Chapter 47
Pacing Urban’s small, first floor bathroom, Miles held his phone to his ear while it rang. Tabitha wasn’t picking up. She hadn’t picked up when he’d called her earlier, either.
And she hadn’t returned any of his texts.
He hadn’t seen or heard from her since this morning when he’d gone across the street to her office while O’Neil was processing Walsh. He knew she had a soft spot for the kid, and he’d wanted to fill her in on Walsh’s situation himself.
She was probably with a client, he told himself, ending the call. Or catching up on paperwork. But he hadn’t seen her car in the parking lot when he’d left.
He meant to stop by her office that afternoon after he’d had a few hours sleep, but he’d ended up covering the rest of Coop’s shift when he had to leave early due to a family emergency.
Wherever Tabitha was, whatever reasons she had for not returning his texts or answering his calls, she was safe.
Even if his bitch of an inner voice kept telling him otherwise. That she was lying hurt in a ditch or crumpled at the bottom of the too narrow, too steep steps of her apartment or was bound and gagged in the back of a van.
Fucking anxiety. Always producing worst case scenarios.
Rationally, he knew damn well that the chances of any of his fears coming true were slim to none.
Too bad rationality had nothing on intrusive thoughts.
They just kept right on coming.
Fingers tingling, he shoved his phone into his front pocket, then hooked his forefingers in his ears and lightly tugged down. It was another relaxation technique Tabitha had taught him. He wasn’t sure how it worked—something about the vagus nerve—just that it did.
Thank fuck.
Closing his eyes, he took three deep breaths. His chest loosened. His breathing calmed. That cold, prickly sensation at the nape of his neck subsided.
So much for that bullshit he’d told Tabitha last night about him not having as many anxiety attacks recently.
He lowered his arms. Wrapped his fingers around the edge of the marble vanity, letting his head hang.
He just wanted to feel better.
He just wanted to be okay.
A knock on the door had him jerking upright.
“I’m ordering pizza,” Urban said. “You eating with us?”
He cleared his throat. “Sounds good.” Opening the door, he stuck his head out into the hallway to see Urban walking away. “No olives!”
Urban kept right on walking, not even glancing back as he lifted a hand in either an acknowledgement of Miles’s words or a silent fuck off, I like olives and if you don’t, you can pick them off.
With Urban, you never knew.
Miles pulled his phone out again.
Miles:Eating pizza at Urban’s. Would love to have you join us.
He sent the message, tucked his phone away, washed and dried his hands, then headed toward the kitchen.
Considered it a personal victory that he was able to move on with his life. That he wasn’t staring at the screen, hoping to see the bubbles indicating she was texting him back.
Maybe he could conquer this thing after all.
In the kitchen, he opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Labatt’s. Turned his head and held the bottle up to Urban who was on the phone ordering their dinner—even though they’d told him a hundred times he could just order online—who nodded.
After grabbing a second bottle, Miles closed the door with his hip, set his brother’s beer on the kitchen island, then opened his and took a long drink. What happened in the bathroom wasn’t backsliding. He’d just had a shitty day. One that would take a toll on anyone.
He’d gotten the call about Walsh during his shift last night after he’d left Tabitha’s. After Walsh’s coworkers at the bar and DiFonzio’s claimed not to know his whereabouts, Miles had decided to check with the one person he hoped like hell Walsh had stayed away from.
And discovered the kid’s truck two blocks from here.
Still, he held out hope it was just a coincidence. Until Urban told him Verity was up in her room, acting strange, and that her door was locked.
Miles knew damn well what they were going to find.
Knowing it still hadn’t prepared him for a shirtless Walsh opening his sister’s bedroom door, then standing in front of the unmade bed smirking, Verity behind him in her pajamas with a serious case of bedhead.
Taking another drink, he leaned his hip against the center island, his anxiety amping up. He checked his phone.
Urban ended the call and Miles took a quick gulp of beer to wash down the lump in his throat. Pocketed his phone once more.
“How’s Verity?” he asked.
Urban opened his beer. “She refused to talk about it on the way to Kat’s this morning, and when she got home, she went straight to her room.”
“And you haven’t gone up to check on her?”
With a shrug that made Miles want to punch him right in the face, Urban sipped his beer. “She’ll talk when she’s ready.”
“Or, you can go up and ask her if she’s all right. And then ask her what in the hell she thought she was doing sneaking a boy—a boy who’d obviously been in a serious fight, who was wanted by the police—into the house and letting him sleep in her room all night.”
“She didn’t know the cops were looking for him.”
“So she said,” Miles grumbled.
Urban raised his eyebrows. “Verity wouldn’t lie. Not about that.”
Miles sighed. Washed down the shame coating his throat with another drink. “That still doesn’t discount the fact that she snuck a boy into her room. What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? She needs to learn the wrong choices have consequences.”
Urban sent him a pitying look over his beer. “Pretty sure she’s learned that lesson already. You saw the way she looked at that kid.”
He had.
Like she was crushed. Heartbroken.
Exactly what he’d always wanted to protect her from.
“She’ll be eighteen in two days,” Urban continued. “Leaving for college in four. She’s not a little girl anymore.”
“Still feels like she’s a little girl to me.”
Urban nodded. “Yeah. Me, too.”
Urban, Miles, and Toby had spent almost half their lives watching over their younger brothers and Verity. Taking care of them. Doing their best to raise them in a way their parents would have wanted. But it was different with Verity.
Where Silas and Elijah both remembered their parents, had their own memories of them, Verity had none.
It had been up to her brothers to provide that connection.
To give her enough time, attention, and love to make up for their parents’ absence.
Miles traced the wet ring his bottle left on the counter with his finger. “I just want to keep her safe.”
“I know. We all do. But she’s a good kid. We need to trust her to make her own decisions. Let her make mistakes.”
It was the same thing Tabitha had told him last night.
One of the many things she’d told him that he hadn’t wanted to hear.
The pain inside of us won’t go away on its own. It needs our attention to heal.
He’d told her it was easier to pretend he was okay, but that was getting harder and harder to do.
It was getting harder and harder to believe he could do this on his own.
“It’s not that I don’t trust her,” he said slowly. “I do. And I know you’re right about letting her make her own choices. I just…” He stopped. Rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, then blew out a breath. “I’m afraid that if I’m not there to protect her, something bad will happen to her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been having some… issues lately. With… anxiety. Worrying about… fuck… everything.”
Frowning, Urban took a step closer. “Like what?”
“Like… one of you being hurt or killed. Sometimes, though, there aren’t any thoughts, just this overwhelming sense of panic, like I’m suffocating or having a heart attack.”
“Was that what happened at dinner a few weeks ago? When you said you’d gotten called into work?”
Miles nodded, remembering that dinner. How he’d had to sit in the parking lot until the worst of it was over.
How Tabitha sat with him on his kitchen floor and told him that first, big truth about the abuse and neglect she’d experienced.
“So it’s been going on a few weeks?” Urban asked.
Miles shifted. “A little longer than that.” He hesitated. Took another sip of beer, then told his older brother something he’d never told anyone. Not even Tabitha. “They’ve recently become more frequent, but they started after mom and dad’s accident.”
Urban’s mouth popped open. Shutting it, he shook his head, studying Miles in that careful way of his. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought I could handle it. I thought I was handling it, but the past few months have proved I’m not.”
“No,” Urban said, clearly confused. “Why didn’t you tell me when it first started happening?”
Miles pushed away from the counter. Began to pace. “I couldn’t. We were barely hanging on as it was, trying to keep our family together. Helping Silas and Eli and Verity manage their grief. Trying to get through our own. I didn’t want to add something else to everything we were already carrying. I didn’t want to be a burden.”
“You’re not a fucking burden. You’re our brother. We take care of each other.”
They did. Always. Miles knew how rare that was.
How special.
And he’d been terrified of fucking that up.
“I didn’t want to worry you. I didn’t want to admit I was struggling when we were all barely getting through each day.” Stopping on the opposite side of the island from Urban, he met his brother’s eyes. “And I thought I deserved them.”
“Deserved what?”
“The anxiety attacks. The endless worries. The intrusive thoughts. The nightmares.” His voice thickened, and no amount of clearing his throat could make it go away. “I thought they were my punishment.”
Urban set his beer down with a hard clap. “No.”
“If they hadn’t gone to my game—”
“No,” Urban repeated, walking around the island to stand in front of Miles. “No.”
Miles’s heart thudded heavily in his chest. He felt sick, the beer he’d drank bubbling in his stomach, threatening to rise up along with the words he’d never told anyone else. The secret he’d buried so deep inside, he could almost pretend it didn’t exist.
That it wasn’t real.
But he couldn’t keep this truth hidden. Not any longer.
It was destroying him.
“Mom didn’t want to go.”
His words seemed too soft, too quiet for how big of a secret he was sharing.
How heavy that had been for him to carry all these years.
“What?”
Miles wiped his palms down the front of his uniform pants. Forced himself to hold his brother’s gaze. “Mom didn’t want to go to the game. She had papers to grade, and Silas had gotten into trouble at school that day, and Verity was being clingy, and Mom thought she was coming down with something, plus she was worried about her and dad driving that far in the snow…”
“She called me while I was getting on the bus,” he continued, “and told me they were going to skip the game. I got pissed. It was a playoff game. Could be the last one I’d ever play in high school—”
“And you wanted them there,” Urban said quietly.
Taking in a careful breath, Miles nodded. “Instead of saying that, I started mouthing off. I brought up how they went to all your games, home and away, when you were in high school. How they drove into Happy Valley to watch you play at college. How they made time for everyone else’s shit but mine. She tried to talk to me, but I wouldn’t listen. I told her to forget it then I… I hung up on her. I hung up on her and I didn’t talk to her again. They waited for me after the game, but I blew them off. I figured the only reason they’d showed was because Dad had talked her into it, or she felt guilty. And then, at the accident scene…”
His voice cracked. Tears filled his eyes. Memories flashed through his mind. The snow. The cold. The flashing lights. His parents’ crumpled truck.
Urban stepped forward and clasped one hand on Miles’s shoulder, the other around the back of his neck. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’s okay.”
It wasn’t. Miles wasn’t sure it ever would be.
“They wouldn’t let me see or talk to her.” His whispered words were raw with anguish. Thick with guilt. “I didn’t get a chance to tell her I loved her. That I was sorry.”
“She knew.”
“She didn’t. She died thinking I hated her.”
“She had six kids—three of them teenagers at the time. She taught high schoolers. She knew teens sometimes lashed out.”
Miles shook his head, all his guilt, all the shame he’d been carrying for thirteen years pressing on his shoulders, the burden becoming too much to bear.
Too heavy for him to carry alone.
“It was my fault,” he rasped. “It was all my fault. If I’d told her it was okay, that they didn’t have to go or if I’d talked to them after the game, they would have left earlier. They wouldn’t have been at that corner when that truck came around it.”
“No.” Urban’s grip tightened on his shoulder, his gaze steady and serious. “It was an accident. It was not your fault. You hear me? You are not to blame.”
Miles had no idea how badly he’d needed to hear those words, especially from Urban, but they were what set his tears free. They streamed down his face, his entire body shaking. Urban pulled him in and Miles… fuck… he clung to him. He didn’t hold back.
For the first time since his parents’ funeral, he let himself cry.
He cried for everything his parents had missed out on—their graduations and career successes and Ian’s birth. For everything they were never going to be a part of—weddings and more grandkids and lives well lived.
He cried for the responsibility Urban had to take on, for how quickly he’d had to grow up. For his brothers and sister and what they’d lost that day.
And he cried for himself. For the kid he’d been. For the mistakes he’d made and the guilt and shame he’d held onto all these years. For the fears he still struggled with.
Maybe, now, he could finally start to let some of them go.
Miles had no idea how long they stayed that way, but finally his tears slowed, and he was able to catch his breath. Sniffing, he straightened, his head aching, his entire body stiff and sore, like he’d been hit by a train and not a crying jag.
But he also felt lighter. Better. That pressing on his shoulders still there, but not as oppressive.
With one final squeeze of Miles’s shoulder, Urban let go then turned to grab a paper towel off the dispenser next to the sink. Handed it to Miles. “What do you need?” Urban asked, his own eyes suspiciously wet, his voice gruff.
Part of Miles wanted to tell him he was good. That this breakdown was all he could handle.
Was all he needed to be magically cured.
But he couldn’t keep pretending he was okay.
And he couldn’t do this on his own.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted, wiping his face dry with the paper towel. “But I think the first thing I need to do is to ask Willow for recommendations for a therapist.”
If Willow didn’t have any suggestions, her mother, a local psychiatrist, would.
“That’s good. And I think it’ll be a great place to start. Just remember, no matter what happens, you’re not alone. You don’t have to go through this or anything else alone. We’ll get through this together. Like we always do.”
Miles crumpled the paper towel in his hand as emotion and gratitude swelled in his chest. “Thanks.”
“I’m proud to be your brother,” Urban said quietly. Sincerely. “I’m proud of the man you are. And Mom and Dad would be, too.”
Well, fuck. He’d thought he was done with the tears.
Apparently not.
He sniffed. Swallowed. Swallowed again. “Thanks.”
The French door opened, and Willow stepped into the living room, a pair of aviators holding her short, pale hair back, a sunny smile on her face. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Miles managed to get out while Urban just nodded at her.
Glancing from Urban to Miles then back to Urban, her smile slowly faded. “Everything okay?”
Urban looked at Miles, his eyebrows raised.
“Not really,” Miles admitted, tossing the paper towel into the trash. “But it will be.”
And for the first time in a long time, he believed it.