Page 234 of Tell Me Something True

Urban ended the call and Miles took a quick gulp of beer to wash down the lump in his throat. Pocketed his phone once more.

“How’s Verity?” he asked.

Urban opened his beer. “She refused to talk about it on the way to Kat’s this morning, and when she got home, she went straight to her room.”

“And you haven’t gone up to check on her?”

With a shrug that made Miles want to punch him right in the face, Urban sipped his beer. “She’ll talk when she’s ready.”

“Or, you can go up and ask her if she’s all right. And then ask her what in the hell she thought she was doing sneaking a boy—a boy who’d obviously been in a serious fight, who was wanted by the police—into the house and letting him sleep in her room all night.”

“She didn’t know the cops were looking for him.”

“So she said,” Miles grumbled.

Urban raised his eyebrows. “Verity wouldn’t lie. Not about that.”

Miles sighed. Washed down the shame coating his throat with another drink. “That still doesn’t discount the fact that she snuck a boy into her room. What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? She needs to learn the wrong choices have consequences.”

Urban sent him a pitying look over his beer. “Pretty sure she’s learned that lesson already. You saw the way she looked at that kid.”

He had.

Like she was crushed. Heartbroken.

Exactly what he’d always wanted to protect her from.

“She’ll be eighteen in two days,” Urban continued. “Leaving for college in four. She’s not a little girl anymore.”

“Still feels like she’s a little girl to me.”

Urban nodded. “Yeah. Me, too.”

Urban, Miles, and Toby had spent almost half their lives watching over their younger brothers and Verity. Taking care of them. Doing their best to raise them in a way their parents would have wanted. But it was different with Verity.

Where Silas and Elijah both remembered their parents, had their own memories of them, Verity had none.

It had been up to her brothers to provide that connection.

To give her enough time, attention, and love to make up for their parents’ absence.

Miles traced the wet ring his bottle left on the counter with his finger. “I just want to keep her safe.”

“I know. We all do. But she’s a good kid. We need to trust her to make her own decisions. Let her make mistakes.”

It was the same thing Tabitha had told him last night.

One of the many things she’d told him that he hadn’t wanted to hear.

The pain inside of us won’t go away on its own. It needs our attention to heal.

He’d told her it was easier to pretend he was okay, but that was getting harder and harder to do.

It was getting harder and harder to believe he could do this on his own.

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