Page 5 of Remade

“Fuck that,” he said, clearing his throat. “Family reunions always get me. And videos of service members coming home from deployment to their dogs.”

Great, now I was smiling and crying at the same time.

“I can’t wait for you to meet the family.” He sniffled and grinned. “You’re in the middle of your recruit training right now, aren’t you?”

I nodded, still working on the meet-the-family comment. Holy shit, I had family? Were they going to be as accepting as Ryan?

“In other words, I won’t be able to drag you off to Washington at the moment,” he deduced. “That’s fine. You can expect most of them to fly out here instead.”

Oh God.

“I’ve, um…stalked the family a little bit on social,” I confessed. “But you’re kinda private on there.”

He grinned. “We’re the opposite in real life—within the family, at least. You wanna see pictures?”

Yeah, because it wasn’t like I’d been crying enough already.

“Yes, please,” I croaked. “Do you have any photos of Da—um, Jake in your phone?”

His eyes flashed with both amusement and affection. “Dad, not Jake. You had it right the first time.” He pulled out his phone. “I should have some in my family album. My parents’ basement flooded a few years back, and it threatened the existence of precisely one box of random photos, so my wife and sister spent a couple months making digital copies of everything Ma had, including the countless albums inside the house.”

Better safe than sorry.

He positioned himself next to me and went to the album labeled “Family” in his phone, and my stomach fluttered with anticipation and nerves.

“I’ve only seen his official portrait and the grainy photo from the article released after he’d been killed,” I admitted.

“Then you’re in for a look in the mirror, son,” he said. “You have his eyes and his smile. And a bunch of little isms. You did somethin’ earlier when Crew introduced us, and it was so fucking familiar. I think it was your expression when you scratched your forehead—it was just so him. The way you looked.” He shook his head, as if in wonder, and scrolled to the earlier photos. “Oh, here’s one of him and Ethan.”

“The gym owner,” I noted.

“That’s right. He ain’t private on Instagram, that’s for sure.”

I smiled and looked closer at the photo, and then my smile just fell off my face.It’s you, Dad.I swallowed hard. The two brothers stood side by side, and they were grinning and holding up beer bottles. It looked like they were standing on a patio—Icould see a wooden deck and a garden in the background. Dad looked to be around twenty or so, and I did see the resemblance. Only, his features were sharper and way more charismatic.

“There should be one of him and Darius after a hockey game,” Ryan murmured. “We used to play every winter as soon as our favorite lake up in the mountains froze. Ma would send us off with warnings and a picnic basket—and Jake would steal some of Pop’s whiskey for our cocoa.”

I rubbed a hand over my mouth and almost got weepy all over again as the picture took over the screen.

“There we go,” he said. “That’s Darius. We were around…fifteen or so here. I think it was the year Jake graduated high school.”

This was already better than Mom’s bedtime stories, and they still meant the world to me.

Jake wasn’t grinning in this photo. He was glaring at whoever had taken the picture, and his front tooth was chipped. Darius was, however, sporting a shit-eating grin.

“He’s smilin’ there, but he wasn’t when we came home and Ma ripped him a new one,” Ryan chuckled. “Money was kinda tight, and going to the dentist didn’t make anybody happy. But to Jake’s credit, he took half the blame and helped Darius earn extra money for the dentist. Those two could be savages on the ice.”

Silent tears rolled down my cheeks, and I couldn’t speak. I just soaked it all up.

I’m getting to know you, Dad.

Now I know you chipped your tooth playing hockey.

“He mellowed out a lot once he started college,” he murmured. “When he came home on breaks and holidays, Darius, Ethan, and I would give him shit for actin’ more like a parent. If he didn’t have his nose in a book, he was runnin’ errands for Ma or tellin’ us to wise up.”

I smiled and sniffled.

I could picture it. I could almosthearhim.

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