Chapter 15 #3
My eyes drilled into the top of my brother’s head, my real brother, and a muscle hammered in my cheek. “Alex, what are you doing here?” I said, stepping around Hudson and placing my arm on the doorframe.
“Thanks, I got this,” I said to Hud.
My foster brother nodded and pointed a thumb towards the back, where the den was. “I’ll go tell the others you need five, OK?”
“Yeah. I won’t be long,” I reassured him, trying to tramp down that bitter taste in my mouth.
Hudson knew I had a half-brother, and as he didn’t question me, I could tell from his soft expression that he knew who my unexpected caller was. Hudson rarely did soft.
“Movie starts at half past and so we need to leave in ten, OK?” he called over his shoulder. I knew he was giving me an excuse to cut my conversation with Alex short. Uncomfortable didn’t even begin to describe how I was feeling.
That bubble of anxiety rumbled in my belly at the thought of my mother.
As Hudson vanished into the back of the house, I turned back to Alex.
“Do you want to come inside?”
He peered up at me sheepishly, shrugging as he glanced past me into the house. I could see he was uneasy, but it was cold out, and his fleece looked as thin as fuck.
“Is your mom here?” I looked past his head, scanning the street for a car. There was no one.
“No,” he replied, worrying his lip. My stomach settled slightly. So, he had come on his own.
“Does she know you’re here?” I added, glancing towards the back of the house as I heard my brothers doing what they did best, being loud.
“Look, come in,” I said, holding the door wider. Alex shifted from one foot to the other before finally walking forward into the hallway.
“Alex?” I prompted, raising my eyebrows in question. I needed to hear his answer even though I knew what it would be. “Does your mother know you’re here?”
Our mother had no clue he was there. Our mother, where the fuck had that come from?
Alex nodded his head slowly from side to side and then took a deep breath.
“I heard what you said,” he began, his adolescent voice doing that cracking thing, as I closed the front door.
Turning towards him, I folded my arms over my chest. His tone suggested he was confused and angry. Yeah, welcome to the club, sunshine.
I so didn’t need this when I still hadn’t gotten to grips with the fact that my mother didn’t want anything to do with me. “When?”
“At the house. I heard what you said to my mother.” I thought back, worrying that I’d said something cruel to the boy's mom and he’d heard me.
“And what did I say?” I asked, my eyes narrowing as I watched him down my nose.
Alex was wearing Under Armour sweatpants and a Nike tee under the thin navy fleece.
His trainers were also super expensive. He didn’t have a coat on—just a rucksack on his back.
I watched as his fingers curled around the straps.
Even his bag was designer. Resentment sat like a lead weight in my stomach.
The boy before me was a mirror image of the life I had been denied, but I couldn’t hate him.
His body language suggested he was strung tight. “You called her mother,” he replied sheepishly.
Shame engulfed me. Shit! He shouldn’t have found out about me like that.
Unfolding my arms, I dashed a hand across my face. “Have you spoken to your mom about what you heard?” I said, biding for time.
“No, but she knows I’m aware she had a kid when she was younger.”
Fuck, that surprised me. “How?” I started to pick at one of the scabs on my grazed knuckles.
Alex released the straps of his bag and lowered his hands. “A box with some kids’ drawings was placed in my room after the move. The removal guys must have thought it was mine. There was also some baby stuff in there.”
A lump formed in my throat. Did that mean my cold-hearted bitch of a mother kept some of my stuff?”
“What type of baby stuff?”
He rolled his shoulders. “A couple of sleepers, a blanket, a silver rattle, as well as those paintings. There was also one of those bands you wear on your arm when you're in hospital, and it had writing on it. The pen was faded, but I could read it.”
I didn’t need to ask, but did anyway. “What did it say?”
“It gave a date and time of birth and then said Baby of Luna Rose Carter. The rattle had the name Phoenix engraved on it, and the same name was on the back of some of the finger paintings.”
Fuck!
“I see.”
“I asked my mother about it, but she’s the worst liar ever. Then later that night, both mom and dad spoke to me about it, about you.”
“What makes you think it’s me?”
“I wasn’t sure, I just had a hunch. When I asked that scary guy at the door for Mr. Carter, he called you Phoenix.” Scary guy. If I hadn’t been so stressed, I would have laughed at that one.
Shoving my hands into the pockets of my jeans, I rocked back on my feet. “You’re a bright kid. I’ll give you that. And what did your parents say about me?”
“They said that she gave you up when you were little. Mom wasn’t in a good place at the time. She said it was for the best.”
For the best, my ass.
“So why are you here?”
“Well, at first, I just wanted to tell you to stay away from us. My mother doesn’t need you coming back and messing stuff up, but on the bus, I started to change my mind.”
My knees trembled.
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
Color bloomed in Alex’s cheeks, and he started fiddling with the zip of his hoodie.
“OK.” My mouth was as dry as fuck. I totally didn’t know what to say.
“I don’t have any friends or anything, and I don’t know, I thought maybe it would be cool—having an older brother. Especially one as big as you.”
I found his comment odd but cute. The freckles on his nose gathered into a blob as he gave me a toothy grin. “Yeah. You could protect me and pummel all the kids that fuck with me at school,”
I raised my eyebrows, that older brother role snapping in automatically.
I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t know how to be a brother.
I had three foster ones who I’d more than cut my teeth on.
But I’d never dealt with a real one, and so much younger than me.
“You kiss your momma with that mouth?” The words just slid out.
Alex looked impressed. “See. That’s exactly what a big brother would say.”
I exhaled and planted my hands on my hips. “Look, I don’t want to burst your bubble or anything, kid, but you shouldn’t be here.”
He shook his head and held his hands up. “Alex,” he corrected, now deadly serious.
His interruption flummoxed me. “What?”
“My name is Alex.”
I dropped my hands to my sides. “Yeah. Sorry. Alex. Look, it’s all a bit complicated.”
Alex shook his head and stepped towards me, his face full of yearning. Was he really that lonely? We had just met, and so why was he looking at me in awe, like I was his hero or something? I was nobody's hero.
“It doesn’t need to be,” he said quietly in that broken voice of his.
The sound of my brothers coming out of the den made me hurry up.
Glancing down the corridor, I drew my gaze back to my brother. “If your mother doesn’t know you’re here, where does she think you are?”
The younger boy strummed a hand across his nose. “I told her I’m with friends, but that shows you how well she doesn’t know me, since I don’t have any. And anyway, she lied to me.”
“About what?
“Dur, about you.” Shit, I hadn’t heard dur from anyone other than Harper, and that’s when I realized how different we were. “She said you lived miles away.”
“How old are you?”
“Almost thirteen,” he said, doing that thing young kids did to try beefing themselves up.
From his mannerisms and how he spoke, I could see he was young for his years.
And me, well, I wasn’t quite nineteen, but I was a man, having lived my adolescence in less than savory circumstances.
You grew up fast in the foster system. Ask any of my brothers.
I was Alex’s age when I’d found a life with Ma, but before that, I had been dragged through a system where you hit the ground running, or you just hit it—hard.
There was nothing else I could do but offer him a lift to the nearest bus stop, where he could catch a bus directly to his house.
We both turned as my foster brothers came thundering into the hallway. Reed was swinging his car keys around his finger, and as he saw me, he paused and glanced between us.
“I imagine you're not here selling Girl Scout cookies?” Yeah, the fat fuck, he wished.
Alex smiled. “No, sorry. I’m all out.”
“What’s going on?” Micah said, appearing by his side and shrugging into his jacket.
Hudson also appeared. “Does your friend need a lift home?” he suggested. And that did it. I didn’t want Alex to be a dirty secret, and so I let the cat out of the bag.
“He’s not my friend,” I paused. “Guys, this is Alex, my brother. Well, half-brother.”
Reed and Micah’s faces dropped in shock, and Hudson smiled at me, like he was proud.
“You’re shitting me,” Micah said, circling Alex and me like a shark’s fin.
“Nope,” I added as I watched my half-brother being inspected like an animal in the zoo.
“Well, it’s clear who got all the good looks,” Micah said, clearly a pro when dealing with younger kids.
My brother beamed at him. “Good to meet you guys,” Alex added like a dork, a cute dork. He stepped back as both Reed and Micah continued to inspect him.
Grabbing Reed by the shoulder, I explained. “Slight detour, we need to drop him at the bus station.”
The boys all exchanged a look and then nodded in agreement. “Let’s go then. You guys can catch up on the way.”
Alex’s face lit up, and I rolled my eyes at Miach as I grabbed my jacket. His face said, you kept that one quiet.
“Come on, your mother’s probably worried sick.” I knew I sounded like an old lady.
As we made our way out of the house to the car, I heard Micah say to Reed. “Fuck me, I go away for a few weeks, and Nix turns into a grandma.” Nice.
Alex sat in the middle of the backseat, wedged between Micah and me.
Reed was driving, and Hudson was riding shotgun.
After Hudson checked the showing times on his phone, it was decided that we’d drop Alex off at home.
As we drove to the station, it was starting to get dark and the place was full of drunks.
None of us felt OK leaving him there. That gave us all plenty of time to get to know what appeared to be our latest recruit.
I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
I could see from his expression that Alex was enjoying the joking and ripping strips off each other, which had always been the Sawyer way.
Micah and Alex discussed Fortnite as they were both big fans. Eventually, Micah opened his big mouth and told Alex about the game on Saturday. He bigged it up, saying how the Mayor of Newport was giving a fancy speech and how he should come with his parents. Yeah, that so wasn’t happening.
When we got to the bottom of his street, I jumped out to allow him to pass me. We exchanged numbers, but I told him it was for emergency purposes only.
“Will I see you again?” he asked as I held up a hand for a fist bump. It was an automatic reaction in case he tried to hug me. I certainly wasn’t at that stage.
“Maybe, anyway, you have my number, and if you get any more shit from the bullies. Let me know.”
“I’m going to warn them that my big brother will fuck them up if they try anything.”
“OK. Let’s not get too excited here,” I said with a nervous laugh. The octopus clingy vibe was not something I was used to.
“Night, Phoenix. You’re OK.”
I was just about to correct him with a goodbye, rather than goodnight, but I couldn’t do it.
Instead, I said, “Call me Nix.” And it was worth the look on his face as we drove away.
Alex Leibrock saw me as his savior. My only other question was, why?