It’s the perfect blend of “pretty” features on a conventionally handsome face. Fuck, he’s prettier than I am, even though I’m definitely the feminine looking-one of the two of us. Which I’m sure makes him crazy, and lowkey always has. He’d rather look like his thug father, so he covers it all up with the stubble and scars. There’s a nasty one cutting through his eyebrow on the right side, and a series of numbers and small symbols tattooed by his hairline on the left.
It’s all designed to make him look crustier, but it’s not enough. He still has the porcelain-doll perfection of the face he was born with, even under all those manufactured flaws he’s carved into it.
“Happy now?” I ask, while he continues to watch me in silence, wearing a fond expression that’s so unexpected it’s kind of eating away at my heart. “I can’t call out from work forever, so I need you to cooperate if you want your recovery to ever have an end date. So, are you gonna be a good boy?”
He doesn’t reply. He just hits me with awhat-the-fucklook of his own.
I didn’t mean it like that, but the words rolled off my tongue out of habit and I’m reminded again that me and Tadhg live in very, very different worlds now.
He’d probably strangle someone else for calling him agood boy. Well, it’s good to know I still have brother privileges after all this time.
Barely half an hour later, his eyelids grow heavy again and he falls into the most restful-looking sleep he’s had since he got here.
Chapter Eight
Micah
For the next two days, we have minimal drama. I don’t know who’s more surprised, me or Tadhg, but I’ll take what I can get.
It feels bizarrely peaceful.
It’s easier than it should be to fall back into old habits and patterns. He lets me take care of him without as much grumbling as I expected, but almost immediately we bicker the same way we used to as kids. He teases me a little, even if there’s a hesitance to him. And I let him get away with it because it’s nice to see him do anything other than go from one intense freak out to the next.
Slowly, the terrible circumstances of our reunion feel farther and farther away, replaced by the constant magnetized pull to stay in each other’s orbits we always used to have. Which should feel weird but doesn’t. Almost right away, it doesn’t matter that time has passed. We’re in a brand-new version of our ownbubble, where we’re the only two real people in the world, and nothing else matters.
I should probably be more concerned about how unhealthy that is and always was, or how readily my mind slips back into it. I don’t have the energy to worry, though.
What’s important is that he’s here and getting better. He can get up and walk around unassisted, even if he’s slow and needs to lean on the furniture most of the time. He’s eating solid food and keeping it down, and I was able to pull his IV. The infection in his wounds is continuing to recede, and there have been no signs of any catastrophic organ damage I wasn’t previously aware of.
I tentatively allow myself to hope for the best. I let myself be lulled into feeling like this is just a normal, long-lost brotherly reunion, and not the sign of impending chaos in our lives.
Last night, while he was heavy-lidded and ready to drift off into another of his near-catatonic sleeps, he even thanked me for taking such good care of him. His big, meaty paw squeezed my hand, and my heart seemed to squeeze itself at the same time.
I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t survived.
This is all movement in the right direction. And that Tadhg isn’t fighting me on any of it is giving me the confidence to finally ask the question I’ve been dying to ask.
He’s sitting on the couch, his arm thrown casually over the back of it in a way that makes his bicep look unfairly juicy. I’m trying not to be jealous. Not that I have any interest in looking like him; I’m very happy with my body. But it must be nice to walk around looking like a human weapon of mass destruction.
His leg on the injured side is stretched out, propped up on the cheap chipboard table so he doesn’t put pressure on the wounds, while his other leg is bent so he’s half-sitting, half-reclining. I think he feels better not having to lounge around like an invalid.
It’s all the same to me, obviously, but if I’ve learned anything in the past few days, it’s that his pride is as robust as a spun-glass spiderweb.
Which isn’t his fault. Anyone would be fucked up by our violent, miserable childhood. Especially if it was followed by a life of crime and violence that you never wanted to be a part of. And that’s exactly what I need to ask him about, even if I’m worried that broaching the topic is going to set back all the progress we’ve made and potentially trigger another one of his panic attacks. The ones that neither of us is allowed to acknowledge exist, obviously.
Straight men are such delicate beasts.
I shimmy into the narrow wedge of the couch that Tadhg isn’t occupying, and he turns his head to take me in with a lazy half-smile. He’s a little glassy-eyed, because Tristan came by two days ago with a handful of street-sourced Percocets that his mother, of all people, acquired.
Which Ihategiving to Tadhg and am rationing as tightly as I can. But they’re at least stamped and branded so the chances of being laced with fentanyl are relatively low. I’m monitoring him around the clock, and Tristan had the common sense to bring me an emergency dose of Narcan with the pills. Just in case.
And I’m not leaving the stash anywhere he can get his grubby paws on them. Because I love my brother—even if that’s a little weird after all this time—and the level of instability I’ve seen from him in the past three days has made it clear he doesn’t belong around anything with the potential to harm himself or others.
I even stole the bullets from his gun when he was sleeping. Hopefully, he hasn’t noticed and won’t need it until he’s feeling more stable. Or ever, if I have my way.
“What’s up, Bambi?” he says to me, only a hint of a slur to his voice.
“Can we talk?”
