him.”
“Got it,” I say.
He turns back for the bathroom, satisfied and resolute, and as I watch him go, I don’t know if I’m still annoyed or if I’m a little endeared.
A protective older sibling is something I’ll always admire. Probably because it was something I was robbed of and wished I still had around. Something I only had for a little while until it was taken from me.
Until drugs decided they needed him more.
