Page 21 of To Hold and Protect

Parker took a healthy swallow of the whiskey, welcoming the burn as it traveled down his throat. “The beginning...okay. A few weeks after we were dumped here and you both were at school, she came into my room. Back then, she was so mean to us that she scared me. She caught me drawing a picture of our mother. I was going to give it to her when she came back for us.”

“Shit,” Kade muttered. “We shouldn’t have let you think that woman gave a damn about us enough to come back.”

“Kade,” Tristan cautioned. “Let him finish without commentary.”

“Sorry, baby brother.” Kade gave him a noogie, something he used to do to annoy Parker.

Parker slapped his hand away. “Are you ever going to grow up?”

“Probably not, but sorry. Tell us everything.”

“Everything. Well, she praised the drawing, and from that day on, she was nicer to me, but only when you two weren’t around. I’d show her my drawings, and she’d show me how to do something better. I think she felt like we shared an artist soul or some such shit. I liked her being nicer and even at that age, I sensed that it was a secret, that if I told you two that she was being nice to me, she would stop.”

“That’s probably true,” Tristan said. “It had to be a heavy secret for you to bear, but I’m glad to know that she was nice to you, especially as young as you were. Did you have to pose for her?”

His brother was trying to sound as if he wasn’t furious, but there was rage in his voice. “No, she never asked me to. As far as I know, no man posed for her. I don’t know why sketching male nudes consumed her, but they did. There’s a whole box of them in the attic.”

“You weren’t a man,” Kade growled.

“No, I wasn’t, and I never found another boy in her sketchbooks that she drew naked. Honestly, her sketches of me look pretty innocent. Like she wanted to capture the beauty of a boy’s body.” He had to believe it was that simple. “If you’re willing to look, there’s a sketchbook under that pillow next to you, Tris. Maybe you two can tell me if you see them the same way I do.”

For years after discovering his aunt’s sketches, he’d agonized over what they meant. Although she’d never asked him to pose for her, they were all of moments he recognized. Like the first one his brothers would see when they opened the sketch pad. It would have been shortly after they arrived at their aunt’s home, so he would have been around four. He was standing next to the bathtub, his hair wet, and water dripping down his skinny chest. Two hands were in the drawing, holding a towel out for him to step into. If someone saw it and didn’t know the circumstances, they would think the hands belonged to the boy’s mother.

There was nothing sexual about the sketch, about any of them. At least, he’d never thought so. Some were actually poignant. But they’d confused him, and discovering them had set in motion the course of his life, one of the reasons he’d fled to France. Looking back, and with a better understanding of art, he could say that he’d probably overreacted by running away.

As an adult and an artist, looking at the sketches she’d done of him, he didn’t know what to think about them. Had she wanted to capture the innocence of a boy, and that was all they were? On the other hand, he’d never ever sketch Everly nude no matter how innocent the drawing might be.

Tristan slipped his hand under the pillow and pulled out the sketchbook. He stared at it, then at Parker. “I feel like I’ll vomit if I open this.”

“Then don’t.” He wanted his brothers’ assurances that the way he saw the sketches was right, but he understood if he was asking too much. If they saw them as sexual drawings, he was the one who would puke his guts up.

“I think I have to, that you need me to.”

Gratitude filled his heart that his brother understood. He sat silent as Tristan turned the pages. No expression showed on Tristan’s face as he looked at the drawings, and Parker forced himself to wait. It wasn’t easy.

When Tristan finished, he handed the sketch pad to Kade, and still nothing showed on his face, nor did he speak. Parker finished off his whiskey, thought about refilling his glass.

Kade had only turned a few pages when he closed the sketch pad. “I’ve seen enough.”

“In the last drawing, it looks like you were around seven or eight?” Tristan said.

“That’s my guess. I think that’s about the time she stopped sketching me.” Thank God. Why wouldn’t he say the sketches weren’t sexual? Were they?

In France, he’d taken art classes on drawing the human body, and they’d had nude models, both male and female. After the first few classes, he’d gotten over the weirdness of having a naked person in front of him. When he’d returned, he’d found the sketchbooks that had sent him fleeing to France hidden in the attic. He’d gone through all of them, and he recognized her drawings for what they were—a study of the male body, much like those lessons he’d taken. Was it still weird? Yes, but none of her sketches felt sexual, not the ones of him or the other men.

“I’m not an artist,” Tristan said, “so I don’t see things through yours or our aunt’s eyes, but although she was obviously fascinated by the male body, I don’t feel anything sexual about them.”

“Still sick as fuck,” Kade said.

“Well, she was a strange duck,” Tristan said, then snorted at the unintentional rhyme.

The three of them looked at each other, then burst out laughing. Their reaction probably had as much to do with the whiskey consumed as it did with Tristan’s rhyme.

“After I came home from France, I expected that one of you would have found her sketch pads after she died. When nothing was said about them, I thought she’d destroyed them, but to be sure, I searched the attic. I was hoping she’d burned them to a crisp.”

“That’s an excellent idea.” Kade stood. “Let’s do it.”

“Now?”

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