Page 20 of Back in the Country
I’ve only ever slept with two people, and while I’m not shy, I also am not willing to give myself to someone who is going to toss me away again. The rules back then had been clear, and I’d agreed to them.
Didn’t mean they weren’t bullshit.
Luckily, or not, the family hasn’t seemed surprised by this new development, and I am both encouraged by that fact and terrified. Sorren will be home in a few days and there is still no telling what will happen when he arrives. Honestly, if he makes it home before someone spills the beans I’ll consider it a miracle.
My older brother is something of an enigma. He is my brother, but he is also a caretaker in so many ways. Sometimes it seems like Otto and Case are more like actual brothers than my own blood.
Sorren never told me the full story of how we ended up in Clementine Creek. He said it didn’t matter how we got here only that we were loved. He was right, of course, but sometimes the unanswered questions still bothered me.
Sorren and I had been born to Michael and Vivian Mackay. My mother had left Tennessee the day she turned eighteen and never looked back. She married my father while they were still in college but had waited to have Sorren until almost a decade later. By all accounts, they had been living the perfect life.
They’d never wanted another child, and everything had changed when I was born. I was unwanted, and I’d been told that repeatedly growing up. My mother had been cold and distant, and my father—while never cruel—had cared more about pleasing my mother than loving me.
Sorren never treated me like a burden despite our almost-eight-year age difference. My earliest memories were of him playing dolls with me or watching princess movies curled up on the couch. Before his football practices, he’d pick me up from the elementary school and walk me to the field. He’d feed me and make sure I had something to do before returning to the team and acting like any other teenager.
It was our routine, and Ilikedspending time with my big brother.
Sorren’s always been my hero.
He didn’t know, but on the night our lives changed, I’d been perched on the top step while my parents had been arguing in the living room. My mother’s shrill voice had woken me, and I’d been on the way to Sorren’s room to see if he’d let me stay with him.
We had an air mattress tucked away under his bed. It was made up with princess sheets that he’d gotten just for me. Sorren let me stay with him when I was scared or couldn’t sleep. I’d only made the mistake of going into my parents’ room once when I’d had a bad dream.
I’d never done it again. My brother had rescued me from the shadows in my room that night as my tears soaked the thin cotton of my nightgown. He was my safe space, and he never made me feel less for needing it.
Sorren wasn’t in his room when I pushed his door open, but I’d heard his desperate voice echo from downstairs. I’d huddled out of sight and listened as my parents told my brother that we’d be turned over to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
They were giving up their parental rights. I didn’t know what all the words meant, but I understood enough—they didn’t want us and it was my fault. Mommy was sick because of me, and nothing I did made it better.
My brother pleaded with them—not to keep our family together, but to give him a chance to make a plan. He said he refused to be separated from me. I didn’t know until I was older what that meant.
If Sorren and I had been put into the system, the odds of a foster family taking us together was almost zero. He would have been placed in a group home, and I would have been placed with strangers with no guarantee I’d ever see him again. It still turned my stomach to think about, but Sorren had taken care of us.
Healways took care of us.
With his impending return, I make a promise of my own. I promise I will do whatever it takes to help my brother adjust to civilian life. I’ll make sure to be there for him the way he’s always been there for me. Dammit, this time he is going to let me take care of him.
A soft knock at the door has me setting aside my laptop and rubbing my eyes. The time on my phone says it is still early afternoon, but there is no telling how long I’d been traveling down memory lane.
Padding across to the door, I open it to find Waylon smiling on the porch.
“Hey, Baby Girl.”
He steps into me and cradles my face in both of his hands before tilting my mouth up to meet his. The kiss is dizzying. Long languid strokes of his tongue combined with the certainty of his lips has my heart pounding in my chest in a matter of seconds.
“I missed you,” he murmurs when he finally pulls away to rest his forehead against mine.
“I just saw you this morning.” I giggle.
Not that I am complaining.
Waylon Thayer could kiss me every minute of the day and it would never be enough. My spirit hums at his proximity, and I can’t stop the smile spreading across my face.
He notices and returns it with one of his own.
“You look pretty today. Are you busy?”
I look down at my athletic shorts and Vanderbilt University T-shirt that I had gotten when I’d been accepted years ago and frown.
