My eyebrows shot up in surprise at the candidness of Lance’s words. “I’m not saying he won’t be around, but I think it’s time you and I actually bonded without me leaning on him. I’m always leaning on him.”
“From what he’s told me, it sounds like it’s the other way around,” I said before scooping a portion of the casserole onto my plate.
Lance paused and shot his blue eyes up at me before straightening the fork at his place setting. “He told you that? About the…home invasion?” Lance asked incredulously. “He never tells anyone.”
Shit. “I was asking about you. I wanted to know more about your friendship. I kind of pressured him into telling me.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie but wasn’t the full truth either. Lance relaxed.
“See? This is why I wanted to have dinner alone with you. We keep using other people to connect, and it’s not working. Decker…our mom…” Lance let the words linger between us before speaking again. “I don’t want any more stories about her. I want to know more about you.”
“Okay, what would you like to know?” This felt wrong, somehow. Like my truths had only been reserved for Decker. But Lance was right, we’d been using everything we could to hide, and it was time to finally lay it all out.
“Do you like it here?” Lance asked. It wasn’t the ice-breaking question I’d expected, but I welcomed the easy topic.
“Yes. It’s nice. I feel…safe here. Memphis is beautiful,” I admitted before shoving a fork full of steaming food into my mouth. It singed my tongue, and I eagerly took a drink of iced tea Lance pushed in front of me.
“Did you not feel safe back in Texas?” Lance prodded.
“No. Not really.” My words turned my tongue to ash.
“I’m sorry, Blakely,” Lance murmured.
“It’s not your fault,” I offered with a shrug. “And you turned up when I needed you most. This is a fresh start for me. Admittedly, I’m relieved that you don’t want to know more about Mama. It’s hard for me to talk about her, but I’m terrified that if we focus on me, you won’t like what you find out.”
Lance leaned forward on the table, propping his elbows up as he spoke. “Blakely,” he said, and I averted my eyes. I wasn’t expecting to have such a hard-hitting conversation right after my episode with Rose. “You’re my sister. There’s nothing that can change that,” Lance said in exasperation.
But didn’t he get it? That’s not what I wanted. I was chained to my own mother my entire life. I didn’t love her. Hell, I think I hated her. I didn’t want Lance to feel obligated to build a relationship with me based on blood. Rose’s words were still ringing in my mind. This blood was mine.
“I don’t want you to feel chained to me because of a missed opportunity. I don’t want you to feel obligated to bond with me because somehow we share sister sequences of the same DNA. I want us to be close because we like one another. Because we add value to one another’s lives. The shared blood pumping through our veins should only be a tiny percentage of the equation. And I don’t ever want anyone to feel obligated to be in my life because of something they can’t control—and we can’t control that we are related.”
My speech felt stilted and didn’t truly dive into the depths of my feelings about this. Maybe I was projecting my issues about Mama on Lance, but it didn’t change the end result. We were virtual strangers, and just because we found each other didn’t mean we had to stay in each other’s lives. Maybe I was self-destructive, and that’s why it was important to me that I push this truth, lay it out on the table between us like it was a decadent feast. But I did.
“I understand,” Lance replied solemnly. “But you have to understand that as someone who has been denied family, that beautiful and unique sequence of DNA is significant to me. Even if I don’t like you, I want to know you. But if we both find that this sibling relationship isn’t compatible, I’ll happily let you go and live your life. But you have to give me the chance to figure that out on my own.”
He was right. I had a lifetime to decide that I was relieved when Mama died. Family wasn’t as much of a blood