Dirty Sexy Alphas (Twenty Book Box Set) - Hannah Ford Page 0,91

Today.

No more looking in the rear view mirror, hoping to see a man that didn’t exist.

Chapter 4

At home, I stomped into the house, my emotions overwhelming me. Matt was in the kitchen, his arms buried in soapy dishwater.

“The princess returns,” he said, not bothering to turn around. His voice is cutting, and I want to scream at him, take out all my frustration.

“Right, because I’m the one with a royal stick up their ass.”

He scowled over his shoulder at me. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not the one who blurted out my sibling’s secret to a room full of strangers.”

“It shouldn’t be a secret Matt. That’s the whole point. You should’ve told me when you were diagnosed.”

“Why?” He asked, wiping his hands on a towel and turning to face me. “So you and dad could stress out for months, wondering if I’d get better?”

“No, Matt,” I said, spitting his name like it was an insult. “So we could be there for you. Like you’ve always been there for me.”

“You don’t get it. My way of being there for you is to spare you from the pain of not knowing. You think I asked for this? For any of this?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why do you keep punishing me for it?”

“It’s the lies! I’m so sick of everyone fucking lying to me!” I yanked out a chair from the dining room table, dropping down to sit on it and burying my hands in my hair. Today had been too much. Entirely too much. I looked up at him. “What if you’d kept it a secret and it was terminal?”

“It’s not.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Do you know that for sure?”

“I’m going to be okay,” he said, his voice and his expression softening. “They caught it early. I had a small surgery to remove the tumor, and chemo to eradicate any surviving cells. It’s effective.”

I didn’t realize I was crying until a hiccup came out of my mouth. His face fell and he stepped closer. “Jesus, did you think I was actually--“

“I didn’t know what to think, okay?” I snapped. “You weren’t talking to me about it.”

“It’s not like with Mom,” he said softly. “A lot of people get cancer and are fine. It’s a scary word, but it’s different than what she had.”

“How was I supposed to know?”

He sank into a chair opposite from me. “I kept it from you so you wouldn’t know anything. I never meant for you to hear part of the story and imagine the worst.”

“Yeah, well, I did.” I chewed on my lip. “I mean Landon said you had a good prognosis, but my imagination has been going crazy.”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I really am.”

“It reminded me of— “

“I know,” he said, his voice firm. “I Know exactly how you reacted, because that’s how I did too. That’s what I was trying to avoid. You didn’t deserve to go through this again, so if I could spare you that, I wanted to.”

“Yet you told Landon.” I said, my voice accusatory.

“Landon’s a hard bastard who could handle a little bad news. I wasn’t worried about him.”

“I can handle bad news. We’ve lived through the worst. I’m not some weakling.”

He sat back in his chair, blowing out a long, slow breath. “I know that. You’re just as stubborn as Mom was.”

His words made me smile, even if it was a sad smile.

Matt met my gaze and smiled back. “But you’re still my little sister. I promised her I’d look out for you.”

I laughed through my tears. “I told her the same thing about you and Dad.”

He grinned. “She always did know how to play us against one another.”

We fell silent, too much distance—too much time and silence and fighting--separating us, for me to reach out and touch him. Some day we could fix the cracks that kept sprouting between us.

“What happened at the funeral after I left?” he asked.

I sighed. “Nothing really. We took off soon after you did.”

He shook his head. “Landon’s not a guy who loses control. Not like that. Not to his own mother.”

“I guess sometimes things have way of stacking up. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. You can hardly blame him.”

“I don’t. He was right. His dad was an alcoholic, abusive asshole. But Landon’s usually pretty cool under pressure.”

“His dad died. A little emotion is called for.”

Matt furrowed a brow, sitting back and letting his gaze sweep over me. Until that moment, I’d forgotten I was wearing a white