“Anywhere. Here is fine. I just…” As the car slowed to a stop, Adrian unbuckled his seatbelt and let it snap back into place. His hand tested the door handle. “Thank you. I need to go figure out what’s going on. I’m sorry to have asked you to drivesolate.”
“You’re fine.” Sterling shifted into park, then killed the engine. “Go. You need toseehim.”
Adrian hadn’t shared his past with Sterling, but he knew that Sterling wasn’t dumb. He had to have assembled the pieces well enough that he understood the monumentality of the moment. A little twist of excitement spiraled through Adrian’s chest, and he leaned across the seat to kiss Sterling on the cheek. Sterling smiled for him, the movement pushing his cheek againstAdrian’slips.
“I’ll be here waiting,” Sterling said when Adrian drew back. “Whatever you decide, wherever you need to be, we’ll makeitwork.”
“Thank you.” Adrian pulled the door handle and opened the door, but he hesitated before he got out of the car. “I just wantedtosay—”
Before he could complete his sentence, some of the people standing on the lawn migrated to stand by the car. Faces Adrian recognized but couldn’t put names to peered in at them. Sterling’s windows were tinted, and the night should have given them cover, but the overhead light had come on when Adrian had opened the door, and it put them ondisplay.
“Adrian?” A woman asked. Family. A second cousin, maybe? Adrian had no idea. “Adrian, isthatyou?”
“You heard the news, didn’t you? Megantoldyou?”
“Adrian, yourbrotherishome.”
The voices stacked, one on top of the other, until Adrian struggled to pick sentences from the chaos. He looked to Sterling apologetically, then opened the door in full and stepped out into the crowd. A hand clapped his shoulder. Someone put a hand on his back. Yet another person swept him into a hug. Adrian let himself be passed from one person to another, touched and talked to, like he was the son who’d gone missing almost half a decade ago. He didn’t deserve the attention. He was the one who’d caused this mess. Without him, a reunion wouldn’t have beennecessary.
But the attention didn’t last long. A car door shut firmly, ringing out through the night, and Adrian watched as the relatives who were so quick to offer their congratulations when they hadn’t been bothered to so much as leave a voicemail offering their condolences four years ago all looked upatonce.
Sterling stood on the other side of his car, arms folded on the roof, one eyebrow arched as he watched the crowd. Adrian had no idea what his goal was, but as Sterling stood there and observed the crowd, the crowd froze and observedhimback.
Then, like a school of fish, they left Adrian’s side to rush around the car and swarmSterling.
“Whoareyou?”
“Are you here withAdrian?”
“Are youdating?”
Sterling had never met the Lowe family before, but he’d read into the situation flawlessly and offered himself up as a distraction to give Adrian the time he needed to escape. Adrian met his gaze before Sterling turned to address the crowd, smiling in such a sincere and down-to-earth way that Adrian couldn’t be sure whether or not he wasacting.
Adrian’s heart skipped a beat, and the strangeness in his chest returned toplaguehim.
He didn’t stick around to hear what Sterling said. Instead, he used the opportunity Sterling had given him to break from his nosy extended family to find the man he’d cometosee.
It wasn’t hard tofindhim.
In the light of the LEDs that illuminated the front garden, left on his own to sit on the stoop, wrapped tight in a blanket pulled from his old bed, was Gabriel. He stared across the lawn, eyes distant and lost, anddidn’tmove.
Adrian didn’t see their mother. Their father was on the lawn, chatting casually with other family members like his long-lost son wasn’t sitting just a few feet away. Adrian increased his pace, letting one foot fall in front of the other until the heavy sound of his footsteps was so frequent, it matched the racing beat of hisheart.
When he fell to his knees before Gabriel and scraped his knees, he didn’t feel the pain—the tears that gathered in the corners of Adrian’s eyes weren’t selfish. After four years of unending guilt, of knowing that he’d been the one who had let his brother be taken, Gabriel hadcomeback.
Adrian cried withrelief.
“Gabriel?” Adrian asked. He reached out, but found himself too afraid to touch. Even now, Gabriel’s eyes were distant. The downcast slope of his brows and the looseness in his lips made Adrian think that maybe his mother had given him one of her pills, and that Gabriel’s mind was too fogged to process external stimuli. “Gabriel, do you know whoIam?”
Adrian knew who Gabriel was. Four years weren’t enough to change his face. Adrian recognized the long, regal bridge of his nose and the angles of his cheeks. Lowe features—features that Adrianshared.
“Adrian.” Gabriel whispered his name. His eyes refused tofocus.
“Yeah.” Adrian’s lips trembled, but he smiled anyway. “It’s me. It’s Adrian. I… I’m really gladyou’rehome.”
Gabriel blinked. When he opened his eyes again, they locked on Adrian’s. For a second, neither of them moved. Tension grew. Adrian didn’t know what to expect, but seeing Gabriel so listless and detached took the pain he’d shouldered over the last four years and drove it deeper into hisheart.
He’ddone this. He’d taken his shy little brother and turned him into a husk of who he’d usedtobe.
