Chapter 37 Collette
To say that I was shocked wasn’t even the half of it. I felt betrayed by my brother.
There wasn’t a good reason for not knowing more about his childhood, but Andy hadn’t told me. I guess I couldn’t blame him all that much. It wasn’t like I told him about what had happened at the home before the Bakers. There were some things a person had to keep to themselves when they were in foster care.
As adults we should have grown up more and told each other everything, but we didn’t. It would be a great regret of my life.
Even with someone you trusted, sometimes it was just easier to hide where you came from and not deal with the past. It hadn’t come up and there was no other reason for telling me that he had a best friend from when he was a kid.
That still didn’t explain why Andy hadn’t told me about his girlfriend or that she was expecting a baby. I could forgive the fact that he’d felt a need to make sure that she didn’t alert her father to her presence, but he could have told me. It wasn’t like I was going to go around blabbing it to anyone I met.
Even though Andy had been three years older than me, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d let him down. I could have been a better sister to him and somehow saved him from his fate.
I knew that was the survivor’s guilt talking, but there should have been something I could have done to keep him alive.
Ian had continued to talk, and I should have been listening. Instead, I was trying to process the fact that Ian hadn’t killed Andy.
“Is there a way that we can make Andy’s wishes come true? Can we find his girlfriend and baby?”
Anything to redirect the conversation. I needed to process what had just happened, and that meant I needed space and time to myself.
Ian nodded. “I’ve been working on that since I learned that she’d been taken. I’ve had private investigators meeting with people to find her over in Ireland. Her father took her way underground. No one has seen or heard anything since Andrew died.”
He reached over and took my hand. His touch still made me tingle and heat up all over. Even sore from our last encounter, my body wanted more of him.
His answer helped.
I was unsure if where we stood. We needed to work together now. A truce made sense, but I couldn’t go back to just being his assistant. I wasn’t made for being a submissive long term. I couldn’t be his plaything anymore, not when I really want to just be his.
“Will you come back to the condo and stay with me there? No more basements, unless, of course, you misbehave.”
He gazed at me solemnly. “ I prefer you in the condo with me than in the basement without me. Will you join me and help me look for Andrew’s killer?”
If we were partners then maybe this time we could actually find out what happened to my brother and his girlfriend.
“Give me a real bed in my own room with a door that doesn’t lock on the outside, and I’ll be good.”
Even as those words came out of my mouth, I wanted to put a hand over my mouth at the flicker of hurt on his face.
Ian winced, but I got up and walked out of the room, leaving him to follow if he wanted to.
Rossi opened the doors of the car and went to get in the driver’s seat while Ian ran to catch up to us.
It was the frequent glances in the mirror from Rossi that finally drove me crazy.
“All right, Rossi. Out with it. Ian and I have cleared the air, and you might as well too.”
“If you and Andrew were so tight and shit, then why didn’t you know he had a girlfriend and that he’d reached out to Ian?”
“Well, we normally talked about once a week, but while in college, there would be weeks where neither one of us reached out because we were busy.”
I rubbed a hand over my forehead wearily. “It’s something I really regret.”
“Andy was always trying to play the long con or the better con. It didn’t matter what it was, he wanted a chance to get a foot up in the world.”
I glanced out the window, watching the scenery pass us by. “I just assumed when I saw Ian with him that he was trying to blackmail him or con him out of something. It never dawned on me that it might have been someone from his past that he was meeting.”
“He told me that his parents were killed in a car crash, but he never mentioned much else about his early life. I just assumed that he’d been from a poor home like we lived in during foster care. It made sense because he was always looking for money. We just lived our lives in the here and now. To focus on the past was dangerous because then we’d long for what could have been.”
It amazed me at how easily I was disclosing facts about myself and my relationship to Andy. I always held that information close to the chest.
“Although, for me, my parents died when I was a baby, so I’ve never known anything else but being raised in foster care. There was only the future, and Andy was the only family I had. Hope wasn’t an option.”
Silence filled the car.
“Hmm, well, that does explain a few things to me, but I’d certainly like to know more about Andrew from those years in foster care.”
Rossi straightened a little in the seat.
It felt like he was pouting because I didn’t have some kind of nefarious relationship with Andy for him to dislike or disagree with.
“The only thing I hid from either one of you was my relationship with Andy because I thought you’d killed him. Everything else has been true.”
I held up my fingers in the boy scout of honor thing. Even though I wasn’t one, I still was being super honest and honorable. Rossi didn’t have to like it, but it was the truth.
He simply grunted and continued to drive us to the condo.
Once there, I went straight to the bathroom and stripped my clothes off.
The first thing I was doing was to get clean. I could focus on what the next step was after all the dirt and grime were off my body.
In fresh clothes, I felt a million times better. There was no time like the present to find out if he was going to honor his word of a truce or if he still wanted to be completely in charge.
He was waiting in the bedroom. When I walked out of the bathroom, he motioned to the edge of the bed for me to take a seat.
“Would you do me the honor of sharing my bed?”
He could still sense my hesitation at his question.
“I have never had any of my other contracts sleep with me. They’ve always stayed in the extra room or the basement.”
Sex with him helped me to feel cared for in an unusual way, I still wasn’t sure that I could trust him. That was shattered, and I honestly couldn’t say if it could be rebuilt. But I was willing to consider it.
It was a sign of trust for him to offer me a spot in his bed with him.
I knew that it was a gift. One that took a lot for him to give.
I really wanted to find a way to accept him, but I still wasn’t sure.
“Here, this might help with your decision.”
He held out the contract that I’d signed and tore it in half.
“We’ll have you sign an NDA and a normal assistant contract when we get to the office tomorrow. For now, I’m trusting you in a way I’ve never trusted anyone before. No more games”
Deep down, what he said was true, I believed that. Though I’d believe no more games when I saw it.
At my small nod, he pulled me into his arms and I was cherished. His hold was protective and caring. We fell asleep, cuddled together.
It was weird to fall asleep next to someone. It had only ever happened with him.
The next morning, after a restful night's sleep, we both pulled out our computers and began to work out some of the details on how to find Andrew’s girlfriend.
One of the fastest ways to get all the information that we needed was to go see Ingrid and let her know that I was alive.
As of right now, what mattered most was finding Andy’s killer and if he happened to scratch an itch that I needed taken care of that just made my payback all the sweeter when it came.