Chapter 10
TEN
CONTINENTAL FLAIR
“It’s relentless, and I don’t know what I did,” I said to sum up the hour-long history I’d just shared with Knox about me and my sister.
“She has damage, baby, that’s certain. And your folks are full of love, so I don’t get it. Also haven’t noticed you doing anything but being you around her, so I can’t make a call about what that damage is.”
“She and Dad can get into it. Mom mostly gives in when Dream’s up to something. But honestly, it seems her biggest problem is me.”
He smoothed a hand up my back and started playing with my hair at the same time pulling me closer as he murmured, “Wish I had answers for you.”
“I wish there were answers, but I’m not sure there are.” I cuddled even closer. “Still, it’s nice you listen.”
“Anytime.”
I believed that, and I loved it that I could.
But now that I’d laid my heavy on him, and he shouldered the load, it was time to let him know I could shoulder his too.
“You mentioned your brothers…”
I let that trail off when I felt his frame get tight.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I hurried to say. “I just want you to know you can tell me.”
He might have reacted poorly to me bringing it up, but he didn’t beat around the bush in giving it to me.
However, I wasn’t a fan of the way he started it.
“We’re happening so I might as well come clean.”
Come clean?
“My brothers, both older, sold pot to the weedheads, and uppers to the overachievers so they could pull all-nighters. In other words, they started dealing in high school.”
This was not even close to what I expected him to say.
Sibling rivalry.
Yes.
Some form of overall, but relatable, family dysfunction.
Yes.
Both his brothers being drug dealers?
In high school?
No.
“Whoa,” I whispered.
“They also broke into teachers’ desks and stole test answers and had a huge file of completed essays on a variety of subjects, and they sold those too.”
Yikes.
No wonder he didn’t like them.
I didn’t know what to say, but I was me, so my first choice was levity. Though, considering the subject matter, I went carefully with that levity.
Thus, I joked hesitantly, “I suppose in every profession it’s good to diversify.”
Levity worked, sort of.
He touched his nose to mine.
Then he went right back to it.
“As for me, I was into sports. All sports, and anything about sports. Watching. Playing. Football. Soccer. Baseball. Basketball. Tennis. I even watch the Tour de France. Since Crew and Poe were following in the family business, and Dad was so proud they were, me and my little sister, who was first into dolls, and then into nothing but boys, were the disappointments.”
The family business?
Well, hell.
This crap was even more messed up.
“You have a sister?”
“Gypsy. She’s a couple of years younger than me.”
Right, that was the easy question.
Now for the hard.
“The family business?”
Knox didn’t hesitate.
“My dad isn’t a dealer. Or, at least he worked hard for his various promotions, so he used to be, but he isn’t anymore.
Now he makes a fuck ton more money, though he also takes a fuck ton more risk.
That isn’t exactly true. He doesn’t personally, because Crew and Poe are on his payroll, so they do. ”
“Risks?”
“Transport, warehousing and distribution with direct ties to cartels.”
“Ah, risks.” That came out strangled because, seriously, that was a lot.
“Yup.”
“And you went into the army,” I noted.
“Yeah. My pops can pitch one helluva fit, but I’d never seen him so furious as when I told him I’d signed on.”
I couldn’t believe that, but there it was.
“Oh, Knox,” I said softly.
“He told me he hoped some Al Qaeda member shot me in the head.”
Hearing those words hurt my heart, way down deep in a way I wasn’t sure that hurt would ever heal.
I couldn’t imagine anyone saying that…but a father to his son?
With nothing else in my arsenal to fight this, I pushed into him as deeply as I could get, moaning, “Oh, Knox.”
“Yeah. That was fucked up, but it was one hundred percent my pops. So it also wasn’t surprising.”
“Still.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Still.”
God.
Knox kept at it.
“Before and after my brothers started to make their way into the family business, they were bullies. Mean to the bone. Kids at school were terrified of them. They brought that shit home, turned it on me, Dad egged it on. I think he thought they’d mock and beat the normal out of me.
The boy who wanted to play football and hang with his friends and play video games.
The only time I made my dad proud was when Crew turned that on Gypsy, and I gave him a black eye, a bloody nose and a loose tooth. ”
The only thing in this convo I wasn’t surprised about was that he went to the mat for his sister.
“Is your sister, I hate to use this word because it’s not really you, you’re extraordinary, but since you used it…is she normal too?”
“She was. Then I went away and they got her.”
Crap.
“Oh, Knox,” I repeated, this time it was nearly a whimper.
Lame, but what else could I say?
“Not sure it was them who got her, though. Dad had another guy in his crew. Rocco. Before I left, I’d met him. I’d come to know him. Did not like him. When I was there, he didn’t even glance at Gypsy. After I left, I realized why he didn’t was not because of Dad, but because of me.”
“So…they’re a thing?”
“One thing I learned about Gypsy, or maybe women in general, was, you don’t talk trash about the men in their lives.
Maybe, if I was close, she’d listen to me.
But I left. She wasn’t happy I left either because I left her to them.
Even so, she knew, if I’d stayed, they would keep at me to fold me into their crap.
I had to leave, one way or the other. And she was sixteen when I left. I couldn’t take her with me.”
“No,” I agreed.
“I called. I emailed. But my finger was off the pulse.”
Wait up.
Was he…?
“Are you blaming yourself she got hooked up with this guy?”
“I was the only one who looked after her.”
“What about your mom?”
“Long gone.”
One thing I knew from the tone of those two words, the topic of his mother had to wait for a different moonlit conversation. One I wasn’t looking forward to, but still, on another level I was because I wanted to know everything about him.
The good. The bad. And what I was learning was the very ugly.
So I grasped the only straw available to me.
“I know she was young, Knox, but she’s also her own person and responsible for her own decisions,” I said. “She saw you get out. She knew there were paths. She didn’t have to hook up with this Rocco guy.”
“They started dating the day after her eighteenth birthday. He was thirty-two at the time.”
If she were a few years older, not a problem. It wasn’t an age gap I’d want, but it wasn’t skeevy.
A girl of eighteen?
Yuck.
Not good.
“Bit of a predator,” I said carefully.
“At least he waited until she was legal,” he replied in a way it was clear he was reaching long to find some silver lining in that sitch.
“Do you still talk to her?”
“She wants me to come home.”
That got me up on an elbow. “Say what?”
He pulled me back into his arms.
“She wants me to come home,” he repeated.
“She says Rocco has taken over the crew. Dad is semi-retired, but from what Gypsy says, it sounds mostly like Rocco humors him. She says, now, they’re a big deal.
They’re heavy hitters. He even has legit shit running alongside the other shit.
She says Crew and Poe are dufuses. Good with their fists, they can follow orders, and they might be a year and a half apart, but they still share a brain cell.
She thinks with me and Rocco partnering up, we could all make it so we can buy an island when we’re forty and retire. ”
“She’s trying to recruit you?”
“Yep.”
“You, former army, current badass investigator?”
There was a slender thread of humor in his tone, but at least there was humor, when he repeated, “Yep.”
“And you’re disabusing her of this notion.”
There was more humor when he replied, “Oh yeah, I’m disabusing her of it.”
“Don’t make fun of my vocabulary. It isn’t like you talk like a caveman.”
“I’m not making fun of you, honey. You having so many words and using them is a massive turn on.”
Interesting.
“Really?” I asked.
“I know there are guys who dig dumb chicks. I am not one of them.”
“Thank God.”
He aimed his mouth to mine in the dark and hit his mark.
When he pulled away, I asked, “Why would she think, when you were never into that, not only would you be, but you’d be good at it?”
“Honestly, I have no clue,” he answered. “Mostly, I think she just wants me home. Close. It was always her and me against all the rest. It’s twisted now for her. It’s become her life. And she wants me to be a part of her life, but she doesn’t get it isn’t healthy. Not for her, me or anybody.”
To that, I said quietly, “I’m sorry you have to deal with all of that with your family.”
He blew it off. “Everyone has a story.”
“That doesn’t mean yours doesn’t suck,” I pointed out.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Mine sucks.”
“Are they still bothering you with that?”
“It’s consistent, but not constant,” he replied.
“Do you think they’ll let it go?”
“I think my sister loves this guy, even if that guts me. I also think she loves me. And the way we grew up, it isn’t surprising she has a fucked-up way of showing it.”
I stroked his spine, whispering, “I hate that for you.”
He put a line under it. “So you gotta put up with Dream bringing the drama, and I gotta put up with Gypsy doing her version of the same. Neither is great. Though it is life.”
“Sadly, it is.”
“Does it hurt that you two aren’t close?” he asked.
“It did, until I met Raye and had a true sister. Though, I have to admit, it isn’t fun feeling like I’m a constant pain in Dream’s ass. I guess by now it’s just that I’m used to it.” I paused and asked, “What about you?”