Staccato (Magnum Opus #2) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,55

about. “My brother had it too. Cancer.”

“Vince mentioned,” Adam said.

Nik wasn’t surprised by that, even if it annoyed him a little. “Going through it with Van scared her, so I think she just…ignored the signs. You’d think it would have made her more cautious.”

“I think trauma does weird things to people,” Adam said. “Do you blame her?”

“Yes and no,” Nik said. “I think maybe when I was younger and things were harder. And it wasn’t hard because I was blind, it was hard because people are…”

“Terrible,” Adam breathed out.

Nik both hated and loved how much Adam understood. “I got tired of coddling her, though, and absolving her of her never-ending guilt. I got accepted to a really prestigious music school, and she didn’t want me to go. Then she tried to convince Van to follow me even though he was in a good comp-sci program. It almost worked, too.”

“Shit,” Adam said.

Nik laughed. “Yeah. I managed to talk him into staying and convinced my parents that I was, in fact, capable of going to school all by my lonesome. She was really adamant about me getting a dog after that, but it’s just…never been my thing.”

“Dogs?” Adam asked.

Nik braced himself. “Not a dog person.”

There was silence, then Adam laughed. “I’m a total cat person. I mean, I like dogs just fine. Puppies—so cute. But I’m totally fine that you don’t like dogs.”

Nik felt something in his gut unwind a bit. “To be honest, I think she probably bribed some people in my dorm building to look out for me. People were…overly helpful. But I still did it on my own. She eventually relaxed—and life went on.”

“And then she died?” Adam asked.

Nik dropped his chin to his chest. “Then she died. Dad was already in bad health by then too. And we all thought he was going to go first, but one morning she just…didn’t get out of bed. That was it.”

“Jesus,” Adam said with a soft breath.

Nik shrugged. “Life is what it is. Dad got worse after that. It was still a slow decline, but he just didn’t have anything motivating him to keep fighting. Van asked me to come help out while he was still living at the house with us, but he kept wandering off, and I couldn’t find him half the time. It was better this way, but I think Van resents it.”

Adam hummed, like he didn’t know what to say, and Nik was fine with it. The GPS alerted them that they were just half a mile away, and Nik braced himself for the short time he’d have to spend there.

“Do you mind waiting out here?”

“Not at all,” Adam said. “I’m not a huge fan of hospitals. I’m good here, I promise.”

Nik breathed out. “It’s not that I’m ashamed. He just…”

Adam pulled the car to a stop, clicked it into park, then took Nik’s hand in his own. “Please don’t keep trying to explain yourself. I’m here for what you need, okay? That’s what friends do.”

Nik swallowed back against a lump in his throat, then nodded. “Thanks.”

“Just go,” Adam said with a small laugh, and shoved at him. “The sooner you’re done, the sooner we can sit together and watch the super douchey John Hughes movies I brought over.”

Nik’s smile stretched wide across his face in spite of what sat ahead of him for the next half hour. “Can’t wait,” he said, and damn his heart, but he had never meant anything more.

Chapter 13

Sforzando

Back at Nik’s, Adam felt awkward as hell, but Nik seemed to find it hilarious that they had to go in search of a lamp for his room. Adam offered to just sit by the light of the TV, but Nik insisted, and eventually, they managed to steal one out of Van’s room. Nik went down to grab food for the movie, and Adam busied himself creating light before giving in to his urge to snoop.

He wasn’t surprised to find bare walls, but the rest of the room was well kept and very homey—a lot like Nik himself. The bed frame matched the dresser—a rich mahogany—and he had shelves of thickly bound braille books. He even had framed photos on the top of the shelves, with pasted on braille labels he assumed listed out what was in the picture.

Most of them looked like Nik as a young child—hair longer and wilder, face rounder, smile wider. Van stood next to him in most of them with his more stoic expression, arms crossed in almost every