Chapter 42
[Stone]
Later, Taxi lies across my chest while I wind her curls around my finger and watch them spring back into place. For her part, she runs her fingers through the thick patch of hair on my chest.
She was rather excited when she entered my house, her art supplies in two overstuffed bags. And nothing made me happier than watching her spread everything out on my dining room table. Paints and brushes. Colored pencils. A large roll of paper.
Then we ended up in my bedroom.
But despite what we just did, how we joined together, Taxi feels like she’s drifting away from me.
“What’s on your mind?” While I want all Taxi’s truths, my biggest fear is that she still wants to leave. Even giving her Frederick’s wall as a commission would only prolong her visit. There isn’t a guarantee she’ll permanently stay.
“I’m thinking about Jolene again.” Taxi shifts, craning her head back against my bicep, so she can look up at me. “Sorry. Not very romantic to think about my sister after what we just did.”
I quietly chuckle and continue winding and unwinding her hair around my finger. “You can think whatever thoughts you want, darlin’.”
While I wish she was thinking about me, her sister’s presence weighs heavily on her mind. And I’m not certain the words I offered earlier as wisdom were necessarily wise.
I have my own failures with siblings, and don’t feel like I’m fully qualified to give her advice on how to handle hers.
“I’m still so angry about her showing up out of the blue, acting like she’s been overly concerned about Trudy when she couldn’t be bothered to get here sooner.
And all this time she’s been God knows where.
Plus, she’s acting like she has a medical degree by association because she works for a world-renowned organization that helps others.
” Taxi snorts, and unknowingly pulls one of my chest hairs.
“I don’t want to begrudge her concern for others, if it was genuine, I just . . . I don’t know what I just.”
I smile and press a kiss to her pinched brows. “Like you said earlier, families are complicated. I know about being the worst sibling.”
I chuckle, but honestly, Taxi talking about Jolene earlier, sensing she thinks she’s somehow failed her younger siblings, has me thinking about Sebastian.
Taxi blinks. “You? Never. You’re like the poster child for the perfect eldest brother.”
I snort. “But I’m not.” I clear my throat. “I’ve had my moments.”
“Name one.”
With a heavy inhale, I blow out a breath and tuck my other arm behind my head.
“I arrested Sebastian.”
The instant I confess my greatest regret, Taxi tenses beneath my arm. Her back straightens, her hand stills on my chest. I swear she even inches a little away from my side, and I immediately realize that telling her this story might be disastrous.
Given her history with law enforcement, she isn’t going to like my tale.
She presses up, balancing on her outstretched arm. Her body distinctly no longer touching mine. She pulls the sheet with her, covering herself breasts, holding her hand against her chest.
“As in, your brother?” She blinks several times, her voice incredulous.
“My brother.” I reach for her lower back, my arm having fallen off her when she shifted upright. When my fingers tickle the base of her spine, she flinches, and I drop my touch. Instead, I fist the sheet behind her and stare up at the ceiling.
“Why?” The question cracks in her throat, disbelief still ringing high.
“When I was still young and only a deputy, there was a small-time drug circuit happening in the woods behind the original Wallace Farmhouse.”
Taxi continues to stare at me, but I don’t look at her. Her distance, while only inches, suddenly feels like a great divide.
“Where Sebastian lives now?”
“Same place.” The ransacked farmhouse outside of town was purchased a few years back and renovated into a gorgeous modern home.
“He’d been dealing drugs, getting deeper involved in the use of them, and I’d turned a blind eye.” My throat is thick again, shame and regret clogging it.
The signs I’d seen but ignored. The disbelief. He was too young, right? He couldn’t really be involved in drugs. Where was he getting them? What was he doing with them? All things I should have asked.
But I was going to be up for sheriff soon. Beau Wilson was backing my election.
“We’d needed the money,” I confess again, shamefully. I hadn’t known for certain that Sebastian’s money came from drugs. I only had an inkling. Still, I dismissed the niggling in my gut that said my brother was in trouble.
When he paid for Vale’s dance lessons.
When he bought Ford new sports equipment.
When he gave me an expensive pair of Aviator glasses when I graduated from training.
“So you’ll look like a bad ass sheriff.”
The glasses cost more money than he could possibly have made as a young kid working at the Seed & Soil, getting paid on the family discount of pennies. The gift was my first hint he was doing something he shouldn’t be doing, but I didn’t question him.
“When he beat a man to death, I had to arrest him.”
Taxi gasps, her hand moving to cover her mouth.
I’m tainting her image of my brother. The now local business owner, devoted husband, loving father of two. But I’ve already started this story.
I’ll never forget the call, arriving on the scene. The man was black and blue, and red from Sebastian’s blood. The victim looked like he’d been strung out. There was no saving him.
The last thing I wanted to believe was my youngest brother could kill a man. Then again, our father displayed the ultimate crimes against his children, and that bitterness, that hatred, could have built up in Sebastian, waiting for a moment to strike.
I just didn’t know.
“He was charged with manslaughter and sentenced to seven years.” The sentence was relatively light, and a relief considering the circumstances. He needed help. Help I hadn’t given him.
Guilt sucker punches me in the gut again.
“I thought going to jail might have been the best thing for him.”
“Don’t say that,” Taxi whispers.
But I continue, feeling at the time, like there hadn’t been another choice. “He was forced to get clean. When he finally got out, he was changed.” Still hard. Still a fighter, but more focused.
“He opened his bakery on an honest dime and became a successful businessman.”
Taxi remains silent and I rush to finish my sorry tale. “He met the right woman at the right time.” Enya.
“Wow,” Taxi whispers, her tone tight, almost sarcastic.
My hand still fists the fitted sheet behind her. She still holds the top sheet to her chest.
“Did you visit him in jail?” she asks, her voice still quiet, eyes lowered. Taxi’s mom had refused to see her own children.
“All the time.” I didn’t want my brother to think I was abandoning him, like our father had abandoned us. I took his displeasure in the situation, fighting against my guilt, eager for his forgiveness, but first he had to forgive himself, which took time. More than just his seven-year sentence.
I exhale heavily and look at Taxi. Her shoulders hunched forward, her hair curtaining half her face.
I’ve fallen from grace in her eyes, and I feel sick. But in order for Taxi to ever love me, she’d need to know all of me. And acting on behalf of the law is still who I am. My faults are more than ketchup on the corners of a grilled cheese sandwich.
“My point in telling you this is because no one is a perfect sibling. And even the worst decisions can be made with love.”
I love Sebastian. Love him something fierce, and he slipped through the cracks in our household. The one I tried desperately to keep together, but failed on several occasions.
Taxi remains quiet. “All I ever wanted to do was protect them.”
“Like I said earlier, maybe Jolene has her own reasons for staying away from Sterling Falls. Ones that don’t involve you.”
Taxi huffs, glancing up and across my room, like the opposite wall is the most interesting space. It also holds the door, and I’m bracing for her to bolt any second.
“You hadn’t been exactly eager to get back here either.” I cautiously remind her. “Or stay for that fact.”
“But I am here.” She whips her head in my direction. “For Trudy. And Simon.”
I’m not arguing that point, she’s given up weeks to be present for them. And my next question is wrong before I even say it, but I ask anyway.
“Those the only people you’re here for?”
“Stone,” she whispers, her eyes still avoiding mine. She can’t even look at me, tell me to my face that I’ve disappointed her. I’ve somehow proven I’m exactly how she’s typecast everyone in law enforcement, and I don’t even blame her.
I’m sick myself when I consider how I treated my own brother. Once he was incarcerated, there was no getting him out. He risked a higher sentence. The judge wanted to make an example of him, and thankfully, we caught the rest of the ring with Sebastian’s cooperation.
“Yeah,” I counter her quiet voice, lifting my arm that had painfully been clutching at the sheets behind her. “You don’t need to answer that.”
I fling my arm from around her, and lunge upward, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. “I’m gonna clean up.”
I need a minute.
We all want to be picked by someone. Be their first choice.
Looks like I’m suddenly not it for her.