“I do.” He clapped me on the shoulder on his way out, and my annoyance ratcheted up another notch.
I couldn’t believe I shared DNA with that guy.
When I turned back to Bridget, she was trying, and failing, to suppress a smile.
“What’s so funny?”
“You and Andreas. You bicker like Nik and I do.” Her smile widened at the incomprehension on my face. “You bicker like siblings.”
Siblings.
It didn’t hit me until that moment. I’d known Andreas was my brother, but he was my brother. A real, albeit annoying, one I saw regularly. We argued all the time, but maybe that was just what siblings did, like Bridget said.
I wouldn’t know. I’d been alone all my life…until now.
My stomach swooped with the oddest sensation.
“I still don’t trust him fully,” I said. Cynicism was hard-wired into my DNA, and while Andreas hadn’t done anything shady since I confronted him about being my brother, it’d only been two months.
“Neither do I, but let’s stick with optimism for now. Besides, it’ll be nice for you to have a brother here. Even if I wish he were less…”
“Andreas-y?”
Bridget laughed. “Yes.”
“Hmm. We’ll see.”
I drew her closer and kissed her forehead. I could hear Booth’s football game in the den, and our takeout containers lay scattered on the kitchen island along with Andreas’s empty whiskey glass and the rumpled diagram he’d drawn for me.
It didn’t look like a royal gathering. It looked like a normal Wednesday night at home.
And as Bridget wrapped her arms around my waist and Andreas returned, grumbling about a delayed bachelor trip to Santorini, I finally identified the odd sensation gripping me.
It was the feeling of having a family.