The Healing Touch - Apryl Baker Page 0,17

into all kinds of illegal activities. It wasn’t the first time Jackson had been picked up either. He had a juvie record, thanks to my dad and his brothers, as he called them.” She spit the word out like it was the foulest-tasting thing she’d ever put in her mouth. “He gets out this October. I’m hoping Jackson will finally walk away from all it, get his life together. He’s young. He doesn’t have to end up like the rest of them.”

“But you don’t think he will?” Dimitri glanced her way when she snorted.

“Not likely. My brother was born and raised into that damn club. He’ll end up dead or in jail again before it’s all said and done. If they’d get out of all the illegal shit, maybe he would stand a chance, but the money’s too good. They’ll never vote out running drugs and guns.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. I’ve tried to talk him out of the club, but he’s a lifer. I just hope he doesn’t die before he turns thirty.”

What could a person say to that? She knew her brother better than he did.

“Jack used to call me ‘little bird.’ Said I was as fragile as a dove. Dad picked up on the nickname when I was five or six. It’s the only thing he ever called me after that.”

“Did he hit your mom a lot?”

“Only when she hit me or Jack. He always told Jack to never hit a woman unless it’s in defense of a child. His only redeeming moral quality. He despised anyone who hit a kid.”

“I’m sorry you grew up with that, babe.”

She shrugged. Dimitri had no idea how truly awful her life had been. She’d grown up in the worst environment with an apathetic father and an abusive, junkie mother. Hard didn’t even begin to describe her and Jackson’s life.

She’d talked to her psychiatrist about it. She’d never thought she deserved it or that it was right in any way, shape, or form. It had surprised the good doctor. She said most victims of abusive homes grew up thinking it was normal or they deserved it. They didn’t have a big brother who continually told them otherwise or treated them with the respect their parents never gave them. She loved her brother so much and thanked God for him daily.

Her home life had contributed to her anxiety, though. How could it not? She never knew what to expect from her mother from one day to the next. She learned to be small, invisible. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Most days, it didn’t. Her dread at what each day would bring, what each small mistake would cost, made her anxiety grow more and more. She thought it would get better when she left home, but that wasn’t the case. It got worse.

Thoughts of her anxiety brought her back to Southern Book Bash hosted in Charleston, South Carolina. How the hell was she going to get through that? All those people…and so many of them had come specifically to see Dimitri. There were over a hundred and sixty pre-orders. Hell, maybe it was a good thing she’d come with him. There was no way he’d manage to put all those bags together on his own, especially since he’d pitched a tantrum about her not going.

That man. Only Dimitri could look adorable while throwing an all-out fit that would make a three-year-old proud. Stubborn. But then, so was she. They’d had some epic fights over the years. She laughed out loud thinking of the great war of 2013, as she called it. He’d been insistent that Italian food was better than Chinese, which she adored. She still couldn’t remember how it escalated to them not speaking for a whole month. Aside from short emails with information she needed to do his promos, they’d completely gone dark on the communication front.

Dimitri folded first. It was around the time when he thought he might have found a girl who would last longer than five minutes. What was her name…Julie, Jane? Becca could never keep them straight. He’d called her at four in the morning. Even back then, he’d had no sense of time zones. They’d talked for a good six hours. He’d barely talked about what’s-her-name. Their conversations usually steered away from his women and toward things that mattered to them.

She’d fallen in love with him when she was in high school, and that only grew stronger every year. It was easy to love