Easy smiled and sighed, “You really loved her, I mean… after just a few days?”
I opened my mouth, but I didn’t immediately have the words to explain it to him. I knew her for days, but my soul… it recognized her like we’d lived a thousand lives together. There was something just…
God, I couldn’t say it, but I felt it.
“She was meant for me. She’s it, Eric. You don’t get it.” I looked over when he didn’t respond and found him fishing a card out of his wallet. He pushed some coke around on a mirror and cleaned it, before offering me the plate.
I held my hand out in a silent denial. My thoughts were already drifting; I wasn’t trying to race with my current mindset.
“Don’t you go back tomorrow?” I belatedly asked.
He rubbed his nose with his fingers and shrugged, his brow raising in that smart-assed way that all but asked who I was to judge.
“Right.” I cleared my throat, and my attention shifted to the stress balls.
“What is so special about her?” he gently asked.
I sighed, hating when people asked that. They always got nasty and assumed it was purely lust. It wasn’t. I smashed. If the only thing that was for her was my cock, I’d have forgotten her by now.
“You know, the night—” My mouth went dry as it always did, when I tried to speak about the loss of our parents. “The nightit happened, that was the last time I went to bed and laid down without issue. I closed my eyes and sleep welcomed me. Ever since I’ve dreaded laying down. My mind doesn’t shut off. It just loops and loops. The memories. The bad times mostly. Shit, I wish I’d have done differently, or maybe I shouldn’t have said. I don’t sleep until I’ve tortured myself for staying at Mark’s house that night. Why did I have to spend the night with Mak? Why didn’t I stay home. If I was there, I’d have smelled the shit when he started his cook. I always did. I’d have probably heard him cussing and bitching and slamming shit around like he always did when he got up to it. If I was–”
“Anthony,” Easy spat, his voice full of horror. The sound jerked me out of my manic trauma-dump.
I sucked in a startled breath and apologetically smiled.
It was his injury, too.
“Sorry– Just… When I’m with her… When I was with her,” I amended, with a gentle toss of my head, “It was like I made up for all that lost sleep. I fucking died in that bed with her, and I didn’t think of any of that shit. It was gone. I wasn’t hashing over the past; I was where I was meant to be. I stumble and bumble around, just… No connection really to anyone or anything.”
I realized that sounded cold, considering he was my brother, “Not–not like that. I mean, I have you and I have Daisy, but this was… It was different, E.”
“I get it.” Easy nodded, scratching at his stubble.
He dropped his head like he was about to say something profound, but then he sighed and stared up at me.
“What?” I laughed.
“If you love her so much, why did you let her go?” Easy laughed.
His laughter cut through me. It was like he hadn’t heard a goddamn thing I’d been saying for the past year. “What the fuck was I supposed to do? Huh? She relocated, changed jobs, and left no word…”
He stared, unmoved.
“What?”
“Nobody in this world is invisible, Anthony. If you wanted to find her, you would.” He shrugged, and I wanted to slug him.
“What the fuck do you mean, ‘if?’ I fucking walked into a courthouse and straight up bought a government license to give her my name, Easy. I’m not talking about some fucking cock gobbler that I fed dreams to, or a mistake I put a property stamp on. She was supposed to be my forever, alright? My ride or die. My fucking wife.”
That unimpressed, dead stare infuriated me the longer it lingered on his face.
“You know I’m a marine right?”
I groaned and wiped my face. It was the coke. It had to be the coke making him senseless.
“I’m saying, if we can find a terrorist hiding in a hole across the world, how fucking hard can it be to track down a stripper?”
Could he track her?
