Plopping my hands on my hips, I glared at him. “That sounds an awful lot like a you problem.” He studied my face, arching a brow. I was being unreasonable. I understood that on some level. “Fine. Then send me with whoever else is going out.”
“Not happening,” he said with a shrug.
I grabbed his arm before he could walk away. “I can’t stay here while you’re out there looking for my brother, OD.” I gave him a pleading look. I didn’t want to put anyone else into danger, but Ihadto help. Sitting here with nothing to do but worry would destroy me.
“You think you’ll be able to convince him to come home this time?” he asked with another lift of his brow.
Shaking my head, I lowered my gaze. “No. I don’t think so. If I couldn’t bring him home last time… But I need to help. I can’t stay here, wondering what’s happening. Worrying about him. Worrying about…you”
“So you want to put yourself in danger? Possibly put us in danger?”
“I’m not useless,” I snapped at him. “I can help.”
“In what way?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m a paramedic, remember? I have skills. Skills that you’ll need if things go badly.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’d rather leave you here.” He sighed as my expression tightened. “You’re just going to go anyway…aren’t you?”
It was my turn to shrug. “I’ve waited because you asked me to. I’m done waiting, Overdrive.”
He ran a hand through his hair, frustration written all over his face. “How am I supposed to fucking live with myself if I bring you along and something happens to you?”
I thought about that for a minute and then answered honestly. “You’d never let anything happen to me.”
He sighed again. “You know this isn’t your fault…right?”
“What?” Where had that come from, and why did it hit like a freight train? My chest tightened as tears clogged my throat.
“Your brother leaving.”
I made a face. “Then who’s fault is it? He ran away fromme.”
“No,” he said, voice firm. “He’s running from himself.”
That caught my attention.
“I don’t know how to explain this to you. It’s something most men understand at one point or another in their life… We need…something…more. It can vary a bit depending on the man, but it’s usually somewhere to belong. A sense of purpose that binds us to others.” He winced. “I’m not explaining it well.”
Only…he was. I’d seen the restlessness overtaking Ryan year by year. It started around fourteen years old. And everything I did only seemed to make him worse. Then it made him angry at me. And I didn’t even know what I was doing wrong. “I tried to help…”
“You’re not his mother. You’re not his wife,” OD explained. “You’re his sister… So you couldn’t fulfill any of the roles he needed.” He paused. “He was abandoned the same as you were,” his gaze was patient as he explained. “That left you with some scars…right?”
Oh yeah. The abandonment issues ran deep inside of me.
He nodded, reading my expression. “It’s the same for him. Boys need their mothers, at least until the mother has to kick him out of the nest so he can grow into the man he’s meant to be. Then he can go find his wife to fulfill that new need inside of him.”
“Ryan’s sixteen,” I reminded him.
“Exactly, so he’s too young for a wife and he had no mother to rely on. So he found somewhere else where he could mold himself into a man. At least, that’s what he’s thinking.”
I made a face. “So what can help him once we get him home?” I was trying to listen, trying not internalize this, like I had failed. He saw the look on my face and knew what I was thinking.
“Other men. Father figures. Someone who can hold him accountable, then take him under their wing.”
“I don’t understand why I couldn’t do that for him.”
“I mean this as gently as possible, because I know you tried as hard as you could. He needs you to be his sister, nothing else. His mother,andhis father, left him. He’s internalized that. You’ve done an amazing job of raising him and being the best adoptive mom you can be, but at the end of that day you’re his sister. It was never supposed to be your job and he knows that.
