Page 79 of Contempt

That was the difference.

Knocking once more on the apartment door—he probably didn’t need to, as he’d just knocked and it was likely the people inside heard him—he stepped back quickly and shoved his hands in his pockets. That way, he wasn’t going to knock again, and hopefully when the door was opened, the person waiting on the other side wouldn’t see how goddamn nervous he looked given that his hands were shaking.

Get it together, man.

This is crazy—stop acting foolish.

They love you.

All those thoughts ran like crazy in his mind, but it didn’t make a difference to the way he was feeling. Maybe it was because in some ways, he’d had to work himself up to come here tonight. It wasn’t that he thought he wouldn’t be welcomed, but rather, the fact that he had been gone for so long.

Things wouldn’t be the same, right?

They couldn’t be.

That was the thing about time—it changed everything. And God knew he had been gone for a long fucking time, now.

“Hey, Ren.”

The sound of his sister’s greeting had Renzo lifting his head. She smiled at him on the other side of the apartment door, but even he could see the anxiety in her gaze. She did her best to hide it, sure—all of them were exactly the same. Maybe it was a Zulla thing to hide their emotions so that no one else could pick them out, even to one another.

“Hey,” he replied.

Rose flipped the dish cloth she was holding over her shoulder, but didn’t move to let him inside the apartment. “Ground rules for tonight?”

“Do there have to be ground rules?”

“Sure, if I feel like you might run again.”

Renzo let out a hard sigh. “I’m not gonna—”

“Say I’ll see you later. That’s it. If you have to go … if it gets to be too much, or he asks you to leave, then that’s what you say. Never goodbye, Ren. Goodbye scares him, even if he doesn’t want to say it. So, we don’t say that. We say something that means we’ll be back again soon, simple as that. Got it?”

He could do that.

“Is that all?”

“No,” Rose said, pursing her lips. “And make sure you play nice with my other guest tonight. I didn’t get her here for you to chase her off. She’s here because I figure the both of you could use a little help together.”

Renzo blinked. “What are you talking—”

“Ren?”

He stiffened all over.

Like ice water had been tossed down his spine.

It wasn’t the reaction he wanted to have when he heard an older, gruffer version of his little brother’s voice, but there it was. Maybe it was because of the change in his brother’s voice—older, and slightly deeper, although not so much so that it meant he was becoming a young man. Just enough to shock Renzo with the sound, and remind him of how many years he had missed with this kid.

Renzo found his brother quickly.

There he stood at the end of the hallway in black slacks rolled up at the ankles, a faded band T-shirt, and a face that reminded Renzo of years gone past. He stared at Diego, and the kid stared back. He took in the changes of his brother—the boyish features starting to form into the face of a young man, and the inches he’d grown since the last time Renzo saw him. He imagined Diego was taking in all the differences he could see in Renzo, too.

The tattoos.

The shorter hair.

The nose ring.