She scrutinized my shirt. “I’m surprised that a high school would allow you to wear that.”
I laughed. “I don’t think that they understood what the shirts meant. But we did. We also fucking loved it.”
The shirt said, “We do it for ninety minutes, from eleven different positions.”
“Can I have it?” she asked.
I shook my head. “You already got my favorite. This is my second favorite. Not gonna happen.”
She smiled at me sweetly. “We’ll just see about that.”
Then she stopped as she got her first good look at my wall.
"What's all this?"
The wall had hundreds of pushpins and strings. Hastily scribbled notes on any piece of paper I could find interspersed throughout the messy web.
"That," I said, "is my sightings wall."
"Sightings of what?" she asked, her eyes wide as she took everything in.
"Sightings of the woman that’s said to be pregnant with my brother’s child."
Her brows rose.
"From the brother we saw the other day?"
I shook my head. "No, this one is Dante. The one you saw the other day was Finley."
Her lips pursed into a Cupid’s bow. One that I wanted really badly to kiss.
"Why are you looking for her, and not your brother?"
I really, really didn't want to get into my brother’s problems right then. They were numerous.
Some of them were heartbreaking, and despite what my brother thought, his heart wasn't the only one broken.
Hell, I hadn't seen him since he checked in on me months ago after I was shot. And even then it was merely a 'you look okay' check in.
He'd stayed for less than five minutes and then was gone.
Then again, if my wife and children had been killed like his had, I might be unwilling to mingle with society either.
"Because he won't."
My tone was final and a little more surly than I intended it to come out.
But this subject wasn't one I wanted to talk about. At all.
She obviously picked up on that, too, because she quickly asked a different question.
"How many brothers do you have?"
I grinned. "Five."
"Sisters?"
My stomach clenched.
"None anymore. They both died."
She must've sensed the anger there, too, because she sighed and looked away.
"Do you want me to shut up?"
My lips twitched, and I sighed.
"No." I blew out another breath. "My family is fucked up times six. Seriously, all six of us boys have fucking problems, and none of them are even remotely fixed yet."
She turned and looked at me with these hauntingly green eyes.
"You don't look damaged."
The laugh that bubbled out of my throat was harsh. It hid the scream of anguish that wanted to slip from my throat at how fucked up I was. How unstable I was when I thought about all the things I’d done wrong in my life.
On the outside, I may look undamaged. But if it was possible to see to the heart of a person, mine would look torn, mangled and bruised.
"I watched my sister kill herself."
Her mouth fell open at the abruptness in my tone.
"Tobias..."
I held up a hand, already shaking my head. "It's okay."
She shook her head in denial. "No, it's not."
She was right. It wasn't. That didn’t change the fact that she was gone, though.
"Well, as of right now, it's as okay as it will ever get."
She knew when a subject was closed, obviously, because she just shook her head and walked away, leaving me staring at a wall that was my effort to atone for my sins.
My way to make things right.
After all, I’d made my sister a promise as I held her rapidly cooling hand.
"You make sure to help him," she’d whispered. "Please, make it right."
Dante had asked my sister to drive his family home when he was called in for an emergency at work. My sister had.
However, what Dante didn't know was that my sister was under the influence of drugs. She'd been exceptionally good at hiding her usage.
Hell, I hadn't even known she'd been using, and I saw her every week like clockwork.
Dante had entrusted our sister with his wife and children’s lives.
Instead of admitting that she was under the influence, she'd driven them to save face.
And in the process of driving them home, she'd lost control of the car, driving them off a bridge and into the river that was twenty feet below.
The only one who had made it out alive without drowning had been my sister, and we still weren't sure how she'd survived it. The drugs, maybe. We really weren't sure.
But that was my fault too. I hadn't protected her.
If I had to make a guess, she started using to hide from the pain after the man I used to call my best friend had hurt her.
And when she woke up in the hospital, I knew from the look on her face that she was going to try something.
So I'd watched her. Spent so much time with her that she couldn't do what I saw in her eyes that she wanted to do.
She'd been heartbroken. Plus, with the accident, and it being her fault, she’d been clean and sober since the accident, causing me to finally start backing off. Which had been a colossal mistake.
She gotten dressed up. Acted like she was going out on a date. Had gone on a date. Except she'd ended it early, and I hadn't realized it.
Then she'd gone home, wrote a note to Dante and me, and had overdosed on a bottle of pills that she’d stolen from my medicine cabinet.
Then she'd cleaned up after herself. Started a load of laundry, and then had gone to her bed.
When I'd arrived at her place an hour later, it was to find the note on the counter.
After I read the first few lines, I immediately started running toward her bedroom. I'd arrived in time to watch her take a few labored breaths in between telling me her wishes for Dante before she died in my arms.
“I’d offer to help you, but it looks like you have your ducks in a row.” Audrey broke into my thoughts. “If you ever need anything, I’m here.”
I squeezed her hand, grateful that she’d changed the subject on me, and returned to the bed to retrieve my weapon.
Once I had it on my person, I covered it up with my t-shirt. Once my shirt was in place, I looked over at Audrey still standing at the sightings wall and studied her.
“You ready?”
She nodded.
“Well then, let’s go,” I rumbled.
“You’re sure?” She was looking at me like I was going to self-destruct. “I don’t want to go that bad.”
***
She started to type, and again she nodded her head.
“The only cabins I have, mid-level and mid ship, are the ones with queen sized beds. However, if you choose, we can separate them into twins. You’ll just need to make sure that you specify that on the instructions tab on the site right there.”
The travel agent pointed to where the tab was on my own computer, and I nodded.
“Okay,” I grunted, turning to the woman that’d been particularly quiet throughout the entire appointment. “Is that okay with you?”
Audrey shrugged. “I can close the bathroom door. As for sharing the bed, that’s fine with me as well. We’re both adults.”
I looked at her, studying her sincerity, and then turned back to the woman.