Page 137 of Guitars and Cages

Now it was my turn to be shocked into silence and sit there, blinking and confused. “No.”

“It’s true. I couldn’t sit there anymore and wonder what the hell had happened to you. I figured I could track you from the letters you’d sent. I kept thinking maybe you’d go back to the places you’d been. We were always inseparable, me and you—and yeah, Gage, too, and now that I stand here and think about it, I guess maybe I should have seen how close you two were getting. Though if I had, I prolly would have been awful to you and made you hate me.”

“You’re my brother. I could never hate you.”

“I don’t hate you either, Asher. Just...give me some time, okay?”

“Yeah.”

I climbed unsteadily to my feet as he crossed the room and laid a hand on my shoulder.

“If you ever need me, you call me. I’ll be there, okay? And no more fighting.”

“Yeah, I’m done with fighting.”

“Good. I never should have gotten you into it in the first place.”

With that he left the room, leaving me to pack.

Chapter Forty-Five

During that first week of living over the bar, Alexia and I fell back into the habit we’d had as children, of curling up in bed together whenever we slept. I guess we were both still a bit freaked out about what had almost happened on the roof. We weren’t alone, either; Rory had taken to crawling in between us, dragging his blanket and his stuffed Tasmanian Devil along too. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to a foot kicking me in the back or little arms choking the hell outta me as he clung to me his sleep. Sometimes I’d hear the door open, and I’d look to see Morgan looming in the doorway, checking to make sure we were all okay.

We weren’t, but we were working on it. Once I even woke up to see him sitting in the chair across the room, watching over us. I guess we really had worried him.

Trying to balance Rory and work was almost a full-time job in and of itself, but after several days of tripping over one another we figured out a plan that worked. My job at the livery meant I had to get up before the sun came up most mornings. I would grab the grocery list and the list of any errands that had to be run and take care of them on my lunch break or on my way home. Alexia got Rory up in the morning and off to school; this let Morgan sleep in undisturbed and gave Alexia some quiet time in the morning and afternoon to get schoolwork done. At two, Morgan would get up for the day and Alexia would lie down for a nap, and Morgan would pick Rory up from school and help him with his homework. I’d talked to my boss about the late days and he’d decided that if I did the weekend morning shifts, I could get out of work at five the rest of the week after the last of the afternoon lessons. That was perfect, because it let me get home in time to take Rory off Morgan’s hands and put him to bed before things got busy around the bar.

Alexia would get up at five and start her shift in the kitchen, and once Rory was asleep I’d head down to the bar and play for a couple hours before going to bed. Morgan had decided to close the kitchen down at eleven, so Alexia would join me around midnight. While we were all a bit exhausted by the almost-nonstop work, at least we’d figured out a system that was working. I think we’d all started to come to the conclusion that this was only a temporary fix, that there was no way we could raise Rory over the bar long-term, but none of us had been able to offer a more permanent solution.

Even with all the added responsibilities, I made sure to call Dr. Hozman on my lunch break every day, answering his questions and telling him what had been going on. He had sounded relieved when I’d told him I was back living over the bar with Morgan, and that Morgan and I had talked about the DNA test and the whole not-being-my-dad thing. Hell, we’d talked about it more than once; Morgan had said it was ’cause he wanted to make sure there was no way there could be any misunderstandings about how much he loved me, even if we weren’t blood.

My hands were still clumsy on the strings when I played, but the doctor in the ER had said that after the incident on the fire escape my shoulder was going to be pretty stiff and sore for a while. The bruises on my side were just beginning to fade, and there was still a twinge of pain in my knee if I moved it the wrong way. I considered myself lucky I hadn’t re-broken my hand, though they had insisted on wrapping it and sending me home with orders to keep it that way.

I hadn’t planned on going to the ER, but Cole had taken me. He’d been sitting in the living room, smoking and staring at the TV while I packed, but when I came out he insisted on getting me checked out at the hospital before I went back to the bar. He said it would make him feel better to know someone had taken a look at me after the bruises he’d seen on my side. A part of me wondered if there was more to it than that, that maybe he was trying to make up for the things he couldn’t say, or couldn’t do. Or maybe that was wishful thinking on my part. Either way, I went to the hospital ’cause he offered and I wasn’t gonna turn down any effort he tried to make.

The first week I was at the bar I didn’t hear a word from him, not even a text. I hadn’t expected to; after all, he’d said he was gonna stay away. So I was shocked when he walked into the bar late one Saturday night and pulled Morgan aside. I don’t know what they said to one another, but they sat talking for almost two hours before Cole left. He didn’t say anything to me or Alexia, and I tried to keep from feeling hurt even as I saw the spark of sorrow in Alexia’s eyes. I told myself it would just take time, but I couldn’t help but feel like that was a lie.

Nights when I had a couple days off to look forward to, I stayed up late and helped Morgan finish the dishes and put the glasses away. I was stepping out of the pantry one night when I heard him chuckle, and then heard his heavy footsteps as he headed up the stairs. Frowning, I wondered what he’d forgotten; we were supposed to play darts when we were done, and the darts were all down here. Maybe he was checking on Rory and Alexia.

I flipped the light off behind me and latched the sliding door to the kitchen, done with the cleanup for the night. Armed with the quarters I planned to feed into the jukebox, I stepped around the bar only to see I wasn’t alone. Conner stood by the end of the bar, looking more disheveled than I’d ever seen him. As soon as I laid eyes on him, my anger flared up again—that is, until I noticed his blue-green eyes had dark circles beneath them, and his skin looked pasty and pale. I frowned, wondering what had happened to him, and then I kicked myself for giving a damn after what he did.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He looked at me with sad eyes, and then looked down at the ground. “I came to say I’m sorry. As soon as the words came out of my mouth I knew I’d fucked up, but it was too late to take them back. I know you hate me now, Asher, but I—I’m sorry. I wanted you to know that.”

As angry as I’d been at him, the only thing I cared about now was why he looked like hell. I put down the quarters and walked the length of the bar until I was standing in front of him.

“Did something happen to you?”

He looked up at me, frowning and shaking his head. “No, why?”

“You look like shit.”

He shrugged and dropped his eyes again.

I thought about his love for the extreme. I couldn’t recall any events that had come through the city that past week, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t found something to get into.

“What happened?”

---