Page 164 of Rules

MAX

“I don’t really think that’s…” I can hear Jeanette’s faint voice from the hallway. She doesn’t get to finish the sentence before the door bursts open, Andrew stalking inside with my sister hot on his heels.

From the corner of my eye, I can see Jeanette’s weary face, but I ignore them, concentrating instead on my movements.

“Get cleaned up.”

A towel falls on my head, obscuring my eyesight. Annoyed, I pull it off with so much strength it goes flying to the other side of the gym.

“What the fuck, man?” I ask, still irritated at him for keeping secrets.

Hard, green eyes look at me, determination written all over his face. “Do I need to write you a special invitation? Get your ass moving, Sanders.”

“Where’s the fire?” I look between the two of them before going to pick up the towel to dry off my sweaty face.

“We found her,” Andrew whispers as if saying those words any louder would jinx it. “We found Brook.”

* * *

“Do you think she…” I swallow hard, unable to ask the question that’s been bothering me since Brook left.

“She left because she thought she didn’t have any other choice, Max.” Andrew’s concentrating on the road in front of him, but I can see his fingers grip the steering wheel tighter. “Between her mother trying to use her to get money for more drugs while at the same time accumulating debt, and my dad not giving two shits about her…”

She should have stayed for me. Not her mother or her father,me.

But the thought leaves a stale taste in my mouth. I don’t have the right to demand anything, expect anything from her because I’m not any better than her parents. From the very beginning, the only thing I’ve done is make her life even more complicated. Using her to forget about Lia, pushing and taking until there was nothing left to give. I demanded and I took, not once asking myself the price she had to pay for helping me. How it affectsher. And when she needed me, I pushed her away because I wasn’t man enough to face the consequences of my actions.

“I should have done something,” I say, not even able to look at him. Brook’sbrother. I gave him such shit when I found out about him and Jeanette. Warning him to stay away. If this isn’t divine justice, I don’t know what is. “But I was too stuck in my own world to notice she needed me.”

He shakes his head. “Yes, you were a dick, but it’s not just you. We all messed up. We never asked for more, never wanted to know what was happening in her life. For fuck’s sake.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “Josephine took her money, so Brook had to go andaskJohn to give her what should have been hers to begin with. She didn’t even want to take the amount Josephine demanded to keep quiet, just the bare minimum so she could survive.”

Survive…Brook is always surviving, never living. Was she all right? Was the…

I push the thought away, unwilling to think about it. I’ve played this guessing game since the moment she left, which was weeks ago, but I couldn’t do it anymore, so I concentrated on something else.

“Still not talking to your old man?”

His lips press in a tight line, a hard expression settling on his face. “And I don’t plan to. What he did was fucked up. He knew what Josephine was like, but still, he tried to cover it up to save his own ass. He paid his own daughter to disappear so he could save his squeaky-clean image and proceed with his political campaign like nothing happened.”

Andrew moved out of his father’s house the same day he and Jeanette came to tell me what they’d found out. It is still hard to believe that Brook and Andrew are siblings. Well, half-siblings. What are the odds of that, really? Living their whole lives in the same town, going to the same school, but not knowing…

That revelation did put a lot of things into perspective. Like the fact that Andrew’s mom really did have reasons to ditch Hill Sr.’s ass. According to Jeanette, Andrew’s relationship with his mom was still strained, but they are slowly working on it. She even went as far as offering for Andrew to stay with her, but he didn’t take her up on it.

“You still at Derek’s?”

Derek and his parents offered Andrew a place to stay until things get sorted out. Jeanette wanted him to stay at our place, but of course, Mom wasn’t having it. Since Jeanette’s accident, Mom has been more present in our lives and that meant discipline and boundaries. And those did not include having her daughter’s boyfriend sleeping in the guest room down the hall.

“Yes, but now that Brook’s coming back…”

He said it with such certainty like, there wasn’t another option. In his head, Brook is coming back home with us. But what if she doesn’t? What if she found a life, found happiness somewhere away from Greyford, away from all the drama, away fromme?

My chest squeezes painfully, and Andrew has to sense it somehow because he gives me a quick look of reassurance.

“She’s coming back home with us. She thought there wasn’t a reason to stay, that she wasn’t wanted, but she is. We all want her back. Lia and Jeanette, me, you… We just have to show her. Show here there is more waiting for her in Greyford than the damn drama that’s been going on for the last year. Show her she isn’t alone in all of this.”

“Do you think she really is…”

I don’t have to finish the question because he already knows. If anybody knows how I’m feeling, it’s him.

---