You’re not an asshole, sweetheart. We both know oh-so-fucking-well you can’t control who you fall in love with, Hettie whispered into his brain, and his back went straight.
Fall in love?
“Jesus, shit, now I’m a lunatic,” he muttered.
With determination, he turned his attention to his whisky.
He downed it.
After he did that, he thought maybe he wasn’t a lunatic.
Maybe he needed to stop fucking drinking.
On that thought, he walked the picture to the chest but he didn’t put it on top where it used to be.
He slid it in the drawer where he’d hidden her when he’d had Olivia.
And he forced Hettie out of his mind as he moved to his bedroom.
The problem was, he tried to force Olivia out of his mind too.
He succeeded with Hettie.
But as she’d been doing since that night he decided to save her from him, Olivia kept him awake all night.
* * * * *
6:23 – Sunday Evening
“Okay, you want to tell me why it looks like you haven’t slept in a year and you’re all broody?”
Nick turned from his contemplation of the lights of Denver that he could see from his place staring out the floor to ceiling windows of Anya and Knight’s condo.
He saw Anya had sidled close.
He hadn’t felt her approach.
Fuck, he had to get his head together. Turner, Hettie and Deacon had taught him better than that.
He looked across the expanse of sunken living room to the other side of the space where the kitchen was. Knight and his two girls were there too, cooking. He saw Knight smiling, Kat giggling and Kasha in her own world, not helping her father and sister, but for some reason she was in the middle of the kitchen twirling.
There it was again. Knight was a natural at everything he touched.
Even being a dad.
There were parts of that that weren’t really a surprise. Their mother, back then fucked way the hell up, had had Knight and named him so he’d be her protector.
But not in a million years would Nick guess his brother would be comfortable in a kitchen with two little girls, letting one twirl happily in her own world while making the other one giggle.
And not in a million years would Nick guess he’d be happy seeing his brother had that, content in his place being a part of it, and not feeling less because of either.
He turned back to Anya.
And Anya, being his in a way he would also never guess he wanted, but in a way now he wasn’t sure he could live without, that being the sister he’d never had, he laid it out.
“I don’t think of Hettie anymore.”
She looked confused and spoke cautiously, “I…well, I can’t tell by the way you said that. Is that good?”