It’s the hope in her voice that undoes me. That’s what makes Eliana Hunter special, I think. Well, one of the many things. It’s that her hope is un-fucking-killable. She masquerades as a cynic, a pessimist, but deep in her heart and the marrow of her bones, that simply isn’t true.
She’s a hoper. A dreamer. A believer. She saw good in me when there was none, and what do you fucking know? That made the goodness appear.
I’m not so foolish as to think that she’s redeemed me. One look at what I did to my little brother is proof that I’m forever beyond redemption.
But she’s made me believe that not all is lost. Not for her or for me. Not for Sage or her mother. Maybe even Aleksei is salvageable, though I’m not foolish enough to try that, either.
We’ve all got sinners inside of us. We’ve all got saints, too. A little darkness, a little light. It’s the tastes of both that make us whole and human.
It’s the balance.
It’s the hope.
I’m overcome by a sudden and irresistible desire to see Sage again. He’s been around these last few months, of course. He’ll eat dinner with me and Eliana, or coerce her into serving as his target practice while he repeatedly snipes her with bazookas or whatever in his video games. But in the way of all teenagers, he withdraws into his room as often as not.
Now, though, I want to see him. I want to crush my baby brother in my arms and remind myself that he’s alive and so am I, and as long as that’s true, there’s hope.
There’s always fucking hope.
The Range Rover chirps as I unlock it and slide behind the wheel. I’m pulling out my phone to text Sage that I’m coming home early when I remember that it’s Tuesday. Physical therapy day.
So I change plans, steering toward the clinic instead of the penthouse. The drive takes twenty minutes in traffic, and I spend most of it replaying Eliana’s voice in my head.
Things might be changing for the better.
God, I want that for her. I want her to have good things. Easy things. Things that don’t require her to be strong and resilient and capable every single fucking second of every single fucking day.
I want to give her those things, too. As much as she’ll let me.
The clinic parking lot is half-empty when I pull in. Through the windows, I can see Sage working with Bishop. My brother’s face is screwed up in concentration as he pushes against resistance bands.
I kill the engine and just watch him for a moment. He looks like amansuddenly. When the hell did that happen? I could swear it was just yesterday that he was a red-faced and squalling bundle of blankets in my arms. Who is this stranger with a man’s muscles and a man’s jaw and—well, not a man’s mustache, you can’t fairly call it a mustache if it’s just a dozen blonde hairs, but dammit, he’s changing and I barely even noticed.
When Bishop leaves the room for a moment to grab something from a closet, Sage looks at Lilah, the assistant he swears he’s never had a crush on, and gives her a wink and flex of the biceps. She fans her face like Betty Boop and giggles, and the blush that steals across my brother’s cheeks makes me grin like an idiot.
That’s my brother. That’s my family, goddammit. That’s my blood.
I step out of the car and go in. They both look up at me, and when Bishop emerges from the closet with a medicine ball in hand, he looks up at me, too.
“Everything alright, B?” asks Sage with a concerned frown.
“All good,” I promise. “I just wrapped things up at the office early, so I thought I’d swing by to give you a ride home.”
“Suspicious,” he remarks with a laugh. He looks at Lilah and nods his head toward me, as if to say,Get a load of this creep, will ya?She laughs again, and I laugh, too, happy to be the butt of the joke if it means seeing him smile.
“We’re just finishing up here, Mr. Hale,” Bishop says. “One last set and I’ll cut your brother loose.”
“Oh, man, not the medball!” Sage complains.
“Yes, the medball,” Bishop confirms, chuckling as a vicious twinkle lights up his eyes.
“I hate this fucking thing.” Sage scowls as he accepts it into his lap with anoof. But he dutifully hoists it overhead and holds it there, straining and sweating, as Bishop times him with a stopwatch and Lilah cheers him on.
When he reaches the designated time, he dumps it to the side with a disgusted sideways look at it and then up at me. “Not bad, eh?” he brags.
I grin at him and give him a slow golf clap. “You’re the strongest man in the world, little brother.”
“He’s all yours, sir,” Bishop tells me. “See you next week, Sage.”
