Staccato (Magnum Opus #2) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,54

the room with me. Then it’s like I’m some petty twelve-year-old all over again. Anyway, give me two minutes.”

“Do I get the tour now or later?” Adam asked, keeping close to Nik’s heels as he walked down the hall toward the kitchen.

“I really don’t want to keep my dad waiting,” Nik said, his tone full of regret. “He’s pretty far gone, but if his routine gets disrupted…”

“Hey,” Adam said quietly, “it’s really no worries. I understand.”

Nik didn’t really know what to say, so instead, he walked to the fridge and found the stack of dinners Van set aside. He grabbed the one with the two raised dots for dinner, and the three dots for his dessert. He didn’t bother to check what they were, instead pulling the insulated bag out of the cupboard, and he shoved them inside.

“So…your brother’s name really is Van?” Adam asked as Nik bent down to secure the laces on his shoes.

Nik couldn’t help his laugh. “Gurvan. He hates it about as much as I hate Yanik,” he confessed. “My dad’s from Brittany.”

“I seriously sucked at geography,” Adam said.

“It’s in France,” Nik said and stood up. He hooked the bag over his elbow, then moved to the front room to collect his cane. “My mom liked his accent.”

“Ah, one of those,” Adam said, and he followed Nik out the front door, and then onto the driveway. “I’m right ahead of you like…oh god, I don’t know. Some steps?”

Nik laughed and extended his cane, finding the car tire ten steps from the porch. He climbed into the passenger seat, then settled the meals between his feet and waited for Adam to climb in. “I’ll put the address on my GPS because I’m terrible with directions.”

Adam just chuckled and waited, and then the soft voice of his app guided them down the driveway and onto the main road. “So…you do this a lot? Taking him dinner?”

“The facility provides meals, but Van has a thing about him having a home-cooked meal once a day. And dinner was kind of our family thing before my mom died.” Nik let his head fall back against the seat and turned his face toward the window. He lifted his hand toward the glass and felt the last vestiges of cold spring nights against the pads of his fingers. “My mom was an amazing cook, but Van and I are…not the best. I don’t think my dad can even taste anything these days, but Van insists it matters. And my dad likes the routine.”

“I’m sorry,” Adam said quietly. “That must really suck.”

“Are your parents…?”

“My dad’s dead. I don’t remember him,” Adam replied. “Mom’s not. She was always around, but after Stella and I were old enough to leave the house, she took off. She’s in North Carolina now, enjoying her retirement by the beach.”

Nik smiled. “Must be nice.”

“I hate the ocean,” Adam said with a laugh. “Or well, I hate the beach. You know—sand. And I’m a crappy swimmer.”

“We lived by the ocean for a while when I was growing up. My dad was a philosophy professor, and he taught at UCLA for a couple of years.” Nik smiled through old memories of sitting in his dad’s lecture halls, then driving down to the beach to get ice cream and listen to the waves. His dad had a singular way of describing the world around him—not with sights that Nik couldn’t understand, but with feelings and smells and sounds. It made the world less abstract. It made things like distance and space tangible when before it was nothing more than a concept.

“We didn’t get to travel much. My mom was always pretty broke—being on her own with just the two of us. And she had to pay for all my treatment and stuff so…” Adam trailed off, and Nik couldn’t help but reach for him, dropping a hand to his arm. “She says it was worth it, but I just wish I had some way to repay her.”

“Being happy would probably do the trick,” Nik said, and Adam laughed.

“That’s what my sister thinks, but I haven’t quite figured that part out yet.”

Nik hated that he was part of the reason Adam was miserable—that he wasn’t brave enough to just try, to just believe in himself—or at the very least, believe in them. But Adam didn’t sound angry anymore, and he didn’t sound like he resented Nik for it.

“My mom blamed herself for my eyes,” Nik said, offering a piece of himself he never talked