Hold Me Close - Talia Hibbert Page 0,181

downed the fucking shot.

“Now you,” he croaked out, letting the sickly-sweet burn sting his throat.

“I’m not overthinking. I never overthink.”

“Take a fucking shot before I pour it down your fucking throat.”

“You’re in a smashing mood tonight,” Zach muttered. But he took a shot.

The little glasses were piling up on Ma’s doily-covered coffee table, surrounding the central plate of left-over Celebrations from Christmas. Nate had the oddest urge to pull out his phone and take a picture—and an even odder desire to start carrying his camera around with him again. But that must be the alcohol talking, because he only really photographed people, and he wasn’t even managing that, these days.

So instead, he looked at his brother, finding eyes that mirrored his own: a bright, clear blue dragged down by the dark shadows beneath and the exhaustion dulling their shine.

He’d never wanted his brother to look like him. Not like this. Not his Zach.

“We’re fucked up,” Nate said. “All of us.”

“Why’s that?” At least Zach’s tone was light as ever, even if his hands shook as he put down his shot glass.

Nate reached for one of the pamphlets they’d been given hours earlier and sneered at its minimalist cover. “This… this thing, it can be life-threatening. But it’s not fucking lung cancer. We should be happy. But we’re here getting pissed out of our minds, and Ma looks like she’s seen her own damn ghost.”

“Because she has,” Zach said softly. “Nate… do you have any idea how much I’ve cried in the last few months? I fucking cried. Because I thought—I thought she was dying. Do you know I asked Hannah to take me to church? I went to church, and I prayed to…” He sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “I just wanted to take the pain. To take it for her. And I couldn’t. And it made me want to die.” Something thick and brutal curled around Zach’s voice, like suffocating smoke.

Nate understood every single word his brother had just said. He’d felt it all himself. But he wished, more than anything, that he hadn’t understood that last part. That he wasn’t the kind of man who could hear those words and know instinctively that Zach wasn’t just being figurative.

His heart squeezed as he laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Zach’s lips twisted into a smile. “Are you really asking me that? Like you don’t get it?”

Because he did, of course. Nate had been wondering, ever since that day when Hannah had said so simply, “I suffer from depression,” if he should say… something. Something like, Hey, I kind of get it, because for about six months, so did I! He hadn’t wanted to, in the end, because it didn’t feel the same. His wife had died and he’d fallen into a bad place, but he was better now. And he got the impression that Hannah would never quite be ‘better’. The last thing he wanted was to be insensitive.

Which is why he didn’t push for further explanations from Zach. Instead, he pulled his brother into a clumsy sort of sideways hug, pressing his face into the other man’s silky hair. It was like hugging Josh. A very big Josh.

“I’m sorry,” Nate said.

“Not your fault,” Zach mumbled.

“I mean I’m sorry that I left. I’m sorry I left you.” Because he shouldn’t have. Even as Nate learned to conquer his rage and like himself, even as he’d found photography and met Ellie, even as he’d built a new life… he’d felt like a traitor. Because he’d been building it all without his family.

They broke the hug. Looking at Zach was like seeing a younger, cockier, pretty-boy version of himself. Sometimes he wondered how his geeky little brother had become a man. Then he remembered that he’d missed that, too. Because he’d left.

“I can see your brain moving a mile a minute,” Zach said. “You really are an angsty motherfucker.”

Nate huffed out a laugh. “Shut up.”

“You didn’t leave me. You didn’t leave us. You were suffocating here so you did what you had to do. You don’t need to apologise to me, Nate. Because, when we need you, you’re here. That’s what matters.”

It was exactly what Hannah had said—and Hannah was the smartest person Nate knew, so he’d almost let himself believe her. But it was only now, hearing the same sentiment in his little brother’s voice, that he really accepted it.

“And while I’m fixing all those fucked-up ideas of yours,” Zach said, “let me