“You want me to get it for you?”
“Yeah…but just don’t…” I take a deep breath.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t hurt them. Alright. I know it sounds stupid as fuck, but they’re still my brothers. Even if I never see them again, I just don’t…just don’t do it.” There’ve been plenty of times where I’ve wished Hunter dead.
Where I envisioned my fist pounding his face.
But at the end of it all, I don’t want a single living soul to feel the pain that I’ve felt.
Not even them.
I just want it to stop.
“I won’t,” he says, and after everything, I believe him. “Give me your phone. I’ll go get your hard drive now.”
I pass him my cell.
“What about your parents?” Lo asks. “Do they know?”
Goosebumps crawl along my arms, cold all of a sudden, but it’s easier to talk. “I’ve told my mom, but she just says it’s boys being boys…” I pause. “And my dad likes Davis the best. They don’t care about anything except making money, and ever since I got a job with Cobalt Inc., they stopped hounding me about ‘doing something with my life.’ If I never checked in, never returned their calls, they’d just think I was too busy for them, and they’d probably be proud.”
“Huh,” he says, frowning. “They sound like dicks.”
I choke out a laugh. “Yeah, they are.”
He scrolls through my contacts. I have shit emojis next to each of my brother’s names, which Lo can definitely see. His lips pull down, and I’m just glad that I didn’t have to paint vivid portraits of all the crap they’ve done over the years for Lo to believe me.
He just did.
With our backs to the cabinets, he presses the phone to his ear, so I can’t hear. It’s better that way.
Lo’s eyes flit to me. “Will they answer?”
I nod. “And miss an opportunity to pick on me?”
He glares off in the distance. My knees bounce a little, watching him. Waiting.
Someone must answer because Lo says, “This is Loren Hale, from down the street.” He pauses and then says, “Garrison left his hard drive at your parent’s place. He really needs it soon. Can you swing by and drop it in my mailbox?”
That’s a good idea—better. That way Lo doesn’t even have to confront them. Weight releases off my taut shoulders in an instant. Pressure evaporating from my chest, and I breathe easier and lean back with less tension.
Lo cups a hand over the cell and looks to me. “Where’s the thing?”
“Basement table.”
He puts the phone back to his ear. “Basement table.” There’s a long silence, and I don’t know if one of my brothers is talking or if it’s just dead quiet on the line.
Truth: I don’t care.
I’m just glad I’m not the one with the phone in my hand.
“Do you want to say something?” Lo asks my brother.
I pick at the ripped hole in my jeans. They want to talk to me? My stomach twists again. Stop.
“Yep,” Lo says on the phone, grinding his teeth. Like he tries not to lash out. He’d probably eviscerate my brothers with his words if I wasn’t sitting here. But I think he’s trying to be nonconfrontational…for me.
That means something.
Lo’s eyes redden, and his glare intensifies on the cupboards. “Sure.” He hangs up and lets out a heavy breath he’d been caging. He tosses me the phone.
“What’d he say?” I ask.
“He’ll drop it in my mailbox. He’s sorry, and he thinks you never speaking to all of them is a good idea.” Lo shakes his head, confusion cinching his brows. Maybe he’s wondering how easily my brother could let me go. But I get it.
I know.
“You called Mitchell, didn’t you?” It’s the only thing that makes sense. I remember the look Mitchell had in the greenhouse, right before I left. How he was staring faraway. Like something clicked in his head.
He’s sorry.
I rub my dripping nose.
Letting me go is Mitchell’s way of protecting me from our other two brothers.
“What is he—the nice one?” Lo asks.
“Mitchell could’ve stopped them,” I mutter. He’s closest in age to me. Two years older. “He never did. Does that make him nice?” I shake my head. “…I don’t know. I never stopped my friends from breaking into your house. I never stopped myself from pranking you. We’re all the same. We’re all shit.” He needs to remember who he’s inviting into his home. I’m not a good guy. Doesn’t he remember?
Lo leans forward, and with utter conviction, he says, “This guy in front of me isn’t shit, and I’ll still be here when you finally believe it too.”
I inhale like I haven’t taken a full breath in all my life.
I was wrong about my family—how I can’t trade them in.
They may be blood, but they’re not mine anymore.
I can choose my family. Lo gave me that option.
And I choose this one.
4 PRESENT DAY – January
London, England
WILLOW HALE
Age 20
“Lo told me I could pick any room in the house that I wanted with one exception,” Garrison explains as he folds clothes into a new dresser. I watch him on Skype. Boxes surround him, and computer monitors and cords litter the queen-sized bed.
Before he officially accepted Lo’s offer, he called to ask if the whole thing was a bad idea. He wanted to make sure that I was on board.
My boyfriend moving into my brother’s house.
In Garrison’s words: “If you become unhappy in our relationship and this makes it harder for you to break up with me—then I won’t do it.”
He’s always thinking about me, in most everything. Even in some strange reality where I’d break up with him, he thinks about me. By the way, that’s a reality that I refuse to believe will ever come true.
During the same phone call, Garrison spilled everything about his brothers. How they hurt him during the holidays and then again in the greenhouse. How his mom did nothing.
It gutted me, but I tried to stay strong over the line for him. Towards the end, we were both crying. I wish I could’ve been there.
With him.
His drunken anger in London made more sense, and guilt gnawed at me for not flying home with him that night. Garrison said he wouldn’t have wanted me to, but I’ll regret it forever.
“I regret a lot,” I told him on the phone, wiping at my tears. “I could’ve confronted your mom or told Lo sooner—”
“No,” Garrison forced out. “We were teenagers.”
“I’m not a teenager anymore.”
I could hear his tears and cracking voice. “What happened isn’t on you, Willow. You left everything you knew to come to Philly. And you came here to meet your brother. Saving me wasn’t your job. It’s mine. And you know how many times I wanted to confront your mom but never did?”
He’s been pissed about how easily she’s erased me from her life.