Page 81 of Fighting For You

"Explain it to me. Because I don't understand how my brother ended up sitting in a police precinct because he was helping people steal cars."

"Don't talk about them like that."

I stopped. "Excuse me?"

"You don't get to talk about my friends like that. You don't know them. You don't know anything about them."

"I know they got you arrested, Ian."

"They didn't get me arrested. They gave me a place to go." He was looking at me now, and something in his face had shifted. The relief was gone. The guilt was gone. What was left was anger, and it was pointed directly at me. "You were never there, Nora."

The words hit me like a wall.

"You weren't there when Mom started using. You weren't there when I sat at the kitchen table begging her to stop, and she looked right through me like I wasn't even in the room. You weren't there the morning I woke up and went to her bedroom and she wasn't breathing." His voice cracked, but he kept going. "You were at school. And then after she died, you were at work, or in class, or picking up another shift, and I was in that house by myself."

I couldn't speak. I couldn't move.

"Jesse was there. Jesse's brother was there. Those guys you're calling criminals were the ones who showed up when I had nobody. They walked me to school. They checked on me after school when nobody else did. They sat with me when I didn't want to be alone in that house." His eyes were wet but his voice was steady now, like he'd been carrying this for years and had finally found the door. "So don't sit there and tell me they're bad people. They were there for me when you weren't."

I sat there.

Six years. Doubles, night classes, bills paid before anything else, food in the house, clothes on his back, a light left on in the hallway so he wouldn't wake up scared.

He was right that the house was empty. He was right that I wasn't in it. I was working. I was always working. I had to be. But knowing why didn't change the fact that he was alone.

We looked at each other. Neither of us said anything.

I didn't know what to do.

CHAPTER 19

Conditions

KNOX

Nora was sitting on a bench against the wall. Her hands were folded in her lap, her back straight, her eyes fixed on the floor. She was still in her scrubs from her shift. She looked like she'd aged five years since I dropped her off that morning.

She saw me and stood. I was already moving toward her. She was halfway to me before I reached her. Her arms went around my neck. I pulled her in, and she broke.

"Knox, I'm so sorry." Her voice cracked. "I didn't want you involved in any of this. This is my family, this is my problem, and I⁠—"

"Stop."

She looked up at me. Her eyes were red, her face wet.

"This isn't your problem. This is our problem." I pulled her back into me. "We're going to figure this out. Together."

She held on, her fingers tight in the fabric, her body pressed against mine. Her breathing went uneven, then steady, then uneven again. I kissed the top of her head and kept my arms where they were. When she finally pulled back, I wiped her cheeks with my thumbs and held her face until her breathing settled.

A door opened down the hall and a woman in a Clark County lanyard came out with a clipboard.

"Miss Avery? We're ready for you to sign the release paperwork."

Nora stepped back. She wiped her face with both hands, pulled her shoulders back, and turned. I watched her walk down the hallway toward the woman with the clipboard.

While Nora was down the hall signing paperwork, I found Andy.

"What's he looking at?"