Walk on the Wilder Side by Serena Bell
37
Brody
Connor and I talk a while longer. Not about anything much. Just the kind of talk you do when you’re trying to make things normal again after they’ve gotten all fucked up. It works, most of the way. I feel like we’ll be okay someday. Probably.
After Connor leaves, I knock at the house.
Gabe comes out. He looks me over. “You look like shit.”
“It’s been a long week. Can I come in?”
He nods.
“There’s something I have to tell you.”
Gabe cocks his head. “Should I sit down?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
He goes into the other room and comes back with a bottle of Jameson. He takes a swig from the bottle, then hands it to me. I drink and hand it back to him.
He gestures to the couch and we both sit. Lucy’s nowhere in sight; I’m guessing she’s at work still.
“So what’s this thing you have to tell me?” Gabe asks.
“It’s about Justin and Zoë.”
He gives me a long level look. “Are you going to tell me he’s not yours? Because I already know.”
“How—!”
“Amanda told us. She heard it from a friend.”
“Us? Easton? Clark? Kane?”
He nods, mouth tight.
“Mom?”
“Yeah.”
“When?” I demand.
“Three months ago?” he hazards. “It was right after Lucy came back. But no one wanted to make you talk about it.”
All this time, I haven’t been protecting them. They’ve been protecting me.
Something that has been knotted up tight in my chest unwinds just a tiny bit.
“If I had known any sooner,” Gabe says, jaw tight, “I would have killed Len Dix myself that night in Oscar’s.”
“The truth is,” I tell him, “it’s as much Zoë’s fault as his, if not more. And I can’t kill her. Justin loves her too much. So I just have to fucking suck it up.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know how much you love that kid.”
“Rachel says—” I grimace, but it needs to be said, and she was the one who said it. “Rachel says I shouldn’t let the fact that he’s not mine keep me from having a relationship with him.”
“Rachel’s wise. How’s she doing?”
“I don’t know,” I confess.
“You haven’t reached out to her at all?”
I shake my head.
“Because of Connor?”
“Because of… me.”
“You, um, want to tell me what happened?”
I do. Gabe listens, and to his ever-loving credit, says absolutely nothing until I’m done. Then he says, “A walk on the Wilder side, huh?” He’s smirking. “Can’t believe I never thought of that one.”
I wince.
“I mean, there are worse things she could say about you.”
“It just hurt. I get so tired of being the resident bad boy,” I say. “Women who want to lick my tattoos and ride on my bike and get fucked against a brick wall.”
“Doesn’t sound all that bad to me,” Gabe says wryly.
“Easy for you to say. You’re the guy everyone wants. The one who’s stalwart in a crisis. The family man. The son a man asks to take care of the business and his family.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I want to take them back. Because Gabe’s no dummy.
He crosses his arms. “This is about Dad.”
I shake my head, but I’m not fooling anyone.
“Jesus, Brody. I had no idea. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“What was I going to say? Daddy didn’t leave me in charge! Waaah! Waaah! Of course he didn’t fucking leave me in charge. I was a screwup.”
“No.” There’s something in Gabe’s expression. A kind of wonder. “You were a fourteen-year-old boy. And it didn’t even fucking cross my mind that you’d feel like you’d been shut out.” His eyes rake over my face, and it occurs to me that one of the things I hate most about Gabe is that he can see right through me.
I reach for the whiskey and he hands it over. I don’t slug it, though. I just hold the bottle. It’s helpful to have something to grip.
I take a deep breath. “I was only a year younger than you.”
He nods.
“But Dad never said anything to me about helping out or taking care of anyone. I could see you struggling after he died and when Mom was sick but when I asked if I could help, you said I’d screw it up.”
“I was fifteen,” Gabe says. He doesn’t sound defensive. He just sounds thoughtful. Like he’s also sorting this out, finally. “And I was terrified, too. Dad left me in charge. I felt like he was watching to make sure I didn’t fuck up.”
I’m sure my mouth is open.
For the first time ever, I think, I got it all wrong. Gabe didn’t get the prize. He got left holding the bag.
It makes it easier to tell him the rest. “When you thought you were going to New York to be with Lucy, you left the business to Clark.”
Gabe looks surprised, but then he nods. “I thought you had too much on your plate. With Justin and Zoë. I didn’t want to pile any more shit on you. And let’s face it, Brody, you weren’t in a great place. You weren’t exactly screaming ‘management material.’ But I get it. You’d just gotten slammed with about the worst news a guy can hear. I just wish you’d told me. I could have helped.”
I take a minute, because if I talk now, I can tell my voice is going to crack, and I’m enough of a boneheaded Wilder not to want to show my big brother that weakness.
“I wish I’d told you, too.”
My voice cracks anyway. And the world doesn’t end.
He gives me a minute, not saying anything.
“Gabe.”
“Yeah?”
“I want to help with the business, but it feels like you’d rather work yourself to the bone than ask me.”
He frowns, and for a second I think he’s going to argue with me, but he nods. “And that’s on me, not you. I’m learning. I’m figuring it out. When Lucy went back to New York, before I realized I wanted to go after her, Mom said something to me that made a fuckton of sense. She said even though Dad laid all this responsibility on me, what he really wanted most for me was to be happy. And that that meant asking for help when I needed it. But as you can see, I still fucking suck at it.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “You know what I think?”
“You’re going to tell me no matter what, right?”
I’m pretty sure he’s trying to hide a smile. He says, “If Connor doesn’t believe you deserve Rachel, so fucking what? I’d wager Rachel doesn’t give a shit. But I don’t think this was ever about whether Connor thought you deserved her. It was about whether you did.”
Staggered, I stare at him.
He returns my stare, unblinking.
Is that true?
I think about it.
About how I was the one who finished Connor’s sentence. About how I was the one who prodded Rachel to say I didn’t want to be the guy in the plan.
All this time, I was waiting for someone to choose me, to tell me I was the guy they could trust with what mattered most to them.
And it turns out this whole time? I was the one who needed to choose myself.
I was the one who needed to figure out what needed to be done…
And fucking do it.
“Gabe.”
This time, my voice doesn’t crack at all. It’s perfectly steady.
“Yeah?”
“I think Wilder needs a business development lead. And I think I should be it.”
It takes Gabe a long time—we eldest Wilders are slow to warm up—but eventually I get his smile.