Page 64 of Her Brother's Keeper

“Doesn’t matter,” I said.

“It does, and that’s why I’ve decided I’m never having kids. I don’t want to go crazy, or pass this down or –”

“Seems legit,” I said interrupting her with a shrug.

She turned to stare at me and I could see the wheels turning, as she was silently judging whether I was making fun of her or not. I wasn’t. I’d never really banked on having kids of my own. I’d even contemplated a vasectomy in recent years to ensure I didn’t have any mistakes with a random club girl or hookup. I was thirty-six. I didn’t know if I could handle being a dad at forty-two like Archer, even if Noah was Grind’s and not his… he’d taken on the responsibility and that was Archer for you.

Of course, I’d sort of done the same thing with Sage. Maren settled back in her seat and kept watching me, I squeezed the top of her thigh and let her gather my hand between hers, curling my fingers around it and aching to touch more of her, to comfort her better. Kind of hard when I was driving, though.

“There’s a lot to all of this, baby, and we can talk about it all when the dust is settled.” I raised her hand to my lips and kissed the back of it, “I ain’t scared of nothing that’s happened, I ain’t scared of what hasn’t happened yet, and I ain’t going nowhere on yah either, so relax; okay?”

“One disaster at a time?” she asked sardonically.

“Pretty much,” I agreed, nodding.

She sighed heavily and resumed her sightless staring out the passenger side window, the gears clearly turning in her head.

“What am I going to do about Sage?” she asked quietly.

“You mean ‘what arewe’ going to do about your brother? I told you, I’m in this with you, Angel, and I’m not going anywhere.”

She stared at me, her expression softening at my words and it was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that made me want to love her until the end of time. Seriously heavy shit that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

“Right, what arewegoing to do about Sage?”

“They only thing we can do, really. Talk to him, for one; find out what the hell he was thinking.”

“And then?” she breathed out, and her face was so solemn like she was staring at a mountain that she’d just been told she needed to climb.

“Then we go from there, figure things out; maybe we get a hold of Pam and see about scaring him straight if nothing else works; but Baby, there’s no way this ends where he doesn’t learn the truth about your mom and what she did.”

Maren hung her head and nodded in defeat.

“You aren’t protecting him, not from this… you can’t,” I said gently.

“I know,” she murmured and I could swear it was accompanied by the pop and shatter of her heart breaking. I squeezed her hand and raised it to my lips placing a reverent kiss along its back, breathing in the earthy, herbal lavender scent that was purely Maren.

“It’s going to be okay, Angel,” I promised her. “It’s going to be tough, but okay.”

“I know, I just wish it were just tough onme.You know?” I smiled to myself a little. I did know, to a certain extent. Melody was like that with Noah, and pregnant with another now. Since Archer’d married her, he’d gotten to be a lot the same way. It was called being a parent, and Maren just seemed to have the gene. I liked it about her, her nurturing side, but I didn’t dare bring it up; not now. Not after the revelation she’d just made and her stated decision about having kids.

Honestly, I didn’t blame her much for making such a hardcore decision at seventeen. I mean, she’d probably been raising Sage for a while now, with her dad being so sick, and she’d be raising him for the next seven years or more. If she was still staunchly against children in the next couple of years, I’d be okay with getting snipped. That is if she hadn’t outgrown me by then.

Why the hell did that thought make my stomach damn near dropout?I wondered but didn’t have to for long because the answer swam right up out of the depths of my brain:Because you really do love her, probably more than you’ve ever loved anyone but your brothers.

It was a sobering thought. I hadn’t meant to or realized that I’d even given that big of a chunk of my heart away, but clearly, I had and now it was gone… resting in Maren’s hands. It was deep, like bottom of the ocean kind of deep level shit, and I shoved it heartily to the back of my brain for right now in an attempt to focus on the problem at hand; which was how the fuck we were going to salvage the rest of Maren’s tiny broken family without it breaking some more?

We drove into the deepening gloom of sunset, and on into the dark. I followed the directions that my GPS spewed at me, and held Maren’s hand tightly in mine the whole way; her hurt, her fear, a palpable thing, setting me on edge. This wasn’t a bully I could knock down a few pegs. This wasn’t a fight I could take on and win, this was something else. Something undefinable and I hated that. I hated that a whole lot.

We made a game plan on how to best handle the situation with her brother and I took the reins for the most part. Maren was afraid she would get angry, or yell and she didn’t want to drive a wedge any further between her and her little brother. The resentment he seemed to be harboring over his big sister suddenly becoming the parent was a palpable thing, and she was afraid if she came on too strong, that she’d lose him forever. It was a pretty valid fear, even if it wasn’t as gloom and doom as all that. Still, pushing him further away wasn’t what anyone wanted.

The hospital looked like something out of an American Gothic flick and was probably one of the oldest buildings I’d seen since moving around these parts. It looked like something out of a movie, the creepy old mental institution and I caught Maren looking at me as I looked at it. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped the car to take it all in. I looked over at her and she blushed, but instead of cute or alluring, this one screamed ‘shame’ at me. I took my hand off the wheel and wrapped it around the back of her head, pulling her to me.

I kissed her, long and lingering deep, and hoped that if it didn’t soothe her anxiety about my judging, that it would, at the very least, serve as some sort of distraction from it. She melted into me and returned it; the relief rolling off of her something else. Tangible, wrapping around me like a vapor, like something I could breathe right in like her delicate perfume.

I pulled back from her and stared into her eyes, satisfied when I found that she didn’t look so far left from center. She was still worried, still a touch distraught, but who wouldn’t be if their eleven-year-old brother took off from school? Disappeared for hours without your knowledge, only to find out about it when the freaking mental joint your mom was locked up in called to tell you he was there.

Yeah, one disaster, one hot mess, at a time. First, to get her brother and break the news that his mom wasn’t going to get better. That life wasn’t always a fairytale, and Santa Claus wasn’t real. It wasn’t in my nature to wreck kids, to dose ‘em up with hard truths and watch them crumble. This was gonna suck for me, and for Maren even though it didn’t hold a candle to what Sage was about to go through.

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