Shaking my head, I pivot toward the truck, unable to rest until I’ve seen Nacho for myself and thanked him. Rewarded him. Been soothed by him. Things I can’t explain to my brother.
17
NACHO
I’m waiting at my breakfast table, hair still wet from a shower, wearing my favorite silky pajamas with a cup of coffee in hand, when I hear Bram’s truck pull up next to mine. His footsteps are heavy as he makes his way up to my door and lets himself in.
He looks mostly normal—handsome and imposing as ever. But his eyes look weary and ancient as if aged by the things we heard on that call.
“There’s my badass vigilante,” I crack.
Bram drops his chin to his chest, stuttering to a halt in the middle of what I jokingly call my living room. Setting down my coffee, I stand and wrap him in my arms, relieved when his forehead hits my shoulder.
“We went because we had a very short window of time to save those people.”
“Sounds like it was a successful mission,” I say, slightly rocking him from side to side.
“Yeah, but everything else is fucked up.”
I pull back. “Why are you saying that?”
“I lied to you. And Levy figured us out, and he’s looking at me like he doesn’t even know who I am.”
“What did he say?”
“We haven’t had a chance to talk. I can’t imagine it’ll go well.”
“His opinion matters to you.”
He nods, touching his forehead to mine. “We’ve always had each other’s backs, even before our parents died. Afterward, it became our biggest priority.”
“How did they die?”
“We’ve never talked about this?”
I shake my head.
“Car accident,” he says matter-of-factly. He clears his throat, and after a moment, he continues, “Levy is only a year younger than me, and we went to the same college, so at the end of every summer, we made it a big family trip. We’d stop somewhere fun along the way, usually camping because we didn’t have a lot of money, and then our parents would drop us off. It was my last year of undergrad. We’d gone to Yosemite and were on the final leg back when an eighteen-wheeler cut us off, then stopped abruptly. I don’t remember anything from the accident, but Levy does. Mom and Dad died right away.”
“Were you and Levy hurt?” I ask, kissing his cheek.
“I had a severe concussion and several stitches,” he says, revealing a scar hidden by his hairline. “But I think I’m the one who got a little lucky. Levy had a bad case of whiplash but never lost consciousness, so he remembers everything. I was unconscious for a long time, and he thought he lost everybody all at once.”
“How did y’all get through that?”
“Together.”
His one-word answer says more than an entire conversation possibly could.
“And he knows about us now?”
He nods. “He guessed where I was going, and I’m pretty sure Charlie and Erik know too.”
“Are you going to lose your job because of me?”
The look he gives me in response…I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this before. He cradles my face, shaking his head.
“I don’t know how much Charlie wants me to tell you, but given what you’ve already seen…” He chews the inside of his lip, then continues, “That driver who did all those awful things to the women we rescued tonight? I just saw them hand him off to Anders and a guy named Hopper. They are almost certainly torturing him right now at what looks to probably be a black-ops site, maybe? So, yeah. I suspect fucking an ex-patient isn’t high on their list of things that will get me fired.”
