Chapter 28 Naomi #2
"Got it, baby." Ty flashes me a smile. And that dumb "baby." He hardly ever uses that nickname. I’m not particularly fond of it. It’s cheesy and obnoxious, but I melt a little on the inside anyway.
Adri wrestles out of my pathetic grip and dashes after him. I watch them as they tear through my living room, heading for the front door.
"For fuck’s sake, leave him alone, Adri! This is my goddamn house!"
But my brother’s too preoccupied with chasing the only man I’ve ever truly loved out of my life.
"I’m gonna bury you, Brady," he spits, sidestepping all my furniture with that pure military precision.
Yep, my life is a sitcom. And I don’t know if I should be crying or laughing or putting some pants on.
"Don’t let him kill me, Nomes!" Ty calls teasingly from the porch, his voice all fake bravado since he has no real plan for escape except for my Subaru. I have no idea how he manages to find the time to grab his boots.
"Trying!" I seize Adri's arm again as I catch up with him on the steps.
"Let go," Adri growls, yanking his limb out of my grasp.
"Quit it already," I demand, refusing to let go. "We can’t keep doing this!"
Adri's eyes are hard and final. "He can’t keep doing this," he shoots back, his voice loud enough for everyone in my neighborhood to hear him.
"It’s none of your goddamn business!"
Meanwhile, Ty has already climbed into my Subaru and started the engine. The window rolls down as he backs up. "I’ll bring the car to the casino later!" Ty throws at me with that stupid smirk of his.
Adri does what he does best—gives Ty a death glare. "Don't even think about coming near my sister, you piece of shit!"
"Talkin' big for someone who’s been lying for seventeen years!" Ty fires back as he clumsily maneuvers out of the driveway.
Adri's face contorts.
"Adri?" I ask, my gaze bouncing between my brother and Ty. "What’s he saying?"
"Ask him what really happened!" Ty shouts from the road. "Ask Adri why I left. Ask that asshole yourself. "
My heart is loud and restless over the noise of the engine. The tires squeal, and then he’s gone.
For a moment, the world seems silent without him. A quiet scream, a soft, persistent echo that fills my heart, my home, my head. Adri stands like a stone in the wreckage on the bottom step of my porch.
"What did he mean?" I ask, placing my fists on my hips. "What did you do?"
His eyes flick away. The silence thickens, suffocates.
"It’s nothing," he mutters. His voice is careful, practiced.
I know a lie when I see it. I know my brother.
"What did he mean?" I repeat, the question thick in my throat. "Ask you what, Adri? What did you do?"
"I have no idea."
"Look at me, Adri."
He takes a deep breath and lifts his gaze. The muscle in his jaw tics. "It’s not important anymore," he grits out.
My heart hammers in my chest, uneasy and clamorous. I’ve spent the last seventeen years wondering why Ty left. Evidently, the answer was here all along.
"I need you to explain it to me, Adri," I demand.
Of course he immediately goes on the offensive. "Don't make the same mistake again."
"I don’t need you to tell me what my mistakes are."
"Just drop it, Naomi." He sighs, and the sound scrapes against the silence like a plea. Or a lie.
"You’re hiding something."
"Don't, Shrimp." He tries to sound confident, but there's a crack in his voice. "It's not what you think."
"Then tell me what it is," I dare him.
We stare at each other for a long, tense moment. He’s still at the bottom of the stairs, and our faces are level.
"How does it matter now? It’s been forever."
"Maybe it doesn’t matter to you. But it matters to me. These past seventeen years have been hell, Adri. Half of my life, I thought I wasn’t good enough for him. Apparently, there’s more to the story. So if he says I need to ask you, then I’m asking you."
"He’s messing with your head. With your life. Let him go."
"I can’t do that." I reach out and tug on his arm.
"We were kids." The words are rough, raw, all the things he won’t say. "He left. That’s what he does."
"He came back."
"And he’ll leave again. It’s the past, Naomi. Leave it there."
The past, the past, the past. It’s haunting me like a ghost. "Does this have anything to do with your dumb puberty falling-out?"
Adri's eyes are dark, unreadable. I think I see something break in them, then it’s gone.
His shoulders lift, a shrug that’s too casual, too much like surrender. "I don’t remember. Unlike you, I’m not that hung up on Tyler Brady."
I watch him turn around, ready to leave, watch the man I once believed could do no wrong. I’m not that kid anymore. Not that naive girl.
"Where are you going?" I ask, the sound so small against the morning.
"To work," he mutters.
"Oh no, sir!" I stomp my foot like I’m six and he’s stolen my candy. "You're my ride to the casino."
He freezes and gives me one of those incredulous looks. "Since when?"
"Since you became the reason I lost my car today."
He grunts out some sort of sound, but I’m not having it. I hop down the stairs and grab his arm, then drag him back up the stairs and inside. Then I shut the door behind him and gesture at the coffee on the kitchen counter. "Have some while you wait for me."
"I thought it was a single-cup morning."
"Not anymore."
Adri sighs and heads over to the pot to pour himself a mug as I rush to get ready for the day.
Sometimes, I wonder if God gave me an older brother to be my rock in a time of need or to test my patience.
Work keeps me busy at first, keeps my head occupied, but eventually, the image of Ty invades every corner of my mind. The man himself shows up around eleven to drop off the keys for my Subaru. I meet him out back, and he immediately draws me closer and kisses me like I’m his oxygen.
"Come on." I push at his chest gently. "Someone could see us."
"So?"
"You haven’t seen what’s happening online?" I ask him.
"No."
"Well, you should."
Tyler Brady is an Instagram and TikTok sensation today. All the videos recorded last night at the talent show have been making the social media rounds all night and all morning. And this extra attention from the press isn’t something I need.
"That bad?" Ty chuckles.
"Well, you can probably expect crowds of fanboys and groupies flooding Palm Springs this weekend in hopes of seeing you. And that isn’t what I want right now…while this—us—is still so new."
"Understood." He nods but kisses me anyway before taking off when his Uber pulls up.
As soon as lunch is over, the Oasis is dead.
The casino crowd is in hibernation until happy hour, the kitchen is cleaner than the day it opened, and Sonia is leaning against a shelf, scrolling on her phone with the kind of focus that says she's in the middle of a group-chat war.
The only sound is the soft whirr of the espresso machine doing its self-cleaning cycle.
There’s not much to do except for inventory, which takes only twenty minutes. I handle the dry storage first, then the freezer and the cooler. When I’m about to finish, I crack the walk-in door with my shoulder and stick my head out.
"I'm taking off after deliveries," I call.
I’ve been anxious all morning. There hasn’t been any news about the Stone family, and even though Asher’s gone along with his parents, I don’t trust that they won’t get him in trouble. I’ve heard too many bad things about the couple.
Sonia’s head pops up. "Going somewhere good?"
I hold up a to-go sack with some deli meats, veggies, and a quart of rice pudding.
"Charity drop-off in the mountains." Not technically a lie. I do plan to deliver the food to someone in need. Or at least, that’s my excuse. It just happens that I have no idea if the recipient will be home, and I’m making up the rest as I go.
Sonia narrows her eyes at me, then lets it go. "You don’t need to bribe me," she says, snorting. "If it’s about the missing kid, just say so."
There’s a smile on her lips, the kind that means she saw right through my plan before I even had one. For all her tough talk, Sonia’s a marshmallow. I think she keeps me around for entertainment.
"It’s not just about the kid," I hedge. "But…yeah, mostly the kid."
"I can handle dinner. This week has been fairly slow. Go be a hero." She waves me off, already sucked back into her phone. "But don’t come crawling to me when you hit a coyote on the way up the mountain."
"Or a mountain lion," I add.
She grins without looking up. "One less liability on payroll."
"But I’m the one handling payroll," I tease her.
"Whatever, boss lady. Go now."
I shake my head and take the back exit, where a blast of dry heat hits me like a pizza oven set to inferno. I place the food onto the back seat of my car and slide behind the wheel, then nudge the AC to max and punch in the address I have saved in my phone.
The drive from Sageview proper to Eagle Creek is only seven miles, but the last two are all uphill, and each turn brings you closer to nowhere.
The neighborhood itself hardly has any stoplights, just a couple of lonely properties hiding in the trees.
My destination is a small trailer park on the border of town and the stretch of land managed by the National Park Service.
I get halfway up before my phone loses its signal.
There’s no radio, no music, just the thrum of the engine and the sound of my doubts knocking around in my skull.
I think about Asher, the way he never talked about home, the weird pauses in his speech, how he flinched whenever you mentioned parents.
The road gets skinnier, the asphalt unraveling into gravel, then dirt. On one blind corner, there’s a flock of wild turkeys squatting right in the path, so I have to slow-roll past them while they glare at me like I just interrupted a board meeting.
I glance at the GPS, which is now a frozen blue dot and a pinwheel. "Very helpful," I mutter as if the phone can hear me. "How do people who live here communicate with the outside world?"