Taking On The Billionaire (Redhawk Reunion #1) - Robin Covington Page 0,43
sharply into focus. “Our mom came running out of the house and yelled at him to stop doing doughnuts in the yard and he blew her a kiss and took off down the road. The bike was a piece of shit and the dust was flying but I thought he looked like the coolest guy I’d ever seen. That was when I fell in love with motorcycles.”
“I think I have a photograph of him on that bike back at my place. It was in a bunch of stuff that ended up in my bag when we were taken,” Roan said, his hands waving around in excitement. “I’ll dig it up and make a copy.” His glance widened to include Sarina. “I’ll make one for all of us.”
The sharp scrape of metal chair legs against the desk made them all jump and Adam swiveled to find Sarina standing, her expression stormy and her jaw set in an angry line. Adam rose to his feet, automatically reaching out to his sister, but her razor-sharp flinch from him kept him on his side of the table. Adam dropped his hand and braced for impact. If he knew anything about his sister, she wasn’t going to come in slow and sweet.
“Sarina, are you okay?” Roan asked, his own chair tipping backward on two legs with his agitation. He reached back, catching it before it slammed to the ground and putting it right.
Sarina tossed her napkin on the table, empty hand slicing across the air in front of her body as if she was cutting all of the tenuous ties between them. Adam’s heart dropped to the depths of the valley of the preserve. He knew what she was going to say and while he didn’t want to hear it, he knew he needed to let her have it out. In reality, he didn’t really have a choice. He might have brought them all together but that had ended any control he’d had over the situation and how it would end.
“Adam.” She glanced at Roan, implicitly including him in her comments before sliding her gaze back to him. “You seem like a nice guy but I don’t know you and I don’t remember any of this happy family stuff you’re spouting off like it’s some movie of the week. I don’t remember the motorcycle or the carport or our mom or the fucking house. None of it.”
“Sarina.”
She ignored him, the hand she’d raised to silence him slowly curving into a fist. “I only remember where I ended up and if I started sharing those tales we’d all need something stronger than what you’ve got.” Sarina took a deep breath and pressed her hands against her stomach, as if she was keeping those memories inside her, physically preventing them from coming out. “I just can’t do this. I don’t want to do this.”
The silence that descended between them now felt impenetrable, worse than it had before, but he couldn’t just leave it like this. He took a step forward and a huge risk by reaching out to touch her arm. Sarina’s eyes narrowed with wariness and she let it sit there for a couple of seconds before taking one step backward. He let his hand drop but maintained eye contact with this woman who had his mouth and Roan’s eyes.
“I won’t say that I understand exactly where you are but I think I get most of it. Something really shitty happened to us, all of us, something that should have never happened and none of our lives were ever the same. And I understand that you were so young that you don’t remember but I do. I remember. I remember your long hair and how you used to braid flowers and follow me around begging for piggyback rides. Those memories, my memories, I’m not ready to give them up.”
“But this isn’t about you and your fucking memories. This is about how you decided that we all needed to get dragged into your therapy-induced experiment. Well, I didn’t ask to be part of your ‘closure’ or whatever the hell you’re doing here. I didn’t ask to be part of any of this.”
He couldn’t have filled the silence that followed because he didn’t have anything else to say. Adam didn’t have the answers, didn’t know how to fix this, and that made him want to howl at the rapidly rising moon.
But Sarina wasn’t looking for answers. From the sharp concrete-hard set to her mouth, he knew she wasn’t