Giggling, I lean closer as he moves on to the next picture. Every one of them breaks my heart a little more. And yet they build something else back up in me.
My brother’s gray eyes smiled in every one of the pictures with Landon. Playing around in town. Having beers at the bar. Riding on a float in the high school parade that always started the new year. Riding a motorcycle that he must have got after I left.
Landon glances over at me, smirking as he tells yet another story about my brother and the hijinks the two of them got up too.
And the warmth in his eyes pulls at something lost and lonely in my heart and soul.
“I wish I never left…”. His eyes widen and then he nods.
“I wish you’d never left either,” he says.
I sit beside him on the floor and lean against him, holding Katy at my side, just learning all about my brother and his life.
Learning what I missed by hiding from my own feelings for so long.
God that hurts.
CHAPTER 8
Landon
“The kids are in bed?”
Kinsey nods her head and her eyes wander to the tree again. The colored lights blink on and off and the shadows curl around her like they’re protecting her. Her head leans against her knees and her arms are wrapped around her legs.
The lights dance across her pale cheeks and my fingers itch to touch her.
I sit behind her and study her downturned face. “Are you alright, Kins?”
She nods her head but still says nothing. “You know that he wasn’t mad at you, Kins. I won’t say he didn’t miss you like hell. We both did. But he never blamed you for leaving and trying to find your own way.”
“He raised me. He took care of me those last two years until I graduated and then like a little girl, I left in the middle of the night and didn’t tell him where I was going. I was a damn brat. And then I never came home to see him again. Just called him every once in awhile and video chatted even less.”
“Granted, you did do that. But he didn’t blame you. He always said you had your reasons but he never told me what theywere. I wish he had. Maybe I could have fixed it so that you could come home.”
Her head shakes, her silky red hair sliding across her tense shoulders. “You couldn’t have changed a thing.”
“How do you know that? I always helped you two out whenever I could. I think I might have been the only person that could have diffused whatever the issue was and let you come back.”
“You couldn’t, okay!” She hollers and then stands up to pace like a caged tiger.
“Why not? I would have done anything for the two of you.”
She freezes in her tracks and I can see her luscious breasts rising and falling rapidly.
“You were the problem, Landon.”
It feels like ice strikes me right in the heart. My breath stalls and I stare at her, shocked beyond belief.
“What?” I ask her softly.
“It’s true. I left because I was in love with you. Obviously Karter figured it out and he was okay with it. I felt like he knew. But I had to go.”
“Why?” I can’t move. Can’t think.
She left her brother and her hometown because she had feelings for me.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
