Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
I heard footsteps pounding down the stairs.
Now was my chance to apologize for being a monumental asshole.
I had an excuse—it wasn’t like it was an everyday occurrence that a forty-year-old dude finally learns when his actual birthdate is and not the date that he was found in an alleyway.
Or maybe I didn’t have an excuse and I laid into Stella because…
what?…I cared about her and felt betrayed?
Fuck.
Penny Cox.
I had a sister.
I was a brother.
I had a name. A birthday. A mother.
Christ. My head was throbbing.
I stopped short of entering the living room when I heard, “Tell Kira it’s unlocked.
All my intel’s on there. You already have my handwritten notes and before you threaten me, I’m out.
Totally out. I know nothing. I’ve forgotten everything.
And you’ll never see or hear my name again. Right here, right now, Lore’s dead.”
Lore’s dead.
My hand came up to my chest. My palm pressed against my heart, which did nothing to quell the pain. Not at her words, but the sound of her voice.
In the time I’d known Lore I’d heard many different tones: snarky, flirty, bitchy, hard, angry, cold. Stella, the same. I’d heard breathy whimpers, groans, growls, grunts, moans of pleasures. But I hadn’t heard her voice flat and dead. Not cold, but arctic.
You’ll never see or hear my name again.
Cold-hearted bitch.
Fuck.
I did that to her.
Not surprising. I ruin everything I touch.
I should apologize. Give her a chance to get her digs in and tell me off.
I deserved it.
“Out?” Zane asked.
“Totally out.”
No inflection. Totally devoid of any emotion.
My feet were rooted. It was better this way. She rightfully hated me. Apologizing would be selfish as fuck. A transfer of burden. I was a royal dick to her and asking her to forgive me would be out of line. She shouldn’t forgive me to assuage my guilt.
I heard the door close and I pressed my palm harder against my chest.
Another door closed.
Another memory I’d lock away, never to revisit.
But something told me this one would be harder than the rest. That Stella’s memory wouldn’t be denied. It wouldn’t matter how deep I tried to bury her, how many locks I put on the box, it would always haunt me.
I heard an engine roar to life and I stepped back into the kitchen before I turned and went out back.
Penny whirled, obviously startled by my hasty arrival on the back porch.
Female number two I needed to apologize to. Somehow this one was easier, even though arguably I’d been a bigger prick to her.
“So, about the ‘not interested’ comment.” I flashed my best cocky smile. “Good to know I’m not attracted to my sister. That would’ve been awkward.”
I watched her lips twitch and tears well in her eyes.
“Stella was right, I didn’t handle that well.”
She didn’t. But was there a good way to announce that you were the long-lost sister of an abandoned and left-for-dead baby.
“Good to know we have that in common seeing as I handled it like shit.”
“Stella didn’t mean you harm—”
Christ, I couldn’t go there.
“I’m not interested in what Lore meant or didn’t mean. I’m more interested in knowing how you found me.”
That was a lie. I was interested in Lore’s reason for not telling me, but I’d forfeited the right to that explanation when I called her a cold-hearted bitch.
“Should we sit?” Penny motioned to the edge of the elevated porch.
I eyed the faded wood decking planks like I was waiting for them to grow teeth and bite me.
I fought against my hand rubbing one of Lore’s bite marks from last night—I had plenty of places to choose from—neck, chest, shoulder. The woman had been vicious in her exploration.
Fuck.
As soon as my ass hit the wood next to her, Penny launched in.
“Eden left me, too,” Penny gently told me.
Eden.
The woman whose uterus grew me was named Eden.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about knowing that other than it was a piece of information.
“I was twelve when CPS started coming around when I couldn’t hide the bruises from my teachers anymore. I guess she knew they were going to take me and she’d be in trouble, so before that could happen, she bailed. One night I went to sleep and the next morning she was gone.”
Christ, I hated that for Penny.
At least I didn’t have memories of Eden or her abandonment. I wasn’t sure which was worse, being discarded as a baby or left after years of enduring abuse.
I didn’t ask. There was no good answer.
“I’m sorry she left you, Penny.”
“I’m not. I can’t say foster care was a sunshiny walk in the park, but I was no longer beaten, and I didn’t have to witness her outbursts.
And then I finally got to see a therapist to help me with my recurring nightmare.
And it was then the therapist explained I wasn’t crazy, that I did have a brother and Eden had spent years gaslighting me into thinking I didn’t know what I knew—that you were born.
That I held you. That it was me who fixed bottles and changed diapers.
” She stopped and tipped her head, giving me a sheepish smile.
“I sucked at diaper changes. Most of the time they were wonky and I didn’t tighten them enough. And you peed on me a lot.”
I tried to hold my laughter back but lost the battle.
Seriously, this was fucked up. I had gallows humor. I’d spent a lot of time in the military in really shitty situations but laughing about pissing on my five-year-old sister because she was too young to properly put on a diaper was a whole nother level of crazy.
“And while we’re here I should probably also apologize for making you really crappy bottles. But in my defense Eden wasn’t a great teacher and I couldn’t read the directions, so your bottles were cold and there might’ve been a lot of powder in them. But you drank them and stopped crying.”
No, a five-year-old trying to make a bottle for her infant brother who needed to be fed was a whole different level of fucked up.
“As you can see, you didn’t stunt my growth so it’s all good.”
Penny pinched her lips. Not to stop herself from laughing but out of discomfort.
Shit. I was totally fucking this up.
I knocked my shoulder against hers. “Sorry. What I should’ve said was thank you for feeding me.”
“I thought you were dead,” she whispered.
“Well, that was a fair assumption. Eden left me in an alley. If the manager of the check cashing place hadn’t come out to dump the trash and saw me there, I probably would’ve been.”
“No. Not then. When I was at USC I had friends who were good with computers and…hacking. My best friend’s brother was the best of the group.
We told him about how I grew up and about you and he started looking.
Piecing your life together wasn’t easy. You’d run away from foster care.
And believe it or not, there are a lot of Cash Phillips running around.
And he had no idea if you were still in California or if you’d moved out of state.
After we graduated and he didn’t find you I thought it was a lost cause.
I had a brother somewhere out there, but I’d never meet him.
My friend’s brother ended up working for the FBI and he never gave up trying to find you for me.
Then one day he calls me, he’d finally found you.
You’d gone into the Navy. You were a decorated SEAL but you’d died in combat.
” She paused to suck in a breath. “But I had something, I had my brother even if it was a picture.” She paused again, leaned to the side, and pulled out a well-worn, wallet-sized picture.
“I keep it with me. I take you with me everywhere I go. My baby brother. The brother I loved so much but who was taken from me in the cruelest of ways.”
I stared down at my basic training graduation picture.
I remembered the day it was taken. The day that a packet was handed out to order copies to send to your family.
A day that everyone in my compartment was excited about.
I tossed mine in the trash. I had no one to send a picture to and I sure as fuck didn’t want one.
The longer I looked at the picture the more acid filled my gut.
It was like looking at someone else. A stranger.
A boy I didn’t recognize but bore a resemblance to the man I was.
It was hard to believe but back then, my eyes seemed dead and that boy hadn’t lived through war yet. Just survived his childhood.
“I had no other option but to join. Three hots and cot meant military or jail. I figured I’d lose my mind being confined behind bars,” I told her.
“There was this guy who lived out in Silver Lakes. We both knew I was homeless, but he never asked. Just told me where and what time he’d pick me up.
He’d take me out to his house, pay me to do his yard work and mow his grass, feed me, give me a safe bathroom to wash up in, and drive me back.
Then one day while I was in his house, I noticed the military memorabilia and asked about it.
He grew up rough—not like us, but not great.
He joined the Navy to escape. Moved up the ranks, made it his career, and retired after twenty-five years.
I looked around his fancy house and I wanted that.
I wanted someplace clean to shower without fear.
I wanted food to eat I didn’t find in the trash or have to steal.
It took me a while to get up the courage to ask him more about it.
He took me to see a recruiter. He helped me get my GED.
He didn’t give up on me when I failed the first three times I took the test.”
I’d found safety in the Navy.
But I hadn’t found a home until I went to BUD/s.
And when I earned my Trident, I’d found my brothers.
“I hate that all those years you were close and I didn’t even know it.”
I couldn’t deal with thinking about having a sister close and not knowing she even existed.