Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
A t the first sign to Las Vegas, a cold trickle of sweat ran down Gabe’s neck.
Great. Sunny was right. He was going to meet his siblings— potential siblings—with a wrinkled, sweaty back. He dabbed the perspiration at his temple.
“You okay there, big guy?” Sunny asked, slanting a glance at him. She reached across the console for his hand and squeezed it, sweat and all.
“Fine.” His voice cracked on the word. He could’ve been a teenager again, riding with Dad to pick up his date for the freshman dance.
“Breathe,” Sunny said. “It’ll be great. They’ll love you.”
“Will they?”
“Of course they will. Just be yourself. But less grouchy. The way you’ve been…” She cleared her throat and turned up the stereo. She was playing showtunes again, and “My Shot” from Hamilton popped, staccato, through the speakers.
She meant how he’d been with her, lowering the shield he held up all the time, ever since his parents—adoptive parents?—had died and left him to hold everything together. The only way he’d been able to keep Beach Island running was to box up his grief, same as he’d boxed up his parents’ clothes and their Funko Pop collection, and hide it deep inside himself, holding up that shield to conceal the debilitating emotions that didn’t help anyone. His arms were so tired now.
He turned down the volume. “What should I say?”
She glanced at him before turning her gaze back to the straight, flat road. “You’re good at direct. Maybe try, ‘Hi, I’m Gabe, your brother.’”
“I mean”—he swallowed—“after.”
She was silent for a moment, and Gabe passed a hand over his face. Maybe he didn’t have to keep his shield up with Sunny, but did he have to expose his squishy softness to her?
She turned the stereo off. “You mean, how do you talk to your brothers and sister?”
“Yeah, I…what about my…my birth parents?”
“Oh.” The word dropped like an iPhone off Twister of Terror.
“Never—”
“No,” she said. “I just hadn’t thought about it, is all. They weren’t on the DN-YAY report, so I sort of assumed they were…gone, you know? But maybe they just didn’t take the test.”
Gone. That’d make two pairs of dead parents. A good hand in poker, not so great in life.
“We’ll start off easy. I’ll be your sister.”
“What?”
“A little role-play. For practice.”
Role-play? This was her specialty, not his.
“I’ll start. Hello, Gabe, I’m your big sister, Mary.”
“Hi, Mary,” Gabe muttered. But all the questions he wanted to ask stuck in his throat. They’d expose too much of his pain. Do you remember me? Why did our parents give me up? What was wrong with me?
A minute passed in silence. “Okay, maybe role-play isn’t your thing,” Sunny said. “Mary was five when you were born. She won’t remember much. Michael might remember more. When you meet them, start off slow. Try to keep your focus on your lives now. On what you’ve been doing. They’ll probably be curious. And then you can find something you have in common. Maybe they hate interstates, too.”
“Maybe.” It came out as a mumble.
“I didn’t grow up with siblings, either. But I made friends who are like family. Like Cata. She and I both like walking in the city when it snows. And New York–style pizza. And boba tea.”
“What’s boba tea?”
“Oh my God, Gabe.” She moaned. “It’s sweetened tea, with these little pearls in it, and you drink it with a fat straw to suck up the bubbles.”
“Bubbles, like air?”
“No, no, they’re made of tapioca. They’re chewy.”
“You have to chew your tea?”
She snorted. “Never mind. I’ll take you sometime.”
“Yeah?”
She blinked and shook her head. “I bet there’s a place in Vegas. We could try it before I go.”
“Oh. Right.” Even after what they’d shared the night before, she was leaving. He’d needed that reminder. Once he’d met his siblings—potential siblings—she’d be on her way. He wasn’t even sure what exactly he wanted, but he wanted more. More time. More Sunny.
Her voice was airy when she continued. “On The Brainiac Bunch , the character I played was always doing bratty things to get her siblings’ attention. One time, she told a guy her sister had a crush on him. After she apologized and the sisters made up, they did something they loved doing together: they went to Coney Island and rode the Cyclone. It’s a?—”
“I know the Cyclone.”
“Oh, sure. Anyway, they rode it together, and it reminded them of how much they loved each other.”
“But I don’t have any old memories of my—of the Forzas.”
“That’s what I mean.” She squeezed his shoulder. “You have to make them. Together.”
“I haven’t liked coasters since…a while.” He caught her wince and rushed to smooth over the moment. “Vegas has a Ferris wheel. Those aren’t so bad. And—and shows. I definitely like shows.” Either one would be heaven with Sunny at his side.
“A show, then, with your siblings. Or maybe one of them drives an old clunker of a Mercedes you can work on.”
He stroked a hand over the dash. “Cinderella’s not a clunker. She’s a tough old girl. She’ll protect you.” He was glad now he’d spent so much time on the car. She’d keep Sunny safe after she left him.
“Cinderella?” Sunny quirked an eyebrow.
The back of Gabe’s neck heated, and he rubbed it. “We, ah, spent a lot of time together. The paint color reminds me of her dress. The blue one. My—my parents took me to meet Cinderella at Disney World when I was six or seven. That was the first time I fell in love.” Even the swish of her wide skirt had been magical.
She smiled. “That’s sweet, Gabe. Talk about stuff like that until you find something you have in common.”
“What about…what about my birth parents?”
She paused so long he thought she might not answer. Finally, she said, “I’m not sure I’m the one to coach you on relationships with parents.”
He’d much rather talk about her parents than his. “Why not?”
She stretched her back in the seat and stared out at the road for so long he thought she wouldn’t answer. “I told you my parents were always on location. And that I took all those dancing and singing classes. That performing was a way to get their attention.”
Gabe waited a minute for her to continue. Then he prompted her, “You’re an amazing performer. I’m sure they were impressed and proud.” His parents—the Armstrongs—had praised him every time he’d made a good tackle, hit a home run, or brought home an A on an assignment.
“They—” She grimaced. “They have high standards. Being box-office gold, you know. So once I got old enough that I wasn’t adorable anymore, they took it seriously.”
“You’re still adorable.”
She snorted. “Not six-year-old adorable. Anyway, nothing I did was good enough. The Brainiac Bunch being canceled after one season humiliated them. My dad made this face.” She turned and did a passable impression of Gene Lafortune in the remake he’d done of MacArthur, the expression that made the young private piss his fatigues.
She turned back to the road. “He got me the audition in New York. He was proud I got the job, but it was only television. My parents think television is for B-list actors. Still, it was a relief to be far away and out of their sphere.”
She was talking about her feelings. With him. His chest warmed. “But now you’re going back.”
She barked out a bitter laugh. “Yeah. Can you believe it? They actually asked me to come back.”
“It’s kind of you to do that for them.” Gabe knew all about family obligations. Once upon a time, he’d wanted to follow in his parents’ footsteps and run Beach Island. Until those footsteps ended.
Gabe stroked the scratched face of his watch. Which was worse: having supportive, loving parents who’d died too soon, or having negligent, critical ones? Gabe thought he’d pick the living-parents option, but maybe he was wrong.
“Oh my God, Gabe.” A nervous laugh erupted out of her. “We’re supposed to be talking about you and your family, not mine. Anyway, you should probably do the same with your Vegas family. Find common ground. You can talk about the hard stuff later.”
“I don’t know that I can.” How could he say surface-level things when those questions bubbled right below the surface? Why did you keep Raphael and not me?
“I’ll be there to hold your hand, I promise. I’m good at small talk. I’ll help you.”
His belly warmed like he’d swallowed some of her sunshine.
“Siblings are easy, though,” she continued, her voice breezy, like she could blow away any obstacles with her confidence. “They’ll love you. It’s like—like a friend you’ve known all your life. I’ve had girlfriends like that. My friend Leena. We come together like we’ve been apart hours and not months. You’ve got a cousin, right? It’ll be like that.”
Gabe and Brandon hadn’t been close since his parents died. Since Brandon had offered to take over Beach Island and Gabe had refused. They hadn’t hung out, hadn’t really talked other than How’s it going at holidays. Maybe it was the awkwardness of what to say to someone who’d lost his parents. Or maybe it was the double-edged pain of Gabe refusing the offer he’d desperately wanted to accept. For whatever reason, there’d been a wall between them. Invisible, but there all the same, pushing them apart.
It’d be easier with Sunny. She’d take the conversational reins. Whenever he was near her, he felt better. Shored-up. Stronger. Like she was a steel support beam. Like it wasn’t just him anymore.
It all rushed to the tip of his tongue, but the words tangled there, refusing to come. Just as he opened his mouth to force them, Sunny pointed.
“Look! It’s the Strip!”
Electric signs and glass high-rises rose before them. Towers stabbed the cloudless blue sky. And in the foreground, rising high above the city, was the Ferris wheel. It rotated lazily in the mid-day sunshine. They had one at Beach Island. It wasn’t a popular ride, mostly attracting older folks and teenagers who wanted to recreate the scene from Love, Simon. Its safety record was perfect, though, and if Gabe ever felt the need to get on a ride, it’d have been that one. So far, though, he hadn’t.
“Mind if we take a cruise down on our way to your brother’s?” she asked.
He ripped his gaze away from the soaring wheel. “No, go ahead.” The closer they got to his family— maybe family—the more his guts squeezed. Could he convince her to put it off to tomorrow?
Once they turned onto Las Vegas Boulevard, traffic slowed to a crawl. Gabe’s stomach unclenched a little when they passed the wheel, but his gaze snagged on another loop farther down. Red like the kiddie coaster at Beach Island, but taller. Not a poisonous tangle of purple and black like Fright or Flight. Still, the unexpectedness of it made him suck in his breath as he glanced away, pinning his gaze on a yellow taxi.
Sunny reached across the console to grip his hand and tug it onto her thigh. “Hey. You okay?”
“Yeah.” He cleared the roughness from his voice. “Just wasn’t expecting it. The—the coaster.”
“We’ll stay at the other end of the Strip. Or away from the Strip entirely. Somewhere we can’t see it. Though…”
“Though?”
“You don’t have a problem with other people riding coasters?” she asked. “Because I love them. I miss going to the parks near LA. It might be fun to do before I leave. If it won’t bother you. I promise you don’t have to watch.”
He forced a smile. “No, I don’t mind.” Though he’d check the ride’s safety record first.
He kept his eyes straight ahead until they left the Strip. And as they moved away from the neon and through the parts of the city that looked more like neighborhoods and less like an amusement park, his breaths came more easily. Maybe Sunny was right, and he’d fall right into this family the way she did with her friend. Maybe they’d plug the hole that Sunny would leave behind.
For the first time, he hoped DN-YAY hadn’t gotten it wrong.
* * *
Gabe wiped his palms on his pants as Sunny pulled the car into a parking lot a couple miles from the Strip. Out there, the neon and the traffic were a memory, and it looked like Columbus in the summer—but with more cacti and palm trees.
“What’s this?” he asked. He’d expected a house or an apartment building.
“This is the address I have for your brother Michael. Look.” She stopped the car and pointed at the sign on the metal building at the center of the lot. “Forza Elite Motors. It’s got his name on it.”
The sign also had a white tiger, its mouth open wide in a roar. Gabe’s heart gave a hopeful skip.
“See?” she said. “You already have something in common: he likes cars, you like cars. You’ll have plenty to talk about.”
The parking lot was half-full of exotic vehicles: limousines of every variety, from the standard town car to Hummers; convertibles; even a few classic Mustangs. The weight in Gabe’s chest lightened. Clearly, Michael liked cars, too. Gabe had never met a gearhead who was a jerk.
Sunny parked in a space in front, and they got out. The sun beat down on her dusty Mercedes with the scrape on the front bumper from the blizzard, making it look sad next to the shiny-clean cars. He’d have to give it a wash and a tune-up before she continued to Los Angeles. Check the belts and the tires. She had more mountains to cross.
The heaviness settled back in his chest. But at least for now, Sunny was still with him. He grabbed her hand and plodded toward the open garage door. Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” played from a speaker somewhere.
A stretch SUV with its doors open was the only car inside the garage bay. Familiar scents of motor oil and gasoline, plus those cardboard pine tree air fresheners, washed over Gabe. A broad backside wearing faded blue coveralls poked out of one of the doors.
Gabe cleared his throat, but the music was too loud for the person to hear it. He tried again. “Excuse me,” he said in a voice that boomed off the concrete floor and windowless white walls.
The person backed out of the vehicle and straightened before turning to face them.
It was like looking in a mirror. After a sleepless night. Or a mirror that aged you ten years. The man shared Gabe’s dark hair, but his skin was tanner with more crinkles around his brown eyes. He was clean-shaven like Gabe, and even the shape of his mouth was the same as it opened in an expression of shock.
“Wh-who the fuck are you?”
Gabe’s heart pounded against his sternum. But he knew exactly who he was. “I’m your brother. Gabriel.”
Those thick eyebrows slammed down in a scowl. His gaze traveled from Gabe’s face down to the pressed front of his blue dress shirt, his shiny leather belt, his car-wrinkled khakis, to the shoes he’d polished last night. The man jammed the cloth he’d been using into his coveralls’ pocket. As if there was any doubt, a patch on his chest was embroidered with his name. Michael.
“Didn’t think you’d show your face here after all these years,” he snarled.
Everything Gabe wanted to say died in his chest. All the oxygen had been sucked out of the garage. Sunny squeezed his hand.
“Do you…do you know me?” Gabe asked.
“Never saw you before, but I know who you are.” Michael crossed his arms over his broad chest. He was a couple inches shorter than Gabe, but his bulk made up the difference.
“You do?” God, why hadn’t he and Sunny role-played this scenario? What do you say to your brother who hates you on sight?
“Of course. I was eight when you were born.”
Sunny nudged him, and Gabe tried to remember what they’d rehearsed. Michael had the manual, and Gabe couldn’t assemble the parts.
“I’m Gabe Armstrong.” Gabe stepped closer and held out his hand. “And this is Sunny Lafortune. My girlfriend.” He didn’t know why he gave her that label. They hadn’t talked about it. But he needed something to hold on to. A throw rope in the sea where he was now adrift.
Michael looked at his hand but didn’t shake it. “Looks like you did fine for yourself,” he said, staring at Luke Armstrong’s classic Omega on Gabe’s wrist. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I—nothing.” What did he want from Michael? From any of the Forzas? Suddenly, it seemed foolish to have come all this way. Why hadn’t he called? Emailed? Heat crept up his neck. “I found out I might’ve been adopted and wanted to see for myself.” He dropped his hand to his side and took a step back.
Sunny stayed where she was. “Gabe took a DNA test and found you. He wants to learn about his birth family.”
“His birth family?” Michael sneered, the expression strange on a face so similar to Gabe’s own. “He’s not a part of our family. Obviously, he doesn’t need us. And we don’t need him.”
The heat left Gabe’s face, and ice trickled through his veins. Michael’s face and his words had proved that Gabe had been one of them once. But they still didn’t want him. Where did he belong now?
“Sorry to bother you,” he croaked. Still holding onto Sunny’s hand like she was a life preserver, he turned and strode back to her Mercedes. He wanted to drive, to be in control of something, but his hands shook, out of control. Instead, he opened the driver’s-side door for her. After closing the door behind her, he rounded the hood on unsteady legs, keeping his gaze away from the garage. He slumped into the passenger seat.
Sunny started the car. “Are you okay?” she asked in a low voice like people had used around him in the funeral home.
He looked out the side window at the white tiger on the sign. Now the heat spilled over his cheeks. Michael had sliced him open, revealing the ugly thing underneath Gabe’s skin. He wished Sunny hadn’t seen it.
“I—I’m sorry that went the way it did.”
“Not your fault.” It was her fault, though. She’d bullied him into coming all the way out here. She’d painted a rosy picture of a family that was looking for him, wanted him. But the truth was that they didn’t. He stared at Cinderella’s dusty dashboard to avoid looking at the white tiger he’d taken as a sign that he had something in common with the Forzas.
Maybe if he’d known how screwed-up Sunny’s family was, he wouldn’t have started out on this trip. As it turned out, Gabe knew more about functional families than she did. And now it was time for her to continue on her way. “Just—just drop me off at a hotel.”
She backed out of the parking space and headed past the rows of shiny cars back toward the street. “I’m not dropping you off anywhere. We’ll figure out our next steps. Together.”
The words ripped out of his mouth. “Our next steps? You’re on your way to LA. You can drop me at the airport. I’m going home.”
She stomped the brake, flinging him forward against his seatbelt. Throwing the car into park in the lot, she stared at him, hard. “You’ve come too far to give up now. My acting coach always said that if you fuck up your lines, you keep going and try harder next time. If I’d given up, I’d never have gotten the part on New York Bomb Squad.”
“But you did give up.” Gabe was sweating again, and it wasn’t the Vegas heat or even nervousness anymore. It was fury. “You worked that crap job at DN-YAY for months. Who are you to tell me to go crawling back to Michael Forza and ask him to reconsider?”
“I—” She stared at her hands in her lap. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I know nothing about siblings or adoptions or families. I shouldn’t tell you what to do.”
His anger melted like ice cream on asphalt. He unbuckled his seatbelt and reached over the center console to fold Sunny in his arms. After a second, she wrapped her arms around his back. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he said into her hair.
“God, he’s such an ass,” she mumbled against his neck.
“Must be a genetic trait.”
“Gabe.” She loosened her hold on him and pinned him with a fierce stare. “You’re not?—”
Just then, his phone rang. Hope flared inside him until he realized it couldn’t be Michael calling to apologize and welcome him back. Michael didn’t have his number. It was Darlene.
He held up a finger to Sunny and answered the call. “Hi, Darlene.”
“Hi, Gabe. Are you checking your email? Brandon called an emergency board meeting. Noon tomorrow. Are you going to be home by then?”
Relief flooded through him. She was okay. But an emergency board meeting? Who’d let Brandon call one of those? And why? To make it home by noon tomorrow, he’d have to leave today.
“I—I don’t know that I can make it ho—back by then.” He’d almost said home. What was home anymore?
“Then I’ll set up a conference call for you and text you the details. Just in case. Any idea what it’s about?”
“No, Brandon hasn’t called me. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.”
“He’s not a member of the board. Can he even call a board meeting?” she asked.
He heard the worry in her voice. “Maybe Aunt Pat asked him to get us together.”
“Maybe so.” She didn’t sound like she believed it.
“I’ll try to call him later and ask him about it.”
“Okay. Are you all right? You sound…not like yourself.”
Gabe snorted. Like himself? Who was he now, anyway? But that wasn’t what Darlene needed to hear. “I’m fine. I’ll call you if I find out anything.”
He disconnected the call and slid his phone into his pocket.
“Everything okay at home?” Sunny asked.
“Fine. Just work stuff.”
She smoothed a finger between his brows, and the muscles in his forehead relaxed. “You do so much for them. For everyone. Maybe it’s time to think about what you want to do for once.”
Now there was a concept. From the second he’d leaped out of the car that day, clambered down the coaster’s scaffolding to the ground, broken through the circle of horrified onlookers, and checked his parents’ broken bodies for a pulse, people had looked to him to lead. To take his parents’ place. To care for everything and everyone at Beach Island. But now that he knew he’d been adopted—Michael’s face was better proof than a birth certificate—it was time to examine his life. Who was Gabriel Forza, and what did he want?
Sunny waited, lips parted, blue eyes darting between his. He knew exactly what he wanted. Lowering his face to hers, he kissed her, gently at first, but when she opened to him and licked over his lower lip, he poured all his frustration, his anger, his longing for things to be different into it. Grinding over her lips and flicking into her soft mouth with his tongue, he showed her what he wanted. Who he wanted. With one hand, he cradled her cheek. He trailed his other index finger down her neck, over her collarbone, into the valley between her breasts. Delving into her bra cup, he rubbed his callused fingers over her nipple the way she liked.
She pulled back, breaking the kiss, her breath heaving. “Hotel.”
He took his time dragging his fingers back over her hardened nipple and out of her bra. “Hotel,” he agreed. He’d take a few hours to show her what she meant to him, and then he’d think about what his next steps would be. What else he wanted.
She reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I know just how to make you feel better. And then we’ll figure it out. Together.”
He leaned over and kissed her, filling his nostrils with her scent. “Together.”
One thing was right in his world: that this woman was by his side. At least for now.