Touch And Go - Aiden Bates Page 0,93
same ages, you know? And we had the same values, same goals. Similar experiences…” I swallowed down the emotion threatening to turn me mute.
Seb rubbed my chest and smoothed away the tension there and softened his voice. “What about the other guys? Were they in the same homes?”
“They came from all sorts of places. I mean, heaps of kids go through those homes, but we connected with a few that passed through.” I looked toward the ceiling as I recalled, and counted them out, my hand on Seb’s, on my chest. “I guess Richie was first…Sean and Matt got into some trouble and finally got separated when we were sixteen. They were both pulled out of the group home where we’d met. That’s when Sean met Richie at the joint he got moved to. Richie was fourteen, huge for his age—”
“I’d be shocked if he wasn’t.” He smiled warmly and laced his fingers through mine. The comment was small, but it meant a lot. He knew these guys. He knew my family.
“Right? But he was constantly causing trouble. He’d been bullied his whole life, but with his recent growth spurt, he could fight back. To a point…” I closed my eyes and became sad as I recalled the bloody wounds and swollen bruises I’d tended to, way before med school. Sad for Richie, and sad for myself, too. “Some older neighborhood kids were kicking his ass, and Sean jumped in to defend him. When Sean got sent back to the group home, still without Matt, Richie came with him.”
His voice was soft, and he gazed at me with wonder in his eyes. “The first of the little brothers you took care of.”
I was flattered that he knew that was how I thought of it. I smoothed his hair back from his ear and smiled at how beautiful he was, before I resumed my story. It felt good to tell. “Hm. I guess I’d actually met Eli before then. I remember Richie picking on him the minute he walked in.”
Seb raised his eyebrows, shocked. Eli did seem like the last person on the planet someone would pick on. “What about?”
“Who knows? His hair? His expression? Richie was constantly on everyone’s case about the most random shit. Eli was thirteen, and looked much younger than that, so he was an easy target. But they bonded over taking care of the stray dogs out in the alley.” I was surprised by how easy it all came pouring out of me. The story of my past had been locked up tight for so long, only told in segments to the brothers involved in each part of the tale, never as a whole. I counted on my fingers. “Hunter was next. Ran away from the last foster house I was at. I was eighteen, he was…sixteen? And he was adamant he’d rather be on the streets than stay in the system. That’s what prompted me, Sean, and Matt to get our foster licenses. So we could help our younger brothers.”
Seb sighed and lowered himself onto his belly to gaze up at me with his chin on his hand. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
“No. Took a lot of work for us to get accredited.” Hard work. Back-breaking work, spirit-breaking work. Begging, pleading, degrading work.
“And the other…three?”
“Two.” I smiled, touched that he wanted all of the story. “Owen was next. We were twenty-one by then, he was around fourteen? Matt brought him back with him from a house he’d ended up in when he got separated from us.” I paused when a sudden swell of emotion rose and pushed tears into my eyes as I remembered the trauma of Matt and Sean being separated. From each other. From me.
I swallowed thickly, but my voice wavered as I went on. “Then Brax was the latest. It was after we were out of the system and we had our licenses for Owen and Hunter. Brax tried to pick Matt’s pocket on the street.”
Seb made a fart noise with his lips. “Bad target.”
I laughed. His light humor had again lifted the heaviness of the moment and I smiled at him adoringly, almost in disbelief that he was real. “Or maybe he picked a good target, depending on how you look at it. It worked out well for him in the end.”
He smiled at me and shook his head in amazement. “There are a lot of stories in there, huh?” His finger was warm where he pressed it against my forehead.
I