Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Raylan
Iregretted the whiskey from the night before as soon as I peeled my eyes open.
I drank enough to guarantee a shitty hangover, but not nearly enough to forget the night before.
I remembered every single excruciating second of it.
And the image that stuck out the most was the pain on Lennix’s face when she walked away from me.
With a groan, I rolled onto my back and blinked my gritty eyes, regretting my decision to drink my problems away. Not because I felt like a living dumpster fire, but because that was a Danny Bradbury move. I deserved the throbbing in my temples and the flaming roadkill taste in my mouth.
I don’t know how long I lay there, silently cursing myself, when I started to hear pounding. For a second, I thought it was my brain banging against the inside of my skull. Then I heard the voice.
“Raylan Matthew Bradbury, open this door! Right now!”
Ah, fuck. This was going to be bad.
I forced myself to sitting and threw my legs over the bed.
It felt like an icepick was drilling into my eyeball as I pushed to my feet.
Fortunately I’d passed out in the clothes from the day before, so I didn’t have to dress myself, because if I had to bend over, I was liable to throw up everything in my stomach.
“Now!” Gypsy shouted sharply. “Don’t make me repeat myself.” She was using the voice she’d used on us as kids when we were being exceptional pains in the ass, and it still made my balls draw up into my stomach the same way they’d done when I was little.
“Christ, relax. I’m comin’,” I grunted, wiping the sleep crud from my eyes as I padded to the door.
“Don’t you attitude me,” she scolded through the door. Jesus, I forgot she had the hearing of a fucking bat.
I pulled the door open and barely had a chance to move out of the way before Gypsy ran me over as she barreled inside. My tiny apartment suddenly felt even smaller as my big sister’s anger filled up every square inch.
“Good morning to you, too,” I said drolly, moving toward the single serving coffee maker sitting on the counter. “Coffee?”
“It would have been a good morning, if you hadn’t acted like a little shit and kept me up with worry half the night.” She curled her top lip in disgust as I scooped grounds into the filter. “And no thanks. Your coffee always tastes like crap. I stopped and got something from Muffin Top.”
I cast her a narrowed look. “And you didn’t bring me anything?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and hiked her chin in the air.
For a woman, my sister was pretty tall. I still towered over her, but the height difference never fazed her.
I didn’t have a single doubt she could still kick my ass, and from the storm clouds covering her expression, she just might.
“I only buy coffee for brothers who don’t stress me out to the point I develop an ulcer.”
My chest fell on a deep sigh, and I scrubbed my hand over my face. “Look, I’m really sorry. I acted like a selfish prick last night. I shouldn’t have worried you like that. I just needed some time to get my head on straight.”
The anger wiped away, in its place was that big sisterly concern she excelled at. “And did you get your head on straight?”
I gave that some thought. It had taken hours to find sleep after Lennix left, and I hadn’t stopped swirling her words around in my head until I finally passed out from exhaustion. “Yeah,” I admitted. “I think I finally did.”
Gypsy’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank god. I thought I was going to have to beat some sense into your thick, stubborn skull after that bomb I dropped yesterday.”
Not willing to wait for the pot to finish brewing, I pulled the carafe out, mid-stream, and put my mug directly under it. “Yeah, well, someone else beat you to it.”
“Let me guess: Lennix?”
My head shot up and around so fast the dull throb in my temples turned into a pickaxe, making me wince. “What? Why would you . . . that’s not . . .”
She rolled her eyes and turned her back on me, walking over to the couch and sitting on one end before patting the cushion next to her in a silent order to join.
My mug was full, so I switched it and the carafe back out and went to join her in my living room.
She twisted to face me, bringing one knee up on the cushion as I sat at the other end.
“I’m not blind or stupid, Ray. I raised you, so I know you better than anyone else, and I know you’ve been in love with that girl for a while now. ”
I choked on the sip I’d just taken. “I don’t . . .” I cut my objection off midway through. There wasn’t really a point in denying it anymore. Not to other people and not to myself. “How did you know?”
She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I just knew. I’ve caught you looking at her more often than a friend should, and I saw you follow after her at Zach and Rae’s wedding. That’s when it started, isn’t it?”
“Sort of. That was the night she told me she had feelings for me,” I confessed. Saying those words out loud was freeing.
My sister nodded, letting out a knowing, “Ah. It all makes sense now.”
My brow furrowed. “What does?”
“Why you were in such a bad mood for so long after that night. You thought you were doing the right thing and shot her down, didn’t you?”
“Jesus, sis. Are you a fucking clairvoyant or something?”
“Just observant,” she said with a smug grin. “And I pay close attention to the people I love. So tell me what happened. Start from the beginning, because I’m incredibly nosey, and I want to know everything.”
I found myself opening my mouth and letting it all pour out, starting with the wedding and ending with the fight we had the night before.
I told her everything—well, minus the more intimate stuff, because there were some things a sister didn’t need to know about her brother.
I even told her about the run-in Danny and I had in Vegas and everything he said to me that fucked with my head so badly.
And the more I talked, the lighter I felt.
By the time I finished, I felt like I’d purged myself of the remaining darkness that had lingered inside after Lennix’s visit.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so . . . free. So unburdened.
“Damn, I always knew that girl was smart,” my sister said with a heaping dose of pride, which only made my own pride in my Chaos’s strength grow.
“But that’s some next-level self-awareness she’s got going on.
” She hit me with a look so serious, I had no choice but to pay attention.
“That’s a once in a lifetime woman, baby brother.
You lose her, you’re never going to get anything even half as good. ”
I brought my mug to my lips and drank, barely suppressing a grimace. Gypsy was right. I made shit coffee. “Believe me, I know,” I said as I leaned forward to put the mug on the old steamer trunk I used as a coffee table.
“She’s right, you know. I’ve always worried you held yourself back from real, lasting love because you worried you were like him.
” She leaned toward me, reaching out to place her hand on mine.
“You aren’t. I was already grown by the time they took off, so I have more experience, and I can say with absolute certainty that he was wrong, dead wrong.
You might look the most like him, at least before the booze and drugs wreaked havoc.
You had similar laughs before the pack a day that he smoked made him sound like he’d sucked on the tailpipe of a beat-up truck.
And you might have some of the same mannerisms and those dimples, but that’s where the similarities to him end, Ray.
Even at his best, he didn’t have a heart like yours.
He didn’t have your loyalty, and he never had your kindness. ”
“I’m . . . I’m starting to see that.”
My sister’s smile was so brilliant it was nearly blinding. Her hand squeezed mine as her eyes grew glassy with unshed tears. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. So what are you going to do?”
That was the million-dollar questions, wasn’t it?
“Zach isn’t going to like it,” I said on a wary sigh.
She waved my concern away. “Zach will get over it. And if need be, I’ll help Rory in kicking his ass until he sees reason.”
I let out a chuckle, the noise sounding a little rusty from disuse over the past couple of days. “You’d do that for me, huh?”
“You’re my kid,” she answered vehemently. “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you or the rest of your brothers and sisters. Don’t ever doubt that, Ray. Not for a single second.”
I really did have the best family a man could ever ask for. “All right then. If you’ll do anything, I need you to get your ass out of my apartment. I need to get a shower and wash this goddamn hangover off so I don’t reek of whiskey when I try to get my girl back.”
She shot to her feet. “That, I can do, baby brother.” She stepped closer and bent to press a kiss to the top of my head.
“I’ll expect you to have a plus-one at the next family dinner,” she announced as she headed for the door.
“Call me when it’s done and you finally have your happy ending. And give her my love.”
Best. Sister. Ever.
It wasn’t the booze from the night before that had my stomach twisted into knots as I pulled my truck up in front of Lennix’s house. The hangover had mostly subsided by then. It was nerves that had the coffee I’d forced down earlier threatening to make a reappearance.
Despite the wrenching in my gut, I killed the engine and climbed out, straightening my shoulders with determination as I marched up the stairs to her front door.
I wasn’t going to knock and risk her refusing to answer, so instead, I pulled out the key she’d given me when we first started seeing each other, and let myself in.
The alarm system chirped, and I made quick work of punching in the code on the keypad by the door so it didn’t go off and scare the hell out of her.