Page 157 of Trust Me

“I have all of you here to keep an eye on this old man,” Dad joked. “Hey, we could go get some lunch together.”

Blake nodded, and the tension began to ease from around his mouth. “Maybe. Just me, you, and D.” He looked at me, and I read the full meaning in his dark eyes.

“Do you think we could go on a walk?” I asked. “Me and you.”

He studied me for a second, then nodded. “Let me change.”

When he was gone, Dad gave me a meaningful look. “You two aren’t going to fight, are you?”

“Not physically.”

“Do you need to talk about it first?”

I considered it for a minute, then shook my head. “Afterward, if things don’t go well. Maybe we can figure it out together.”

He grasped my shoulder, squeezing it hard. “I’m proud of you.”

My stomach somersaulted, just like it did any time he said that. With a dip of my head, I headed out of the kitchen, but his voice stopped me at the edge.

“And D?” Turning around, I saw him carefully sit in his wheelchair, bringing his coffee with him. “I promise, alright?”

My nostrils flared, but I just nodded.

Blake was already at the door when I got there. He was silent, just as I was. Together, we walked outside, taking the same path down the sidewalk that we used to. We cut through a park, then navigated through overgrown brush until we came out next to the creek. It wasn’t all that nice in the daylight, what with the trash that always littered it, but it was the tiniest slice of nature in our old, concrete-lined city.

“I talked to Oli,” I said when we’d been walking beside the water for a few minutes.

“Ah, so he’s a narc.”

“Don’t joke right now.”

His toe hit one of the pebbles, sending it skittering across the rocks. “You’re too damn serious sometimes, you know that?”

“I’m serious when I need to be,” I countered. “Like when my brother insults my boyfriend.”

Coming to a stop, I turned to face him. He did the same, and in that moment, we weren’t two kids with five years separating us. We were grown men, full of our own dreams and fears and values and people who we loved separately from each other.

One of us had enlisted at eighteen, desperate to get away from home despite the way it made our mom cry when he told her. She hadn’t done it in front of him. No, she was too proud for that. Too strong. It was after he left for his last shift at the movie theater that she’d broken down in her room, and even my dad couldn’t console her. She’d lost part of her husband to the army. It was a wound that would never heal, and now I feared that the rift between her and Blake was another one.

And yet, when he left for basic, she told him she was proud of him and kissed him on the cheek. He’d called every week, but she wasn’t home even once when that phone rang. I’d never let myself wonder why that was, too afraid of the answer, or of what it would do to what remained of our relationship.

As I looked at him, my fingers curled into fists. “You’re selfish.”

His brows rose. “I’m selfish? D, I’m trying to protect you. That’s my job.”

“No, it’s not. If it was, you wouldn’t have been so quick to leave when I was thirteen. You’d call me more than once a month, if that. You’d talk to Mom more than just holidays.”

He scoffed, looking away from me. “My relationship with Mom has nothing to do with you.”

“Of course it does! We’re family. That doesn’t end with one of us.”

“Is this about her or Oli, because I’m fucking confused.”

“Both, but right now, him.” I glanced at the slow-flowing current. “You called him a stray? That’s not okay.”

“He sort of comes off that way. He just shows up, attaches himself to you, and suddenly he’s everywhere.”

“It wouldn’t be sudden if we talked more.”