“Does that mean you’ll forgive me for it, then?” he asked quietly. “Terrible personality and all?”
“Will you forgive me for mine?” I asked.
“Nothing to forgive,” he said. “And I’m sorry you’ve had to beg me to be a good brother lately. Your efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. You’re doing great things, Al. I haven’t told you that yet, but you are.”
I swallowed and bumped his knee. “You’re annoying and bossy and you think you know everything—but you’re a good brother, Ox. Always have been, and I have no doubt you always will be.”
He grimaced, as he slipped back into a deep sigh.
I felt lighter for all of a few seconds before suddenly my stomach was knotting again. My throat pulled as I looked at him. “Sorry I messed up your deal.”
He didn’t pull his pointed look away as he speared me with those black pupils. “Why did you?”
Gulping, I returned my attention to the whole room. “Does anyone know the stipulations to declare a missing person as dead?”
Chapter Thirty-Four
AUGUSTUS
If humans had the power to own each other’s perfect moments, all mine would belong to Alta Fernandez.
Ever since she’d agreed to let me get closer to her, I’d flourished in the knowledge that this woman could own my whole world.
I think I’d do anything for her. Her presence brought me safety, her friendship brought me fulfillment. Her love—or at least I hoped it was that—showed me my future, painted in full color before my eyes with her in the very center of it. All these years I’d been chasing down dreams and running from nightmares when a brown-eyed angel was the answer to my prayers all along.
But every coin had its opposite side, and it wasjust my luck that Alta’s had waited until I’d completely and utterly fallen for her to flip.
Hell, my whole life had suddenly flipped. Because looking up from my phone where there was a mysterious text from Alta that made my eyebrows pinch, on the other side of the glass window of the shop front doors, were my parents.
Fuck.
“Do you know her?” my mother asked after describing the woman of the fucking hour.
Her.
The girl who was making my heart ache, along with my head.
When I saw the first familiar face standing outside the shop door, I’d been prepared to let my mom in.
But then I saw my dad and something in my gut told me that whatever was waiting for me behind those grim faces was serious. Serious enough to leave the guys in charge at the shop and direct my parents down the boardwalk in the direction of my home.
It was surreal to be going anywhere with my parents, especially home. Ten years of building walls around my past and the ten minutes it took to drive home from the shop is all it took to send them tumbling down.
Mom entered first. She was more comfortable after having just seen me less than a month ago. Walking right into the entryway, of course the first thing she noticed were the photos. And of course she immediately got misty-eyed.
“These are good pictures,” she said. “I would have chosen the same.”
Of course she would have. I still remembered the days they were taken. The first was of Mar after she won an award in school for‘Exemplary Academic Achievement.’We were so proud of her. She was proud of herself. She kept telling us how she was going to run the world one day and I kept telling her how I believed it.
The second was of both Mar and I on a surprise visit home during one of my first study abroad trips. She’d been having a tough time with me being gone so I paid a visit to lighten her spirits.
Dad was more hesitant to come inside. Loitering in the doorway and pretending he was checking out the wood paneling of the frame as he stuffed his hands deep into his pockets.
If Mar looked like mom then I looked every bit like my father with his tall broad build, short dark curls and deep brown skin. I didn’t hate looking at him. It wasn’t like looking in a mirror like most people said, because I knew we weren’t the same. Not entirely.
The time had helped to distance myself from the bad parts. Oddly enough, as I looked at him now, waiting for an invitation into his own son’s home, I wasn’t really seeing that much bad at all.
“Come in, Dad,” I said, because without the invitation, it seemed like he might stay out there forever.
