Touch And Go - Aiden Bates Page 0,77

my desire to rush to his defense, to make an excuse for him, to fill in the blanks of what happened next. I needed to hear it from him. I needed to hear the truth, in his own words and Ben was just shameless enough to tell the story.

“I thought you were dead, and all I could think was what the fuck am I going to do with a dead body. I’m an accountant. Dead bodies…don’t fit on a balance statement.” Oh. He was trying to be cute. I wasn’t laughing. “I couldn’t take the chance of someone finding you and connecting you to me. Last thing I needed was a bunch of cops poking around. That old lady that lives downstairs saw me go in. So…I had to get you out of there. Make it look like a mugging. But I didn’t want you to die. You have to know that.” Didn’t want me to die. He’d actually said those words. “But I thought you were dead. And I was so happy when I found out you were alive. I went to the hospital.” He made it sound like an abundance of concern brought him to the ER that day, but we both knew. He’d come to find me, keep me quiet, finish what he’d started.

I needed to never see my brother ever again. He was a liar and a thief and a criminal who’d tried to kill me. Then dumped me into the river to conceal what he’d done.

Before I’d finished thinking how horrible this was, how I was connected to someone so damaged and defective it had to be genetic which meant I was as bad, Metro police pushed through, grabbed Ben, and cuffed him. Through the white noise screeching in my head, I heard him shout my name, swear at me, and make promises of violence hard to keep from prison. As they pulled him away, he spat at me, but it landed short. He’d proven all my suspicions true. All of them. I was trash and everyone here knew it. The brothers had heard everything, but worst of all, so had Derek.

23

Derek

I turned to Seb who was shaking by my side. The dichotomy of his relationship with his brother to my relationship with mine was startling, and I wanted to comfort him the way my brothers had comforted me in my times of need. And we all seemed to have the same idea. As Ben was dragged off howling profanities, we formed a protective circle around Seb, shoulder to shoulder, with him standing in front of me, his head bowed against my chest and my arms around him. His body quivered and shook.

“Thank you all.” He flashed an unconvincing, fake smile at my brothers then turned to me. “Thanks, Derek.”

There was no spark in his eye, no life in his voice. He was pulling back, closing off, and I had to stand there and watch him do it.

“Come home, we’ll talk it out. Or watch some infomercials about it.”

He shook his head. “I need to be alone.”

His words gut-punched me, took the air from my lungs, made my insides ache. My hands slid from his shoulders, and he stepped back. He needed time to process losing the last of his family. He must have felt alone and lonely. Probably lost, too. While I wanted to be there to help him, I couldn’t force myself on him.

I wanted to insist that the Tower was his home, that we could make a home together…but I couldn’t promise that. We hadn’t talked about the future. We hadn’t discussed anything beyond how much we liked having sex with each other. And the way Seb was pulling back made it clear he didn’t want to talk it out, either.

“Okay.” I nodded at Seb and ignored the looks Braxton and Eli were giving me.

“I’ll come and get my stuff, then I’ll get out of your hair.” He mumbled and stared into middle space with a glaze over eyes.

“You’re not in my hair—” He caught my gaze, and I lost my words. A burning pain roared just below my breastbone. I wanted him to come back with me, stay with me, let me take care of him. But a feeling of hopelessness paralyzed me. I couldn’t argue or even beg. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded. “Cool.”

I followed a step behind him as he headed up the dock toward the Vanguard Tower, and my