Page 40 of Forged By Sacrifice

Thoughts of my family and Mac followed me back to the apartment.

After eating a sandwich, I purposefully lost myself back in the Fourth Amendment with a podcast that I’d discovered on the topic. I allowed myself to geek out over the law and the facts that I could see in black-and-white instead of the what-ifs of my family.

When the last episode on the podcast ended, I took off my noise-cancelling headphones and heard the TV on downstairs. Daniella was home. I wondered if she’d want to catch up on the latest episode of Fighting for the Stars. I’d started watching the singing competition because Brady was going to be a guest host in a couple of weeks, but the show had slowly sucked me in—and Daniella along with me. It had been a good way to bond with my new roommate. We’d laughed, screamed, and thrown things at the TV over the judging.

Now, I could use the show and her company to continue distracting me from my thoughts.

I headed down the stairs, water bottle in hand. “Hey, Daniella…” I started, and I abruptly stopped when I realized that she wasn’t alone on the couch. There were two dark heads tucked together—one decidedly male. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize your boyfriend was here.”

The two bodies jumped apart. Daniella yelled, “Ew,” at the same time that the male said, “What the fuck?”

My water bottle clattered to the floor as the male body that rose from the couch and turned to face me was the same one that had haunted my dreams. Now he was here...in sweats and a T-shirt that showed every part of him that I’d tried desperately to forget.

We all stood, staring at each other as if someone could find an explanation as to how—in all of D.C.—Mac had ended up in my apartment.

Mac

WHY GEORGIA

“'Cause I wonder sometimes,

About the outcome

Of a still verdictless life.”

Performed by John Mayer

Written by Mayer

I stood, staring at Georgie like she was a ghost. She felt like a ghost. A ghost in yoga pants and a Panic! At the Disco T-shirt that looked like it had seen one too many washings. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that hid her white stripe. I’d just spent weeks at sea with Truck in order to forget her. To put her behind me. And now she was in my apartment, looking better than any memory I’d had of her, even better than in that damn summer dress she wore the last night in Rockport. Because she was real. Flesh-and-blood real. Kissable-lips real. Body-that-fit-into-mine-perfectly real.

I could feel my sister staring at me like I’d lost my mind, but I didn’t even turn to her. “What the fuck?” I repeated.

“Mac?” Georgie’s voice was as surprised as I felt.

“Wait. You two know each other?” Dani asked.

Georgie turned to her. “You said your brother’s name was Robbie.”

“It is.”

I groaned. “It’s my middle name. Robert. I haven’t gone by Robbie since high school.”

“You were the one who hated Macauley,” Dani teased.

“Just like you hated Daniella, and yet that’s what you go by almost exclusively now.”

“You still call me Dani.”

“Well.” I rubbed my hand through my hair and down my face that needed a shave. It was almost a full beard from the weeks on my sailboat. Dani was right. I was one of the last holdouts in our family, still calling her and all my sisters by their nicknames. Gabi. Bee. Dani. It was probably only fair that they still called me Robbie after years of hating the name Macauley with a passion.

Georgie was watching us, eyes ping-ponging back and forth, going wider and wider.

“You live here?” she finally breathed out, as if it was finally catching up with her.

I nodded.

She sat down on the bottom step. I didn’t blame her for needing to sit. I felt like I might need to keel over myself. This was so screwed up that I didn’t even know where to start. Dani had never told me the new roommate’s name, I realized now. She’d just said she had brown hair and brown eyes. Georgie’s hair was closer to black than brown, like my own, and her eyes changed color with her outfits, so it wasn’t really Dani’s fault that she’d told me she had brown ones.

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