Chapter 22
Riley easily found Sadie at a nearby park on the same street. Devoid of any children, thankfully.
Sadie swung absently on a swing set near the far corner of the tiny playground, hands wrapped around the chains. She glanced at him as he approached. “What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“Why, because you want to keep fucking my best friend?” she asked bitterly.
“Yes,” Riley said bluntly. He wanted far more than that with Dawson, but he knew she wouldn’t listen. And regardless, he was still the only reason Riley had come here. Before him, Riley would have given himself time to sift through the emotions hindering him, and then he would have moved on, knowing that the life he’d always known, the family he’d grown up with, mattered more.
Risking any of it for people who had given him up, for a sister he didn’t know or care about, wasn’t worth it. Dawson had changed everything, and Riley wouldn’t lie about that. He had become important to Riley, and that meant having to make hard decisions that would affect them both and the relationship they were attempting.
Dawson loved him. Riley couldn’t find a way to voice the feelings in his chest, but he knew they existed, and that he returned the sentiment even if it went unsaid. And for that, he would talk to this woman. He would learn to live with the fact that she existed, and that his family had grown that bit bigger now.
“You know, I was perfectly fine without you,” Sadie said, still not looking at him. “And I’ll be perfectly fine after I get over it.” She sighed. “That doesn’t mean that I didn’t want to try. Didn’t want to find out which parts of me are you. Think about what our lives could have been like if I’d grown up with you.” She rubbed her stomach. “I don’t understand the choices that they made, only that they thought they were the right ones. I know that I couldn’t do it. I could never—this child has only been a part of me for a few months, and I can’t imagine my life without them. I dream about being able to hold them, and see their eyes open, and that first cry. To experience all that and then… I couldn’t then choose to give that up.”
Riley didn’t say anything. Many of his own thoughts had gone in that direction. Wondering what they’d been thinking. How they’d felt. What he’d done wrong as a barely days-old infant for them to give him to someone else to raise and wipe their hands of him.
Useless thoughts that he wouldn’t have an answer to. Ones he didn’t need an answer to, because he had a family and parents that loved him. Whoever his biological parents had been, they meant nothing. As much strangers as the woman in front of him with eyes so much like his own. He would extend this branch for Dawson, but he didn’t want to meet the people who’d raised her.
“I don’t agree with what they did, and I don’t stand with them on it,” Sadie said. “I need you to know that.”
Did she think it would make a difference? That he wished for her and her parents to be divided over this? He had no desire to destroy someone else’s family simply for existing.
“Are you going to say something?”
“I’m not very good at saying something.” Not things that made anyone feel good. He didn’t temper his words to avoid hurting people’s feelings. He didn’t know how to be a brother to a sister. Brothers were different.
“Will you tell me about them?” Sadie asked.
“Who?”
“Your parents. Your family. Who you grew up with, what it was like.” She let out a harsh laugh. “I always wanted a brother. I had no idea all this time that I actually had one.”
Riley didn’t know if he could do this. He’d avoided it for a reason. Talking to her opened all the wounds he’d carefully stitched up a long time ago.
He sat on the other swing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on one. Not since he was a kid. Lucas had been banned from them after the second broken arm, Peyton preferred getting to the top of the rope spider pyramid and hang off it just to give their parents a heart attack, Danny and Kellan were sandpit kids, and Parker had always found a group of other kids to follow him around and mutiny with.
“My parents’ names are Theresa and Simon,” he said eventually. “I have five brothers. Kellan, who’s older than me. Then Lucas, Danny, and the twins—Parker and Peyton.”
Sadie looked at him then. With eyes that were so much like his that he almost couldn’t hold the stare for long. “That’s a lot of kids.”
“Chaos,” Riley agreed. “My mum honestly deserves a medal for keeping us all alive until adulthood.”
“You don’t have other—it’s just me. I didn’t have siblings growing up; for my whole life I’d thought I was an only child. But I had Dawson. He lived down the street, and we went to the same play group as kids. I don’t have any memories growing up that don’t have him in them.” She laughed. “We got into so much trouble together.”
Riley could imagine. Dawson was particularly good at getting himself into trouble as an adult too.
“We went to all the same schools. Worked at the same place as teenagers. Saved up together to get our own place. We moved in together as soon as we turned eighteen. Not this one; this one’s an upgrade. I was there when he got injured playing footy. When he thought that he’d never play again. When he decided that he didn’t want to play again. All of it. He was there for me when I had my first breakup. When I went to university and almost dropped out. When I met Richard and got pregnant before I realised what a twatwaffle he is. We have effigies we haven’t burned yet. I couldn’t do them without him; it felt wrong.”
“Excuse me?”
“Of Richard. I’d thought about one for you too. Makes sense now why Dawson didn’t want to do that one with me. The point is that we’ve been close our whole lives. He was there for me when I found out about you . Knew how torn up about all of it I am. And then he sleeps with you behind my back, and I can’t… I can’t understand it.”
“Maybe you don’t have to,” Riley said. “You’re both adults now. He doesn’t answer to you.”
“I know that,” she said defensively.
“He didn’t do it to hurt you. And I certainly never meant for it to happen. He is supremely annoying.” Riley had wanted to shut Dawson’s mouth, in one way or another, their entire relationship. Even when he’d shown up drunk at the precinct.
Sadie laughed. “He’s an acquired taste.” She sobered and stopped swinging. “Are you—do you have feelings for him? Or was this some weird revenge thing?”
“I’m not so petty as to do something like that.” What he and Dawson did had nothing to do with her, in any way.
“I don’t want you to hurt him,” Sadie said. “No matter what he’s done—because he’s always getting himself into things he shouldn’t—he doesn’t deserve that.”
“I could say the same thing to you. If you’re looking for me to say that I won’t, then I’ll have to disappoint you. Those kinds of words are meaningless; we don’t know what will happen in the future, and making those kinds of guarantees will inevitably make me a liar.”
“You know, I can’t tell if you’re an asshole or not.”
“I am.” He spoke the truth, even when others didn’t want to listen. He’d never been one for sugarcoating his words or using lies to make someone feel better. Quinn had always been better at dealing with people who were grieving than he’d been. His detective—and longtime friend—worked well with surlier partners because he complemented them with his calm levelheadedness.
Sadie snorted out a laugh. She started swinging again, kicking her feet up. “I know this is hard for you. It’s hard for me too. The sibling thing, and the being pregnant thing, and my best friend thing. Don’t take him away from me.”
“That’s up to you,” Riley said. If she chose to continue making it an issue, then their friendship would deteriorate because of it, and that had nothing to do with him.
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“Will you talk to me again?”
Riley stared at the empty playground equipment and the road that led to where Gideon and Dawson waited. “I don’t know you. Part of me doesn’t want to know you.”
“And the other part?” she asked tentatively.
“The other part wonders what I missed too,” he admitted. “I can’t promise anything.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m just asking you to try. For us and for Dawson. He’s stuck in the middle of this.”
Riley had never meant him to be. But he couldn’t deny that Dawson bridged the gap in a way nothing else would have.
“I didn’t get to annoy you as a kid, and I think it’s only fair I get the opportunity to do it now.”
Riley sent her a sardonic look, and she laughed. A start. Whether a good or bad one, only time would tell.
Riley and Gideon went on ahead without him, and Dawson spent a whole ten minutes pacing, wondering whether he should go talk to Sadie at the park or wait till she got home.
They’d spent a lot of time conversing there. The park wasn’t used much, except for that brief period after school when parents were trying to tire their kids out before they took them home. They’d thought of it as “theirs.” Now he didn’t know if she’d welcome him there.
After another five minutes, he snatched up his keys and headed outside. “Don’t be a fucking coward, Dawson,” he muttered to himself. She couldn’t yell at him if they were in public, right?
He found her on her favourite swing—the right. She said it swung better, but he’d sat on it once when he’d gone without her, and it felt exactly the same as the left.
Dawson carefully sat in the swing beside her. When she didn’t say a word, he figured he had to start this. “Sadie, I’m so sorry.”
Her lips flattened, and she still wouldn’t look at him. “For what?” she asked sharply. “Sleeping with my brother, or lying to me about it?”
“I… I can’t be sorry about what happened with him. I am sorry that it ended up hurting you. I thought I could keep it separate, and I mean, of course, I couldn’t, but I thought I could.” He shrugged helplessly. It’s not like the fact he’d been an idiot came as a surprise. He’d known all along and still run headlong into it. “I didn’t know what to do, and he’s…” Magnetic. So damn appealing. He’d drawn Dawson in, and he hadn’t exactly tried very hard, if at all, to resist the pull.
“I might have understood,” Sadie said quietly. “If you’d just told me. Maybe I wouldn’t have, I don’t know, but you should have at least given me the chance to decide without being blindsided by it like that.” Her face wrinkled. “Especially not by seeing you all but fucking against the wall. I don’t want to see you like that. Or him. You’re like a brother to me too.”
“I didn’t know how to,” Dawson said honestly. “I felt like shit that I couldn’t keep away. That one kiss scrambled my brain, and I just…” I couldn’t stay away.
Sadie softened. “The first time I saw him, sitting there in his office, I realised that my life would never be the same,” she said, tipping her head upwards and leaning back, swinging lightly, hands twisting around the metal, her knuckles going white. “He was nice to me, sort of, to start with, until I told him who I was. You know I always wanted a sibling.”
“I know.”
“Then I found you, and I thought, ‘Nah, this sucks.’”
Dawson nudged her knee, and she laughed. Hearing the sound sent relief pouring through him. It gave him hope that they could get through it, and that things wouldn’t change so much that who they were would be lost under the weight of their new reality.
“He was nothing like what I thought he would be. Less, but also so much more at the same time, even during that first conversation. Cold. A total asshole.”
It was Dawson’s turn to laugh. “I hate to break it to you, but only some of that had to do with your sibling bomb. He’s kind of an asshole in general.” Blunt, direct, and refreshing. Dawson never had to wonder where he stood with either of his men, because they told him. Honest, reliable, ridiculously decent men.
“I don’t know how to feel about the fact that you know that about him already. That you know so much more about him than I do.”
“I think there are things about him that I know that I’d prefer not to share with you.” Like just what he could do with that tongue and his skills in bed. Not to mention his filthy mouth. Good for so much more than just pissing people off.
Sadie grimaced. “Yeah, you can keep those dirty thoughts to yourself.” She turned her head to the side to finally look at him, cheek against the chain. Seeing the blue didn’t hurt anymore, not the way it had before. He loved both of the siblings, so damn much. In different ways but no less powerful. He considered her a sister. And he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Riley and Gideon.
“How did you even meet him?” Sadie asked.
Dawson hesitated, and she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “I… might have showed up drunk at his work to give him a piece of my mind.”
Her jaw dropped. “Oh my God, that’s where you went that night? I thought you were sleeping in the shower.”
“I already said that I didn’t, and you and Marshall need to get over the sleeping in the shower thing.” He’d done it three times, max . Maybe four if he counted that one other time. Not all that regular an occurrence and only when he’d been drinking.
“Do they know about your shower-sleeping habits?”
“That’s not what we do in the shower,” Dawson shot back.
“Gross, that’s my brother, Dawson.” She exhaled abruptly. “Damn, it sounds so weird to say that.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Please tell me you didn’t drive there. You were so fucking drunk, Dawson. I thought you might die.”
“You thought I might die, so you went to sleep?”
“I was tired, okay?”
“Yeah, well, I was drunk because a witch kept pouring me shots and insisting I drink them.”
“Can’t waste a good shot.”
“They were not good shots,” he argued. Straight vodka shots weren’t his favourite. He preferred the ones that tasted like berry and kicked him in the face after a few. “Anyway, no I did not drive, thank you. I might have puked in the bushes in front of the station—in front of Gideon—and yelled at him because I thought he was Riley at first. And then when Riley came out it… got worse.”
“I’m sorry, let me get this straight. You threw up in front of him?”
“Well, no, it was before he came out.”
“But you did throw up in the bushes at the police station ?”
“Yes.” Why did she need to clarify the details? He didn’t particularly want to relive it.
“And then he decided, ‘Damn, I want to sleep with that’?”
“That’s… not quite how it happened.” But mostly, yeah. Good thing for Dawson that his behaviour hadn’t put Riley off. He’d have missed out on so much.
“God, he has just as bad taste in men as I do,” she said, cackling.
“Hey!”
They swung lightly in silence for a few minutes, just like they used to as kids. Of course, as kids they’d also gone as high as they could and then competed to see who could jump off the farthest. Not their brightest endeavour. Sadie had broken her wrist doing it. Later that year, Dawson had broken his leg when they’d decided riding a skateboard down the slide was the best idea they’d ever come up with. They’d spent hours drawing over each other’s casts.
“You really hurt me, Dawson,” Sadie said, breaking the silence.
“I know.” It hadn’t been his intention, but he’d known what direction he’d been going in. He couldn’t put the blame on anyone but himself.
“You’re my best friend, and the fact that you were keeping something so important a secret…” She looked up at the sky again. “I hated that you would do that to me, when you knew how I felt about the whole situation with Riley.”
“I’m sorry.” He would say it forever if it helped make her feel better.
“It’s kind of romantic, though,” she mused.
“What?” Dawson stopped abruptly, putting a foot down on the bark to stop his next swing. Romantic? Where the fuck had that come from?
“That you wanted him so bad you would do that. That you care about him that much.”
He decided not to mention that it’d been purely physical to start with. That Riley had been a colossal asshole, and something about that had done it for Dawson. Those kinds of white lies were okay, right? Not a truth she needed to know. Some things were better left unsaid.
“I’m glad that you got to talk to him,” he said instead.
“He wouldn’t have, would he?” Sadie said. “If you hadn’t slept with him, if you hadn’t become someone important to him , he would have cut me off forever.”
Dawson tried to think of a way to make the truth gentle, but he couldn’t. “Yeah, he would have put it behind him and closed it tight. Like a vault.” One that would never open.
Sadie bit her lip sadly. “I guess I should thank you.”
“No. Fuck, no,” he said, horrified at the thought. “We could have tried again, worn him down, locked him in a room until he accepted you.” All totally plausible actions.
Sadie arched an eyebrow, looking eerily similar to Riley when he did the same thing. “I think we should leave the planning portion of our adventures to me, mate.”
“Probably.” Dawson hesitated before saying, “I met some of his family.”
“Like…?”
“His mum and two of his brothers. She was… perfect, Sadie. She was perfect. And the brothers were kind of ridiculous, but the bond between them all… He’s a good brother. They adore the fuck out of him. I’m sad for what you lost growing up, but seeing them makes me see it from a different perspective. And what he had wasn’t bad. He had an amazing childhood, and so did you. Now you get to see what your adulthood looks like together.”
“Focus on the future, you think?”
“It’s the only direction any of us should go.” Sadie’s parents had done what they thought best and set them all on a path they couldn’t have avoided. The blame couldn’t be landed on any one person. Life was just sometimes like that.
Dawson leaned over and took her hand. She smiled, a real, genuine smile that eased the last of his tension, and squeezed around his fingers.
He had to hope that they all made better choices. For their futures.