Nix cleared his throat, sliding his hand back and forth over my leg.
Reed finished the rest of his beer, belched, and then slid his cell out.
“I still can’t believe it. Your head must be a mess. First, you find your mom and meet your half-brother. And now you have a dad and a half-sister who have been living under our noses for years. You should be on Oprah.”
“Oprah? Where are we, the nineties?” Hudson barked with a laugh.
“You know what I mean. It’s almost unreal.”
Nix raised his head. He had been silent for a while. I grabbed one of his hands and squeezed it.
“I know. When Harper showed me the photo, I wasn’t so sure, but I see it now.”
Reed lowered his bottle to the sand and turned to me. “Photo? What photo?”
Leaning across and grabbing my backpack, I withdrew the picture of Dominic Summers, around the same age as Nix now, and handed it around.
“Fuck me, man. Dead ringer,” Micah blurted as he took the image off Molly and Hudson. He then passed it to Reed.
“It’s not a very realistic shot, though.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled as he handed it back.
“Summer’s is being awarded the Butkus Award. After tonight's performance, there’s more chance of monkeys flying out of my ass than Nix getting a shot at that.”
“Fuck off,” Nix grunted, rolling his shoulders. Even though he had given them the reason he’d been out of sorts on the field, they wouldn’t let him forget that anytime soon.
“Well, whilst we’re sharing observations. I thought you looked alike at Storm’s party. When you were talking in the kitchen.” Hudson said, repositioning his girl between his thighs. “As in you and Summers. I mean, before you threatened to smash Cash’s face in.”
“Really?” Molly asked at the same time Nix said, “What the fuck are you on about?”
“Phoenix,” I chided, squeezing his leg.
“Sorry,” he apologized, managing to rein in his temper before he added in a calmer voice, “And you never said anything?” His expression was now razor-sharp.
Hudson shrugged with a bored expression. “It was just an observation.”
Nix bristled, cracking his neck from side to side. “You should have said something, bro. Just like you should have told me about Alex.”
The air became charged as an argument started to brew. I had seen many during the time I had been part of the family. They started quickly, but soon burned out. And the two who fought the most were Phoenix and Micah, not Phoenix and Hudson. You didn’t fight with Hudson; it wasn’t good for your health. Molly gave me a look, and I shook my head to say it was fine. She’d witnessed Hudson almost choke a guy to death at a party once: Xander Creed, the brother of Nicholas, whom I was sort of seeing at the time, and the son of Anton Creed, that dodgy fucker I mentioned.
“We’ve been through this a million times already. I saw that shit byaccident,” Hudson puffed out his chest and grabbed another beer.
“But now you're saying youalsoknew who my father was?”
“I didn’t say that dickhead. It was anobservationthat youlook alike, end of. And how would I have known anything about that? There was nothing about your father in your file, you know that.”
“I just don’t get why you didn’t tell me what you’dobservedsooner. Or what you’d seen in my file about Alex,” Phoenix grunted moodily.
“It wasn’t my news to share, Brutal. You know that.”
Micah was looking back and forth between the two other Sawyer boys with his mouth open and a half-amused expression.
“What the fuckhappened to my brothers whilst I’ve been gone? We never used to keep shit from each other,” Micah stated, dusting sand off his shorts.
Everyone turned to glance at him.
“I’m surprised you came tonight, considering what happened here last year,” Reed said, referring to Micah’s stabbing.
