Page 58 of Shattered Echoes

"Hey," he murmurs in that rough, smoky rasp that never cannot send a molten shiver arcing down my spine. "Morning already?"

I huff out a quiet chuckle, warmth blooming behind my breastbone at the unguarded sweetness woven through his tone. "Unfortunately."

Antonio snakes an arm around me, tugging me in until the solid wall of his chest presses flush against my back. "Don't sound so put out, gorgeous," he drawls against the nape of my neck, lips skating over the sensitive skin there. "I know for a fact that you enjoy my rekindled night owl tendencies."

I shiver as his warm breath ghosts over me, the arm I have draped over his trim waist of corded muscle flexing against my ribs. "Maybe I was hoping for a chance to tempt you back into bed before the day starts."

A low, guttural sound vibrates against my bare shoulder blades in a wordless reply. Antonio nips a heated path to the juncture of my neck and shoulder, his beard scraping over my sensitive skin. My breath hitches as desire coils low and molten in my belly, my body arching into his insistent caress.

“I think it’s time to call Henry,” I say. “I can’t keep putting it off. It just…feels so hard. Things are already so weird, you know?”

“Yeah, right?” He stretches with as much flexibility as a cat, flowing out of bed. “You do that while I go make some coffee. How about that?”

“Perfect. Thank you.” I pull him close and kiss him.

“Mmm… a man could get used to this kind of life, Col.”

I chuckle and then groan in frustration. “I wish you’d be here when I make the call.”

“Sadly, darling, there are certain journeys we need to take on our own. This is one of such journeys.” He points at the phone on the side of the bed. “Call Henry. I’ll be back with some coffee in about 15 minutes. When I do, I want to see you talking to him.”

He winks and struts out of the room with visible relief. I’m not the only one running away from an awkward conversation, it seems.

Inhaling a shuddering breath, I reach across the bed for my phone. A few deft swipes, and I'm scrolling through my contacts to Henry's info, pausing with my thumb hovering over the call button.

I force myself to stop overthinking and act, stabbing my thumb against the call icon with an emphatic jab. The line trills three times before the crisp click of a connection sounds in my ear.

"Col??"

I nearly drop the phone at the sound of my brother's anxious reaction across the line. I take several agonizing beats to find my voice through the maelstrom of raw emotion rattling through me.

"H-Henry? Yeah, it’s me..."

Silence stretches between us, rendered even more daunting and expansive by three thousand miles of fraught distance. Then, almost imperceptibly, I hear the faint sound of an exhale hitching as though all the air has been punched from Henry's lungs.

"Colette," he rasps, and Lord help me, the stripped vulnerability laced through that single utterance is enough to bring a hot prickle of tears stinging my eyes. "Oh, little sister..."

The endearment shatters, the fragile resolve clamping up around my throat on a hitched sob. I duck under my chin and turn toward the window, hazing in and out of focus through the sudden blur of moisture obscuring my vision.

For several suspended heartbeats, neither of us can seem to find the words to breach the cavernous rift that has torn between us. I want nothing more than to pour every fractured piece of my psyche out over the phone, to unburden the tangled knot of grief and isolation and betrayal still anchored in my marrow.

But the words won't take shape, clogging in my throat until I'm trembling from head to toe with the effort of holding everything inside.

Mercifully, Henry seems to sense the futility of prodding me before I'm ready. There's a faint rustle, like he's shifting positions on the other end of the line, and then a low, steadying exhalation.

"I'm here, Colette," he murmurs, each syllable gentle, as though speaking to a wounded animal liable to startle at any moment. "Whenever you're ready, I'm listening."

The naked sincerity in his tone, coupled with the familiar cadence of his voice, is like a cool ice pack on the most raw, festering parts of me. Henry might have failed me in ways both profound and visceral, but he's also the only real tether I have left to any sense of home and family. Of unconditional belonging.

The realization is both harrowing and empowering, and before I can think better of it, the words come tumbling out in a hoarse torrent.

“I miss you, Henry. God, I miss you so much it aches like a physical wound some days.” My voice fractures over the final syllables, throat constricting around a fresh swell of emotion. I swallow and sag back against the nearest wall, gripping the phone with a white-knuckled grip.

“I don't even know how to untangle everything–the anger and hurt, the bone-deep sense of betrayal you put me through. Because no matter how far down that road you've dragged me, you're still my big brother.”

I drag in a ragged inhale, fighting to collect my thoughts into something resembling coherency. “You're the only person on this entire godforsaken planet who knows every facet of me, the beautiful and the ugly and everything in between. You are family.”

Henry makes a strangled sound across the line, almost pained. For several drawn-out beats, his shuddering breaths are the only noise permeating the weighted silence shrouding the bedroom.

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