got me to a better place.”
To avoid those clear yellow eyes, Qhuinn walked around, pacing back and forth from the bed to the door. Then he took a trip through the bathroom for shits and giggles.
And still the brother sat there in that chair.
“Why,” Qhuinn asked as he came out again. “Why are you doing this to me.”
He hated the capitulation in his voice. But like he could change it? Like he could change any part of this?
“You mean aside from my impeccable credentials when it comes to being fucked in the head?” Z twirled the prop again and swooshed the plane around in circles. “Don’t you remember our little ride together on FUBAR Airlines? If you hadn’t flown me out of that abandoned lesser induction site in that piece of shit we found in the hangar? I’d have died. So I owe you.”
Qhuinn closed his eyes and remembered that death flight. And what else had happened that night when they’d searched those cabins. “That was when I found Luchas.”
“I know. Which is the other reason I’m sitting here in his chair.”
“You said he was dead. That none of this was his anymore.”
“I said the room isn’t his. This chair is.”
“Splitting hairs.”
“Don’t deflect.”
The two of them stared at each other for the longest time. And stupidly, Qhuinn kept waiting for the brother to back down, look away, maybe apologize for his tone, even if his content was on point. When none of that happened, Qhuinn didn’t want to be the one who flagged out first.
So they just stared.
In the end . . . well, big surprise, he was the one who cracked. He lowered his eyes, but to make it look like it was just because he’d decided to sit on his brother’s bed, he went over . . . and sat at the foot of his brother’s bed.
“I don’t know what else to do,” he said with a defeat he hated.
“So just do something, anything.”
“Isn’t that the name of a movie?”
“You should ask Rhage that question, not me.”
There was a long period of silence. “Can I be honest?” Qhuinn asked.
“With me? Always.”
“I’m afraid to know why he did it. I’m afraid it was my fault in some way. And you know, I can live with his death if I have to, but I couldn’t live with . . .”
As his voice failed him, he tried to gather the reins, but the next thing he knew he was weeping so hard his back was in on the sobbing, his whole torso wracked with pain. And while he cracked wide open, Z stayed where he was in that armchair, a silent witness to the active mourning.
It turned out the brother was right.
Given everything Z had been through, Qhuinn didn’t feel embarrassed or self-conscious—and strangely, if the brother hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have released the pain.
Also, if Z had come over and touched him in any way, or said a word, or tried to get help, Qhuinn would have zipped himself up tight—and probably never reopened again.
But the brother not only had a point about the credibility he possessed, he had the sense to know that this solo journey didn’t need any intrusions.
It did, however, require a trailhead.
And maybe a guide.
Or two.
Qhuinn’s emotional storm passed, as all storms, no matter how strong and overwhelming they might be, did.
And in the aftermath of his breakdown, as he stood in his brother’s bathroom and rinsed his hot face with cold water, he felt like he’d been on a long, exhausting trip. One that had lasted months.
He was that tired, and that discombobulated.
When he stepped back out and looked across at Z, the brother was exactly where he had been, still with the toy airplane, big body lounging in the armchair.
“Sorry about that,” Qhuinn said as he made another pass of his face with his palm.
Z lifted a brow. “Really. You’re going to apologize.”
Qhuinn shrugged and tried to ignore the fact that his eyeballs felt like they had sand in them. “I don’t know . . . how to handle this. Any of it.”
“That’s okay.” Z clapped his thigh with his free hand and got to his feet. “But there’s no apologizing. You do that when you’ve offended someone or pissed them off, neither of which you’ve done to me. You also do it when you have some kind of control over your actions—and trust me, like I don’t know you’d have avoided that if you could have?”
“Guess I’m an open book to you.”