“See you tomorrow?” I asked.
“Sure thing. No more fake smiles.”
Outside, the rare summer Memphis breeze licked at my soul. I saw the world in a different light, breathed in the barbecue-tinted air like it was a drug. Maybe Rose’s blood was magical. Perhaps it was a placebo for happiness. Either way, I smiled all the way out of her office and on my walk home.
“You’re home early!” Lance exclaimed while pulling a casserole out of the oven. The moment I stepped foot in the loft, the smell of taco seasoning hit my nostrils full force. I breathed it in.
“It was a slow night. Rose sent me home,” I lied.
Decker was sitting at the kitchen table reading over a stack of papers. No longer sporting his sexy suit but a pair of sweats instead. His eyes snapped to me the moment he heard my voice. We had a silent standoff for a moment, the earlier disappointment fading away like dust in the wind. “Hello, Mr. Harris,” I said with a grin. Lance coughed, drawing my eyes back to him.
“How was your day?” my brother asked.
“Awful. I’m not half as smart as those other kids, and I’m already behind,” I replied with a wince. I already had homework in chemistry thirteen pages long, intended to test my aptitude to see if I can place in the advanced class.
“Do you need help?” Lance offered. “I can google like a champ.” I smiled at his willingness to assist.
“I already looked it over, and I think I’ve got it covered. I’ll just be up all night determining the major organic product of reactions. Where’s the coffee?”
“Atta girl. Working hard already!” Lance got out two plates and coughed again, making Decker stir from his spot.
“Oh. I’ve got plans I just remembered,” Decker jolted lamely, making me roll my eyes. He sauntered off toward his bedroom, giving me a simmering look in the process.
“That was weird,” I mumbled to myself before sitting down at the kitchen table as Lance served dinner. He looked like a domestic goddess, wearing an apron and floral oven mitts.
“In the interest of honesty, I asked him to give us time tonight,” Lance said with a shrug before sitting down and removing the mitts from his hands, plopping them on the table. “Decker is my brother, but I’ve been using him as a buffer between us.”
My eyebrows shot up in surprise at the candidness of Lance’s words. “I’m not saying he won’t be around, but I think it’s time you and I actually bonded without me leaning on him. I’m always leaning on him.”
“From what he’s told me, it sounds like it’s the other way around,” I said before scooping a portion of the casserole onto my plate.
Lance paused and shot his blue eyes up at me before straightening the fork at his place setting. “He told you that? About the…home invasion?” Lance asked incredulously. “He never tells anyone.”
Shit. “I was asking about you. I wanted to know more about your friendship. I kind of pressured him into telling me.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie but wasn’t the full truth either. Lance relaxed.
“See? This is why I wanted to have dinner alone with you. We keep using other people to connect, and it’s not working. Decker…our mom…” Lance let the words linger between us before speaking again. “I don’t want any more stories about her. I want to know more about you.”
“Okay, what would you like to know?” This felt wrong, somehow. Like my truths had only been reserved for Decker. But Lance was right, we’d been using everything we could to hide, and it was time to finally lay it all out.
“Do you like it here?” Lance asked. It wasn’t the ice-breaking question I’d expected, but I welcomed the easy topic.
“Yes. It’s nice. I feel…safe here. Memphis is beautiful,” I admitted before shoving a fork full of steaming food into my mouth. It singed my tongue, and I eagerly took a drink of iced tea Lance pushed in front of me.
“Did you not feel safe back in Texas?” Lance prodded.
“No. Not really.” My words turned my tongue to ash.
“I’m sorry, Blakely,” Lance murmured.
“It’s not your fault,” I offered with a shrug. “And you turned up when I needed you most. This is a fresh start for me. Admittedly, I’m relieved that you don’t want to know more about Mama. It’s hard for me to talk about her, but I’m terrified that if we focus on me, you won’t like what you find out.”
Lance leaned forward on the table, propping his elbows up as he spoke. “Blakely,” he said, and I averted my eyes. I wasn’t expecting to have such a hard-hitting conversation right after my episode with Rose. “You’re my sister. There’s nothing that can change that,” Lance said in exasperation.
But didn’t he get it? That’s not what I wanted. I was chained to my own mother my entire life. I didn’t love her. Hell, I think I hated her. I didn’t want Lance to feel obligated to build a relationship with me based on blood. Rose’s words were still ringing in my mind. This blood was mine.
“I don’t want you to feel chained to me because of a missed opportunity. I don’t want you to feel obligated to bond with me because somehow we share sister sequences of the same DNA. I want us to be close because we like one another. Because we add value to one another’s lives. The shared blood pumping through our veins should only be a tiny percentage of the equation. And I don’t ever want anyone to feel obligated to be in my life because of something they can’t control—and we can’t control that we are related.”
My speech felt stilted and didn’t truly dive into the depths of my feelings about this. Maybe I was projecting my issues about Mama on Lance, but it didn’t change the end result. We were virtual strangers, and just because we found each other didn’t mean we had to stay in each other’s lives. Maybe I was self-destructive, and that’s why it was important to me that I push this truth, lay it out on the table between us like it was a decadent feast. But I did.
“I understand,” Lance replied solemnly. “But you have to understand that as someone who has been denied family, that beautiful and unique sequence of DNA is significant to me. Even if I don’t like you, I want to know you. But if we both find that this sibling relationship isn’t compatible, I’ll happily let you go and live your life. But you have to give me the chance to figure that out on my own.”
He was right. I had a lifetime to decide that I was relieved when Mama died. Family wasn’t as much of a blood connection as it was a decision. My resistance was taking that decision away from Lance. My insecurities were affecting the possibilities of a relationship with my brother. “I promise to give you a chance. A real chance. Not one littered with fake truths about our egg donor. And if you decide this isn’t working, I just want you to be honest with me. I didn’t feel like I could be honest with her. The guilt from her cancer ate me up inside. How can you hate a dying woman?”
“Stop beating yourself up,” Lance offered with a shrug before eating a bite of food, wincing when it scalded his mouth. I watched in amusement as he grabbed his glass of iced water and guzzled it down. “Shit, how can you eat that?”