32. Debt-to-Equity
Debt-to-Equity
Sara
When Dante and Finn join us in the living room, Dante lifts me off the couch, sits down, and settles me on his lap. Finn sits next to me and takes my hand.
Natasha’s mouth hangs open.
“It’s a thing.” Drew smiles. “You’ll get used to it. See? Finn, Dante, Wyatt, and I are all with Sara.”
Natasha finally blinks and turns to look incredulously at Drew.
He shrugs and winks at me. “What can I say? The right woman makes you do crazy things for her.”
That should be something Natasha understands. Tom was insane to run off with her.
I snuggle into Dante and breathe in his ocean scent. There’s a lot going on right now. Our relationship is apparently out to Tom and Natasha. Which means questions might be coming my way that I don’t want to answer.
But Tom is still on my shit list, so I don’t have to answer them if I don’t want to.
I rest my head against Dante’s chest.
“Did Tom know about this?” Natasha asks as her gaze goes out the window again.
“He knew we all had feelings for Sara.” Finn puts my hand against his steady heart. His green eyes capture mine. “He also knew we’d never act on them.”
“But you did?” Natasha wrings her hands.
“I convinced them to.” Drew leans back in his chair and smirks. “Poor Sara just wanted herself a harem. It took me to bring it together for her.”
Dante shakes his head. Finn chuckles but doesn’t dispute it. Would we have found our way together without Drew? Probably. Is it easier with Drew? Surprisingly, yes.
“You’ve been to my club.” Drew distracts Natasha by asking her how she felt as a woman in his establishment. He’s never asked me that, so I assume it’s just to change topics.
Dante rubs his jaw against mine and says for my ears only, “I’d love to find somewhere to continue what we started outside.”
I squirm on his lap a little. Part of me feels guilty for what we’re doing. These are Tom’s best friends that I’ve basically stolen from him. But it’s not like Tom didn’t make it easy.
But if we snuck off, Tom would assume we’re having sex and I don’t know how comfortable I am with my brother thinking that, yet.
It’s making me very conflicted because, on one hand, Tom’s been a dick and I don’t give a shit that he thinks I’m getting railed by his best friends.
On the other hand, Tom’s my brother and there’s this level of older brother respect that still lingers.
It’s really small, but he’s still my older brother.
“Do you think you’ll ever forgive Tom?” I tip my head to look into Dante’s pale blue eyes.
Dante sighs. “It’s inevitable. Even if you weren’t his sister and we wouldn’t have to see him at holidays. Tom’s a part of us. But it’s going to take time and he’s going to have to change.”
“You think the baby will change him?” I glance at Natasha as she and Drew talk about costuming. She’s just like Tom. A flight risk. Who’s to say they’ll be able to stay together? That this poor baby won’t end up with my mom?
“Yes, I do.”
My skeptical gaze returns to Dante’s.
“There’s nothing Tom wouldn’t have dropped to get back to you if you needed him.” Dante breathes out, fanning the hair next to my ear. “When that shit happened in high school with Verity?”
“Yeah?” I flinch, remembering how torn apart I was. Tom came home immediately and stayed up late watching movies with me, getting me ice cream and chocolates, making me laugh even through the tears.
“Tom had been working on this girl for months to go out with him. He finally wore her down and then canceled on her to be with you.” Dante adjusts me on his lap.
“It may not seem like much, but to him, that was going to be his grand finale of the semester. That girl didn’t talk to him when he came back. ”
“So he missed out on getting laid? That doesn’t sound like a big deal. And if she actually liked him, she would have forgiven him.”
“Maybe it’s a Tom thing, but this date was big on his to-do list. He set up this fantastic date that would show her that he was the one she should be with.
” Dante chuckles low and runs his fingers up my arm, leaving a little wave of sparks in his wake.
“To Tom, that was the most important thing, but you trumped that.”
I don’t know. It sounds pretty fucking weak. “Maybe.”
“It’s those types of things that make Tom our friend.
If I needed someone to save me from a date my uncle set me up on, Tom would help by either faking an emergency or sometimes by taking the girl.
Nothing gives a girl a good time more than another man wanting her attention.
” Dante’s touch is soft and soothing. Again, Tom gets laid. I’m sensing a pattern.
But I also know how I feel at this moment.
“I don’t know that I can forgive him.” I let the chill race down my spine as those words settle inside me.
“I’m never going to feel safe again. Someone broke into our home, destroyed my stuff.
I was kidnapped and sure, it was probably the politest kidnapping ever, but it still left a mark.
I didn’t even know if Peabody was safe.”
“I’m not denying that, pip.” Dante tips my chin so our eyes meet. “But it’s okay if you want to forgive your brother. What he did might never be made right, but that doesn’t mean you have to be mad at him forever.”
I breathe him in. Dante grounds me. He protects me, and if he thought Tom would continue to hurt me, he would cut Tom out of our lives for good. But he also knows that to me, family is everything. And that at some point, I’ll need to forgive Tom to move on and Dante will help me with that.
My heart fills and I press my forehead to his. “I love you, boss.”
“I love you.” His words are soft and he just holds me like that for a moment. My heart thrums a little harder because this man loves me. Dante could have anyone, and he wants me. He loves me.
Finn squeezes my hand, and when I turn, Natasha is watching me and Dante. Drew gives a little nod. Wyatt and Tom haven’t come back in. I glance out the window, but they’re almost too far away to see.
I clear my throat and look at Natasha. “Did you ask Tom about Verity and Wyatt?”
Natasha grasps her pendant necklace and slides it back and forth. Her gaze drops to her lap. “Not yet.”
I shake my head. “Are you scared to face reality? Afraid to find out who you really married? Who you’re having a baby with?”
She glances out the window and sighs.
“Your relationship won’t work if you don’t know who he is.
He isn’t always going to be your hero and whisk you away when Daddy does something bad.
” I straighten on Dante’s lap. “It’s not all bad, but some of it is.
You know what your father did to me. Maybe it’s time to stand up and figure out what your husband did to me and his friends.
And why we’re all so angry at Tom right now. ”
Dante lifts me to stand. I glance over my shoulder at him and he rises and places his hands on my hips. “I think maybe a little space is needed.”
Finn rises and glances at Drew.
“I’ll stay with Natasha until Tom is back.” He gives them both a subtle nod and then winks at me.
“I’m safe here,” Natasha protests.
“Whatever they’re working out, they need to get through.” Finn smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Meaning you can’t go stomping in to save Tom. Now if it were me, I’d be making points with punches, but Wyatt uses his words.”
Natasha’s worried gaze goes to the window again.
“Here’s the thing.” I step a little closer to Natasha. “Tom will take care of himself. He always has, he always will. All we can hope for is he cares enough about us to make an effort to take care of us too.”
Her resigned, dark eyes lift to mine. “I’ll ask him.”
“Good.”
* * *
Wyatt
Not everything is resolved, but it took years to make this tangled mess. We walk back toward the house side by side.
“You need to catch up on work. I’m sick of covering for your ass,” I say.
He nods and runs a hand through his already messy hair. “You got an extra laptop?”
“Yeah, set up in the dining room.” I’d search the windows for Sara, but all I can see is the reflection of the sun on the glass.
“I won’t get punched in there?”
“No guarantees, but we can call it a neutral zone.”
“Fuck.” He rubs his jaw. “Dante still hits really fucking hard.”
“He really fucking loves Sara and you put her in danger.” I sigh. “You have to understand where we stand. If someone had taken Natasha from you, what would you have done?”
His gaze goes hazy as he stares at the house, but he nods. “I’m trying to get it.”
I slap my hand on his shoulder. “You’ll get there. But I’d stay away from those three until you really get it.”
“Finn, Dante, and…”
“Sara.” I smirk. “She’s pissed at you and has every right to be. You hurt her the worst. She was followed. Her home broken into. Kidnapped. And you kept us away from her.”
“She had other boyfriends,” he mumbles.
I shake my head. “Not really. None of them meant anything to her. The first boyfriend she really cared about was Drew Young.”
Tom tips his head and his green eyes meet mine. “There had to be others.”
“No, there weren’t.” I blow out a breath. “If you’d just let things take their natural course, we would have been awful for each other. But now…”
“Fuck, I don’t want to know. Maybe we keep the now stuff to a minimum until I can wrap my head around all this.”
“Wrap fast, Tom. We can’t hide out here forever.” I stop walking and he stops with me. “Your mom’s going to have a lot to take in at once. You, married with a baby on the way. Sara, with us. You need to be on Sara’s side by the time she has to tell your mother.”
Tom drags in a breath.
“And you’re going to be the one to tell her what your recklessness almost cost Sara.”
“Fuck.” Tom starts toward the house again and I join him. After a few more steps, Tom glances at me. “We’re not square yet, are we?”
I think about Sara and what all she’s had to endure. What Dante, Finn, and I had to endure. The open, festering wound of Tom’s father’s death and my dad’s responsibility has been cleaned out, but it’s far from healed.
“No, we’re not.”
Tom stares at his feet.
“It’s going to take time, Tom. There’s too much damage to just wash off the blood and move on.” I rub the back of my neck over the strained muscles there. “You and I will get there. We may not get back to where we once were, but you’re my brother. The others?”
“Yeah?” Tom holds open the door to the house but doesn’t step inside.
“It’s a fresh wound for them. They haven’t lived with the truth hanging over their necks waiting to drop. They’ll need to work through it and that’s going to take time. If you’d released it years ago, it would have been the guilt of a child. But you held onto it for years and made me pay for it.”
“I don’t have anything to say to that.” Tom looks up at the sky and then meets my eyes.
“I thought I was doing what was best for everyone. I’m sorry that I didn’t realize I was just hurting all of you.
I’m sorry I hurt you that way, and in turn, hurt everyone I love.
I’ll find a way to make it up to all of you. ”
“You don’t have to make it up to all of us. You need to make things right with Sara. Our hearts are hers. She needs to find a way to forgive you. And if she can do that, I know the others will heal. We may not be what we used to be, but we’ll find a way to become something new.”
Tom nods and his face is drawn. He lost us and he knows it. But hopefully Natasha is worth it. He’ll find a way back to Sara. She won’t cut him off, because that’s not who she is. And I love her for it.
But the damage to our friendship is real on both sides. That will take time and may never heal properly.