Page 30 of Her Brother's Keeper

I felt awful, I felt trapped; I felt like no matter what I had tried to do to get him gently through this, it wasn’t working. I felt like the last thing I wanted to do was to terrify him into behaving, believing wholeheartedly, that fear wasn’t how you should motivate or steer a child through life. However, I was at a crossroads here with my little brother. My way had, quite literally, lost him his best friend. I wasn’t sure how that would end up working out or if it would at all.

“Truth is best,” Nox murmured and I covered my face with my hands, scrubbing as if I could scrub all of this away.

“Nox isn’t lying, itdoeshappen and I don’t want that for you. I want you to stay here, with me, I don’t want to lose the only family I have left. It’s just you and me now.”

“No, it’s not! And you know it!” Sage exploded and pushed off the couch. He went for the stairs and slammed up them; I closed my eyes and sighed.

“I’m not going to ask,” Nox said gently, “I’m around when you’re ready to talk.”

I nodded, grateful for that, because as soon as I told him about my mother, I was pretty certain he would walk away and I was growing to depend on him; on his emotional support. I stood up and he pulled me into his arms, resting his chin on top of my head.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

“For?”

“One last minute of closeness before the clock strikes pumpkin hour.”

Nox chuckled lightly and kissed the top of my head, “You’re welcome, Angel.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in his crisp, clean scent of man and leather before I had to let him go.

Chapter 11

Nox

“Dude, what the fuck are you doing? You’re gonna end up in jail and listed on some sex offender’s registry as a total pedo,” Rush said, dropping onto the couch in the media room next to me. I scowled at my twin.

“Fuck you. I am not,” I said, scoffing. Rush scowled right back.

“Man you had your tongue halfway down her throat in here last night, then the both of you disappeared.”

“Yeah, they were in his room with the door wide open, quit yer fuckin’ bitchin’. You ain’t his mom.” Duracell said from one of the recliners.

“No, I’m his fucking twin, asshat. Fuck you, mind your own business.” I had to laugh when Duracell flipped him the bird, saluted my brother with his beer and took a drink of it. Blue laughed silently from the other recliner at the opposite end of the couch from Cell. Those two were fuckin’ weird. None of us could tell if they had something going like Disney and Aaron, and whenever anyone brought it up, Cell typically flew off the handle about how he wasn’t some faggot. Confusing as fuck if you asked me, because short of holding hands and kissing, the two were inseparable and even slept in each other's room sometimes.

Rush was talking, droning on in one of his fucking lectures like he was somehow magically older or wiser, I cut him off with: “Motherfucker, you’re older than me by a few minutes. What the fuck do you know about it, anyways? I’m not going to do shit to put myself in any crosshairs. She’s a grown woman despite her age, and she knows what could happen. Chill the fuck out and mindyourown business on this one.”

Rush pushed to his feet, expression stormy. “Fuck you, then. I’ll be in my shop,” he left out the media room and I followed him with my gaze, meeting Duracell’s half charmed smile.

“Admit it,” he said. “You hit that nubile teen pussy already.”

“Can’t admit to something that didn’t happen, bro.”

“You could,” he said, settling back, “but you’d be a liar. I would have fuckin’ hit it by now.”

“Yeah, but you have no limits, plus, we already have our sights set on someone,” Blue said softly and I startled, looking in his direction.

“Shit man, that’s the most I’ve heard outta you inmonths.Who is she?”

“No one,” Duracell grunted, “Blue doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.”

Blue rolled his eyes so hard he probably saw his own brain, and I chuckled. “Does that mean you two are some kind of a thing?

“Man, fuck that. Why everybody have to be accusing me of being gay and shit?”

Again Blue rolled his eyes and I laughed outright. The rest of the evening passed pretty peaceably. I kept a hand wrapped around my phone, waiting for it to go off, though. Finally, around nine o’clock, it did.

Maren: He still won’t talk to me. Won’t come out of his room, either.

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