Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Could that be? Because I thought of Cord as being a “fuck ’em and forget ’em” kind of guy, whereas I didn’t think of either of my brothers as being that way.
“Are you punishing him for your own bullshit?”
“No,” I said defensively.
“No?”
“Maybe,” I granted.
“Attaboy,” he replied with a wicked grin.
“I hate you a little.”
“That’s okay. It comes and goes.”
I reached over and gave his cheek a pat. “I never hate you.”
“Yes, I know.”
We were silent for a while.
“So…what now?” I asked him. “We’re going to stay up here and wait out the storm?”
“Why not?” He yawned. “What the hell else you got planned for today?”
“Matt’s supposed to call me and maybe come by.”
“Who’s Matt again?”
“My best friend since college.”
“Oh yeah.”
“You know, you really do have the attention span of a two-year-old.”
“If that,” he agreed. “But I do know what’s truly important.”
“Like what?” I teased him.
He thought a moment. “Like that your favorite ice cream is chocolate chip and that Mom’s was coffee, and that Dad is afraid of loving Beth, and that Alex almost got strung out on heroin the last time he was undercover.”
“Holy shit,” I gasped, rolling my head to stare at him. “I should know that. How come I don’t know that?”
He shrugged.
“I didn’t think he talked to you more than me about stuff that went on at work.”
“You thought wrong,” he said kindly but firmly.
“How come?”
“It’s because he wants you to think of him one way—he needs it to be that way, counts on it. It makes him feel safe. He can share the garbage with me and know that nothing will change.”
“He has more faith in you than he does in me,” I said sadly.
“No. He counts on you for his emotional support and on me as a sounding board.”
“I worry about him.”
“Hell, so do I. I’d really like him to quit.”
“He’s like Cord, though. Fat chance of either of them ever quitting.”
We were quiet then, and I realized how sick I felt thinking of all the things I couldn’t fix or change.
“Say something else, Evan.”
He lifted his left wrist. “You want this?”
Alex and I had banned Evan from buying us things, gifts, because he didn’t have to. We loved him no matter what. But what he wanted was to pay off my mortgage, Alex’s, and to send my father around the world. None of us allowed that, not wanting to take advantage. So lately, he’d started to leave things when he visited, or he would swap Alex a Schott motorcycle jacket for whatever he had in his closet, and steal my bracelets and watches and apologize by sending ridiculously expensive replacements. Or my father would get a delivery of brand-new kitchen knives out of the blue; or some bill, like the food he ordered for Bo, would no longer be debited from his bank account. When he called to check, it was always the same story: it was now being billed to Evan Brandt instead. No amount of arguing would change anything. Evan slowly and methodically did whatever he felt would help, and he would not be deterred. We weren’t letting him do for us as he wanted, so he had work-arounds. At the moment he was tempting me with the Bvlgari Octo Grande Sonnerie Perpetual Calendar watch with the transparent dial and heavy black leather band he had on his wrist.
“No,” I lied.
He took off the watch, which cost more than I made in a year, and passed it to me. “You could just borrow it.”
“Evan, you don’t—”
“I’ll get it at Thanksgiving.”
Arguing was futile. He knew me, had seen my eyes light up, and I recognized in him a desire to make me even a little happy. When I put the watch on, his smile made his eyes glow.
“It looks good on you.”
He was so transparent.
“So now you wanna hear about this movie part I’d just read for?”
“Oh fuck yes.”
And so I listened to his excitement about a war movie that sounded horrific to me. There would be sacrifice and unrequited love and death, lots of that, all in the future where World War III was a done deal. The longer he talked, the worse it sounded. I liked the other one he had already signed up for—an urban-fantasy epic, with steampunk vampires and lots of layers. He’d made it sound like a cross between Underworld and The Matrix, with Supernatural and Van Helsing thrown in for good measure.
“So do you get to wear leather?”
“Probably too much.”
“Awesome.”
“I’m leaving Cape Cod too.”
“No shit.”
“My death scene is gonna be epic.”
I chuckled.
“I’m moving back to regular TV.”
He told me about his new show, which sounded a little spooky and a lot graphic. In fact, it was going to have one of those cool disclaimers at the beginning of each episode that warned you to get your kids the hell out of the room so they didn’t get the crap scared out of them. I was pleased with him and his decisions. I’d been worried he would forever be cast as the pretty boy, but his latest choices were not that.