Page 27 of Her Brother's Keeper

“I don’t understand.” I said, “What does the law have to say about it if I say everything is fine?”

“Not how the law always works, Angel. Even though you’re perfectly capable of making your own decisions, even though you’re legally emancipated, all it takes is one social justice warrior with a badge to say that you are still a minor and that I’m somehow victimizing you and bam! I’m walking around with a life sentence of having to be on some sexual predator registry. I’d lose my license, wouldn’t be able to practice massage anymore. My livelihood, my ability to live where I wanted, anytime I tried to get hired on anywhere else, all of it would be in jeopardy even if we were still together or not.”

“That’s not fair,” I murmured.

“Neither is life, Angel.” He shrugged the shoulder he wasn’t laying on and it was such a nonchalant motion over such a serious topic, the fact that he had just given up and knows this to be true, or the case – it broke my heart.

“Not everything has sinister connotations,” I whispered and he gave me a crooked smile.

“No, not everything, but enough of the real world situations do and so people just get to calling a spade a spade. I’m almost twenty years older than you, I like you, and for a whole hell of a lot more than your age or your body. You’re a smart woman, Maren, and strong, even if you don’t feel like it. You’re interesting and not like other women I’ve met. I want to get to know you and I have to say, the best things in life are worth waiting for and I don’t think you’re an exception to that particular rule.”

His last sentence made my breath catch in my throat, my eyes very nearly mist, and I felt galvanized of a sort. If he could wait and be patient, then so could I. After all, he had done for me, and for Sage, I think I could wait forever if I had to.

Nox reached out and grazed his thumb gently in the corner of my eye, thumbing away the pool of moisture there. He leaned forward carefully and pressed a kiss to my forehead, sighing.

“It’s okay,” he murmured, lips against my skin. “We can do this. Hell, you can do anything, just look at all you’ve done so far…”

I closed my eyes and basked in the comfort of his presence. It felt good to have someone acknowledge it out loud, you know? To recognize that it wasn’t easy, being seventeen, being the only one available to help your only functional parent through their last days. Dealing with the paperwork, the social workers, the hospice workers, and the finances; managing your little brother and his feelings, his pain, on top of your own to the best of your ability. That it was hard maintaining a full-time job, on top of a full-time high school class schedule, all of the legalities with inheritance and emancipation, becoming a legal guardian for a brother who had little to no interest in cooperatingat all.

To have someone look at me and say that I could do anything I put my mind to, when I constantly felt like I was on a razor’s edge of failure… that was something I needed. That was just the right thing at just the right time and I couldn’t help it. I wept with relief that I wasn’t crazy and that this really was as hard as it felt. I wept knowing that I finally wasn’t doing it completely alone.

Nox let me shake and let me cry and smoothed my hair away from my face, making soothing sounds, keeping me warm and giving me a sense of safety – that it was finally safe for me to simply feel all of these things. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I did, and it was probably the best sleep I had ever had; at least since my father told my brother and me of his diagnosis. When I woke up, light streamed in the high window and the door still stood wide, but Nox’s side of the bed was empty, a blanket lay over the top of me and I sat up, shoving it off.

I slipped on my boots and brought down my coat and scarf from the back of the door where it remained; Nox’s jacket and cut missing from the hook next to it. I used the bathroom at the end of the hall and slipped out the door we’d come in from. Frost, so thick it looked like snow, coated the grass and my breath fogged the open air. I winced as the sound of a table saw assaulted my ears and I marched across the grass to the open bay door to investigate its origins. That’s where I found Nox’s brother Rush in what I presumed to be his woodshop.

“Hey, Jailbait!” he called out and I felt myself blush.

“Hi,” I called back as the saw whirred down.

“Lookin’ for Nox?” he grunted and inspected the cut he’d just made. Something was different, it was like Rush was more reserved than he had been before last night and I felt myself sigh inwardly.

“Yeah, have you seen him?” I asked.

“Think he was making y’all some breakfast inside the main building. Just go through the back door and past the media room. The kitchen is behind the bar,” he answered, his expression going back and forth as if he were struggling with things…

“Ah, thank you.”

Rush nodded and looked me over, I waited for him to say what was on his mind knowing it was likely something I wasn’t going to like.

“Just do me a favor, Maren,” he said finally, and I nodded for him to go on. “Just don’t fuck over my brother. He’s a good guy, and for some reason, of all the chicks that's out there, he got stuck on you. Personally, in some ways, I think it’s a good choice, you’re one solid chick, but you’re too young. Plain and simple, which makes it the wrong choice. I worry, you know?”

I nodded, and forced a smile, “I worry too, so I guess that’s a good sign, yeah?”

Rush nodded, “Yeah, maybe it is.”

He started up the saw and was all concentration behind his clear safety glasses as he made his next cut, and I felt as dismissed as anyone could be. I escaped the grating high pitched noise by trudging through the white coated grass towards the back door of the club, past Nox’s car which was iced over pretty good. So he hadn’t left at all, which eased my anxiety.

I wiped my boots on the mat outside the back door and slipped inside the warmth of the main building. I slipped through the archways and found the bar easily enough, but paused before going in. Even though I was emancipated, and considered an adult in every regard, I was still legally a minor when it came to both alcohol and cigarettes. I couldn’t buy them, and I couldn’t just waltz into a bar…

“Come on in here, he’s in the kitchen in the back. Somehow I doubt any law enforcement is gonna jump out and bite ya,” an older man said. He was bald and had a trucker’s mustache. He was sitting at a table across from Dragon who looked half asleep, smoke curling out of his nose. I returned my gaze to the older man and he looked at me with watery blue eyes over half-moon spectacles. He clutched a thick romance novel, of all things, between his hands and I blushed.

“I’m looking for Nox,” I murmured and the old man smiled.

“I gathered that Honey, the way you was suckin’ face last night. An’ like I said, he’s in the kitchen, through there. Go on now, its booze, not anything that’s gonna get you.”

“Thank you,” I murmured and yet still felt uneasy stepping into the room and past the two men at the table. Dragon chuckled and shook his head.

“Were we ever that young, Doc?”

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