He sighed. “I try. Work keeps me away.”
“And is it work you enjoy?” I mocked, knowing full well Brodan was running away from home, just like me. Hypocrite.
“Arran … this isn’t you.”
“Isn’t it?” I grinned unhappily. “I’m the Adair fuckup, remember? This”—I gestured to myself—“plays right into my wheelhouse.”
“You’re not the Adair fuckup. And what happened isn’t your fault.”
Bile rose in my throat. “Shut up.”
“No. I’ve shut up about it too long.” Brodan turned to me. “You don’t need to go home if you’re not ready to. But you need to leave here. I’ve got a mate in Australia. He has a bar in Byron Bay. He’s looking for a bartender.”
“I’m already a bartender,” I drawled.
“Kasem tells me you’ve been blowing off work for weeks. He never mentioned the drinking, though.”
Indignation and shame roiled in my gut. “I don’t drink. Tonight is special. It’s one year tonight that it happened, don’t you know?” I said with a casualness I mostly definitely didn’t feel.
“Fuck.” Brodan let out a ragged breath. “I didn’t … I knew it was a year, but I didn’t realize tonight was … fuck, I’m sorry, Arran.”
“It is what it is.” I side-eyed him. “Can’t believe Kasem called you.”
“He’s worried. He thinks you should move on from here.”
Bloody hell. My friend had gone behind my back to my brother. Like I was five. I flinched, dropping my head as the shame overtook my indignation. It had to be bad for Kasem to have done that. And if I was honest with myself, I had selfishly left him in the lurch many times this past month.
Shit.
“Have you told Lachlan?”
“No,” Brodan bit out. “I promised I would tell no one, and I’m keeping that promise.”
Lifting my head, I stared out at the dark water again. I could hear Colin roaring my name in panic. Then silence. And then it was me calling for him.
So much silence. Just water crashing and silence.
I felt like I was losing my goddamn mind.
Staying was punishment.
Did I really deserve to leave it all behind?
“If you don’t leave here, I’m terrified we’re going to lose you,” Brodan confessed hoarsely, “And Christ, Arran, hasn’t this family lost enough?”
Tears thickened my throat as I forced myself to look at him. The sight of the glassy emotion in his eyes undid me. “I don’t deserve to be here.”
Brodan’s jaw ticked. “It was an accident. Not your fault. And you don’t deserve to wither away here in misery. Your family certainly doesn’t deserve to get a phone call one day telling them their brother is dead.”
A sob broke out of me before I could stop it, and I buried my head in my hands, half despair, half mortification.
I felt Brodan’s warmth seconds before he pulled me against him.
“I’ve got you, Arr.” He gripped me, his words gruff with his tears. “I’ve got you.”
“I-I can’t go home.” I was a mess. There would be so many questions. I’d always vowed when I returned home, it would be as a man I was proud of. Now, it seemed like that would never happen.
“Then go to Byron Bay. Start over there. Get yourself together. Maybe talk to someone.”
It sounded like an awful bloody plan.
But Brodan was right about one thing.
I was wasting away here.
If I wanted to move on, I couldn’t stay. Only ten minutes before, I was certain I didn’t care about moving on. Happy to live out a miserable fucking existence on my own. Seeing Brodan, however, changed everything. I couldn’t do that to him. To my family. “I don’t want anyone to know.”
“You have to at least answer an email or text,” he pressed. “Everyone is worried about you and asking me questions I can’t answer.”
“I’ll … I’ll email or something. But can you … can we just pretend I’m still here?”
“They won’t think it unusual if you move somewhere else, Arran.”
“I just … let’s just …” I couldn’t even explain why I didn’t want them to know I was abandoning my life in Thailand. I was ashamed, but it wasn’t as if they knew I had reason to be.
“I won’t tell them,” Brodan promised. “Just as long as you get on a plane with me in a few hours.”
I pulled out of my brother’s embrace, scrubbing aggressively at the wet on my cheeks. “I’ve got shit to do. Kasem, the bar, my place …”
Brodan waved me off. “We can tie all of it up from a distance. We’re going to head to your place, pack what you need, and go.”
“Just like that?” I smirked unhappily. There was only a year between us in age, and among all our siblings, Bro and I were the closest. We’d shared everything, even women. But he’d always been the more sensible of us, the one who stopped the fights I started, the calm who tempered my wildness.