12
Trent
After I hungup my phone, I set it down on the kitchen counter and turned my attention back to the food in front of me. I needed to get this right. Tonight was about more than a special anniversary dinner, and I needed everything to be perfect. Everything—from the food, to the drink, to the candle I lit on the little table when I arrived downstairs with the tray of food.
When everything was transferred to the table and the tray was tucked aside so it couldn’t be seen, I drew my gaze across the room. The girl was still asleep where I’d left her. I liked her better when she was awake. When those wide eyes looked up at me and her arms pulled at her chains as she reached for me.
I shook my head, because, while she was important, she wasn’t the main reason I was down here tonight.
“You’re late.” My brother’s voice startled me out of my thoughts, and I turned away from the girl.
“I had to make a call,” I told him, feeling his scrutiny as he circled around behind me. Almost as if he were touching me rather than just looking at me.
He came to a stop in front of me. If I shifted my gaze, I could still see her over his shoulder, even as big as he was. But I didn’t dare take a peek. I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
When John was in the room, he was my sole focus. It’d been that way since I was just a toddler. When my older brother was my world. My protector.
And I’d never ask for more.
“Come, sit down.” He said it like it was him who’d prepared this dinner and carried it down the stairs. Like it was him who had provided this for me, instead of the other way around.
But in a way, it was him. Because if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be who I was.
John directed me to the chair behind me, and a sense of relief swept through me at the same time as something else. Something that had my heart rate picking up, my hands itching with sweat, and an empty pit growing deep in my gut.
I tingled with it, that feeling. Every inch of my skin felt like my hairs were standing on end, like I’d climbed from a freezing room to stand naked in the hot rain. My hands, which I’d had clenched in front of me, lowered as if on their own. As if they could feel my blood stirring and wanted to help, wanted to go to where they were supposed to go.
Instead, I sat, hands resting on my thighs. I watched John as he took the food from the platters and arranged it on our plates.
One single chicken breast and thigh for me. Three large pieces for him.
A small scoop of potatoes and gravy with corn spread on top. A heaping pile of it placed on his plate, and then he set it before his seat.
He looked down at me, and I sat taller in my chair. I wanted to be on my best behavior for this special night.
After he sat, after he spread his napkin in his lap and motioned for me to do the same, John reached for his glass of wine and lifted it in a toast.
“To us.” It was a quiet murmur, the same nostalgic words he uttered every year on this day.
“To us,” I mimicked, before lifting my glass to my lips. The wine tasted of blood, of a life full of everything my brother had sacrificed to be by my side.
He set his glass aside, but instead of reaching for his food, he rested his elbows on the table and clasped his hands.
“Trent.” I bristled when he said the name, and that naked, hot rain feeling doused me again. “How far we’ve come.”
There was nothing for me to do but nod. John moved at his own pace, and there was no changing it. I’d learned that when I was young. When he’d come to me in the middle of the night to give me comfort, to take away my fears.
He could be brutal, sweet, and caring. He could be slow and bitter and calm. I was at his mercy, as I always was. As I’d always wanted to be.
“Twenty years ago, they tried to take you from me, just as they took Maddy from us both.”
I nodded again, lowering my gaze to the table between us. That was my fault, that Maddy was taken away. They’d found out our secret because I wasn’t being careful enough. I wasn’t as skilled at caring for our sibling as John was at caring for me, and it cost us the greatest gift our parents had ever given us.
John reached across the table for my hand, giving it a squeeze that left that pit in my stomach twisted into a knot.
“Twenty years ago, we became a family of two,” he continued, his words rife with the kind of emotion I struggled to understand. “Twenty years ago, I moved you into this house, and you’ve been with me ever since.”