Page 24 of Not Your Hero

As for now, there’s nothing more I can do but wait and hope that he or my guys find something.

I enter the airport and my brother greets me. He smiles as he walks over and pulls me into a hug.

“Fuck, Gannix. It’s good to see you.”

“You too, man. It’s been too long.”

“Yeah, it has. I’m glad you’re here,” he agrees as he pulls away from me, and I smile back at him. Gary is thirty-one with me being a year older than he is. I don’t know why mom had us so close together, and I suppose we never will know at this point. All I know is Gary and I have been through hell together, and we’ve clawed our way to the surface. I’m not saying we escaped, but we don’t reside in the ashes any longer.

“Me too. I need to relax and unwind,” I tell him. He nods his head, and I grab my bags, following him out to the car. We toss my things into the trunk and climb in before he takes off.

“You hungry?” he asks, glancing over at me.

“Fucking starving.”

“Good. I got us a good table at the Italian place. You’ll love it.”

“Sounds good to me. So, how’s Charlotte?” I ask him. His smile fades as he looks at the road and not me, telling me all I need to know. She’s not in the picture anymore.

“We’re not together anymore.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, Nix. One day, we were good, and the next, she was leaving me.”

“She didn’t say anything?”

“Just that we’d grown apart. What kind of shit is that? We’ve grown apart. We’d only been together for a few years.” He sounds pissed.

“Yeah, fuck that shit. There’s no growing apart in the matter of a few years.”

“That’s what I said. Said we did, and that was it.”

“Didn’t have anything to do with the other shit?” I nod toward his legs. He shakes his head.

“No. She was about the only one who didn’t make a big deal out of it. You find anyone new?”

“No. I just do the same old thing. Drug them, and walk away,” I tell him truthfully.

“I get it. It’s hard to find someone that’s accepting of us.”

“I just don’t understand why more women aren’t. We’re fucking adults, not kids. Shit happened we couldn’t avoid.”

“Exactly. They act like we brought that shit on ourselves.”

“Right. But who the fuck cares, right? I mean, eventually, we’ll find the right one.”

“You think so?” he asks. I nod my head, thinking about Emerson and what she’d think if she saw the real me. Would she hate me, too? Would she think I’m sick like the others?

“I’m positive.”

“But what about everything else that comes with us? We have so much fucking baggage it isn’t even funny,” he chuckles.

“That’s true, but we could always stop, Gary. There’s always that option.” He glances over at me, and I can see the shocked look in his eyes. He never thought I’d suggest stopping what we do. It was never an option when we were kids, but it could be now. We’re adults. We’re allowed to make our own decisions.

“Would you stop?”

“I don’t know. If I found the right girl, maybe. Don’t you want a family?” I ask, glancing over at him as he drives.

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